Long ago, I covered an amazing corruption trial. The leader of the Massachusetts State Senate was put on trial for extorting money from one of the guys who’d been his bagman for over a decade. The charge was absurd on its face, but it was the only way the federal prosecutors could get to the pol, so that’s what they tried. Some of the testimony was flatly hilarious. The judge was openly hostile to the prosecution’s theory. And the pol was acquitted, though the Feds did eventually convict him on their next try before a different judge.
There is the same sense of absurdity attending the latest—and, to some people, the greatest—scandal to hit college basketball.