Home   >   UK News   >   Basketball   >   Phil Mushnick Hammers Kentucky for Racketeering

Phil Mushnick Hammers Kentucky for Racketeering

By on November 16, 2012

New York Post writer Phil Mushnick took the time to write an article blasting Dick Vitale, ESPN, Dez Wells, Jon Gruden, and the Kentucky Wildcats.

You can check out the entire article here, but lets look at what he said about Kentucky and the one and done rule.

In the same telecast, Vitale mentioned the “one-and-done” system of the Kentucky program, then noted that neither coach John Calipari nor UK “has done anything illegal,” then praised both for their string of sensational recruiting and on-court successes.

Vitale’s rationalizations ignored the fact that the University of Kentucky is a college, ostensibly devoted to higher education, and not an NBA warehouse and showroom.

That full college scholarships are being granted to heavily recruited athletes with virtually no intent to stay in college for more than a year or two, that a major university now annually serves as a front for a basketball team — known in other business enterprises as racketeering — apparently is unimportant.

Racketeering is defined as the following: Traditionally, obtaining or extorting money illegally or carrying on illegal business activities, usually by Organized Crime . A pattern of illegal activity carried out as part of an enterprise that is owned or controlled by those who are engaged in the illegal activity. The latter definition derives from the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act (RICO), a set of laws (18 U.S.C.A. § 1961 et seq. [1970]) specifically designed to punish racketeering by business enterprises.

So, now Kentucky is the college basketball mafia according to Mushnick…sounds like a t-shirt in the works to me.