Since Sam Gilbert was paying the UCLA players during practically the entire period of their dominance under Wooden?
Bill Walton admitted that Gilbert paid the players and bought them clothes and cars, and stated that if the NCAA had bothered to investigate the Gilbert connection UCLA would have been under NCAA suspension for hundreds of years.
Wooden knew what was going on too. He confronted one of his players who showed up with a new coat and said, "Did you get this from Sam Gilbert? I don't like this."
In fact, UCLA WAS put on probation for Gilbert's pay-for-play scheme after Wooden had retired. Funny though, Wooden just abruptly announced his retirement out of the blue. Somebody in the NCAA tipped Wooden to step down so the whole house of cards wouldn't have to fall down, ya think?
Any other program without the UCLA pedigree doing the same thing in the modern era would get hammered by the NCAA, so shouldn't UCLA's championships under Wooden have an asterisk?
2007-03-11
01:55:44
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8 answers
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Anonymous