Kellerman on First Take said Duke should just get a head of it and claim they're in violation but blow the lid off the thing and say its happening everywhere because its the NCAA's fault for their unfair system. Sure Max, you'd have a better chance of keeping Stephen A Smith's annoying outbursts at a minimum on your show than Duke falling on it's sword and the charade of the student athlete in the one and done era.
The other thing is it appears very likely that Zion DID get paid, but it's by multiple people and it's likely from Nike. his parents lived in North Carolina last year they rented a house there. I know this because a friend of mine, a HUGE Duke fan, told me he found out Zion's parents were living a couple of blocks away from where he lives. He said I don't live in an uber rich neighborhood but it's not cheap either. One of his neighbors told him one day, the guy is a UNC fan and he said I'm sure you're aware Zion's parents moved in on such and such street. He had not been aware, checked and confirmed it was indeed them.
He said I guess it's like making hotdogs I don't really want to know, I'd like to think Duke is clean, I'm not naive, and I assume someone is paying for them to live there because it was fairly well known neither of them had any obvious job they were going to during the time they lived there.
So when the stuff came up in the trials about the stepdad asking Kansas for money, housing and a car he said I just sort of assumed whatever they asked from Adidas, they got from Nike.
So Duke would have to think there's a very clear paper trail and they're about to get caught so they better get ahead and self report. Right now there's no reason to think that's the case, Zion may "get caught" but nobody really cares about the kids taking money and if it's from Nike, Duke can just claim they had no knowledge.
Zion played on the Adidas circuit in HS, it's pretty clear Adidas put lots of money into him so him going to Nike probably caused some hard feelings and I imagine then his changing agents did the same thing.
I seriously doubt Duke will get into much if any trouble here. I'm sure he got paid, I'm sure they knew he got paid, but nothing is going to happen unless there is some bombshell that hasn't come out yet.
Michael Beasley got into the exact same kind of suit over changing agents, it came out he got money while in college, and K State never got into trouble over it.
