I know it’s in defense of Chuck Person, who was in the employ of Bruce Pearl, so, yeah, anyway you look at it, there’s an underlying element of sleaze you can’t ignore, but, still, this makes me damned uncomfortable when I read it:
“Straining to charge the alleged NCAA rules violation as a federal crime, without any conceivable federal interest at stake in doing so, the government has concocted unworkable legal theories that lack any basis in the statutory language and exceed the constraints of due process,” Trzaskoma writes. “The federal government has no business policing the NCAA rules, and the superseding indictment should be dismissed.”
If there is some federal interest at play here, what is it, and, more importantly, why is it coming to a head now?
“The revised wire fraud theory in the superseding indictment does not fix any of the problems that were fatal to the original indictment and the government has failed to advance any persuasive arguments in its opposition brief that its federal criminal charges against Mr. Person are viable,” Trzaskoma writes. “… It is no exaggeration to say that the government’s new wire fraud theory (like its original theory) would criminalize nearly all undisclosed NCAA rule violations because every college coach and staff member routinely certifies compliance with the NCAA rules. … One need not be a careful student of college basketball to appreciate the number of coaches or athletic department employees who have failed to disclose known violations of the NCAA rules but who have not been prosecuted for federal wire fraud.”
Like Person’s former boss, for example, who just got a reworked contract, if I’m not mistaken.
Be careful what you wish for, Mark Emmert.
Get The Picture 
There need be very little nexus under commerce clause jurisprudence for a federal interest to be there.
Just because they haven’t prosecuted this area before, doesn’t mean they can’t. Selective prosecution is a high burden.
They’ve been stayed out of by this stuff before because of politics. That’s a choice not a prohibition.
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The commerce clause can be used to justify almost any prosecution. If one party’s actions could in any way affect another party’s commercial interest in any other state the feds can say “commerce clause”.
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If they are all paying their taxes on monies received, I don’t see how the government has an issue here. What federal law was broken? A big all powerful government that can make up rules as it goes along is scary. As sleazy as it all is, here’s to hoping the case continues to get thrown out.
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