COLUMN

For those planning to be glued to the television Saturday watching the NCAA Final Four men’s basketball games, you might want to pick up a copy of a new book to use as an eye-opening chair-side guide to the untold side of the sport.

It’s called “Raw Recruits” and, depending on your stance on big-time college hoops, you’ll either find it an affirmation of the worst you’ve heard and read about big-time corruption in the sport, or you’ll find it so unbelievable and disturbing you’ll dismiss it outright.

Either way, “Raw Recruits” is the most fascinating, readable sports book to come off the presses since John Feinstein’s “Season on the Brink” with Bobby Knight. And in my book, this one beats “Season” hands down.

“Raw Recruits” is co-authored by Alexander Wolff and Armen Keteyian. Wolff is best known as a senior writer for Sports Illustrated specializing in college basketball. Keteyan used to write for SI, but has been a sports correspondent for ABC-TV for the past two years. Keteyan recently broke the story on point-shaving at North Carolina State.

Both authors specialize in investigative reporting, which is basically what they do for 274 pages. They investigate what the book terms “the cesspool” that constitutes the recruiting of top high school basketball players by big-time college programs.

The book begins and ends with chapters digging into the now infamous University of Kentucky scandal of 1988 in which $1,000 in cash was found in an overnight air freight envelope addressed to Claud Mills, the stepfather of Chris Mills, a big-time high school recruit in Los Angeles.

The scandal ended with UK head coach Eddie Sutton’s forced resignation and the program being investigated and placed on NCAA probation. It also resulted eventually in the hiring of current coach Rick Pitino.

There’s a revealing look, in turn, at the ostensibly clean Pitino’s history, which includes his being implicated in numerous NCAA infractions while he was a young assistant at the University of Hawaii.

Another interesting section deals with Pitino’s character, particularly as displayed during his days at Boston University. In one anecdote, the authors relay Pitino’s being so happy with a BU win over Rhode Island he stopped the team bus at a “strip joint” and handed out dollar bills to his players so they might tuck them into the strippers’ G-strings.

But while the book is built around Kentucky and its checkered history, it branches out into all regions and several other programs across the country. Among the disturbing things you’ll read:

There is a coach at Martin Luther King High School in Chicago who allegedly demands, and gets, upwards of $40,000 from college recruiters, just to talk with his best players. The authors describe what amounts to the flesh peddling done by other high school coaches in inner cities.

You’ll meet a New York City “street agent” who allegedly works for Syracuse University. His job: locate the best inner-city players and pay them to go to Syracuse. Naturally, the street broker denies he is affiliated with the Orangemen program and that he makes payments.

You’ll read about two AAU programs in New York City – the Hawks in Harlem and the Gauchos in the Bronx – which actively recruit top schoolboy players. The authors interview several former players from both programs who freely admit they were paid to play. Naturally, the two men who run the programs have become extremely popular with Division I college recruiters. The authors also inform us Kenny Anderson of Georgia Tech played for the Gauchos.

You’ll read about The Code, the unwritten, unspoken law respected by almost all Division I coaches which preaches above all, “Thou Shalt Not Squeal on thy Fellow Coaches to the NCAA.” There are interviews with coaches from UNLV’s Jerry Tarkanian to Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski about The Code.

You’ll also read about how easy it is to cheat on standardized tests, the routine fixing of high school transcripts so players can get introutine fixing of high school transcripts so players can get into college, and how simple it is to provide a new car to a recruit without appearing to violate NCAA rules.

It is all fascinating, disturbing stuff.

The authors offer no easy answers about how the game might be cleaned up. Then again, their work in “Raw Recruits” may be a first step.