Seth Wenig/Associated Press
A lawyer peered at the defendant in United States District Court and demanded to know: Did you violate college rules and give cash payments to collegiate basketball players?
The defendant, Christian Dawkins, who has spent much of his young life in the netherworld of professional agents, coaches and hustlers, looked pained at the naïveté, not to mention the hypocrisy, encoded in this question.
“We were definitely paying players, yes,” he said. “Everyone was paying players.”
Dawkins, 26, did not stop there. He has watched poor athletes walk into the business known as big-time college hoops and scratch for pennies while coaches and colleges reap multiples of millions of dollars.