Greg Hansen: Sun Devils of 'Hoop Schemes' fame prompted college sports changes

I took six pages of notes on an 8x11 notepad as I watched “Hoop Schemes” on Netflix the other day. That’s how newsworthy I found it to be.

Yet there were times I found it farcical to be watching or writing anything about a forgettable ASU basketball team, 1993-94. The Sun Devils finished 15-13, failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament and went unranked in the final AP Top 25 poll for the 13th consecutive season.

I shook my head when ASU point guard Stevin “Hedake” Smith described himself and his teammates as “superstars,” and laughed when teammate Isaac Burton said the Sun Devils “got star-treatment on campus.”

ASU barely averaged 6,800 fans in an arena with a capacity of 15,000.

But now, almost 30 years later, I realize the 1993-94 Sun Devils are Exhibit A why college basketball — college sports — is making a needed transformation in which those like Smith have all but changed the label of student-athletes to a more fitting term of student-employees.

The NCAA’s Names, Image and Likeness legislation now permits athletes to receive compensation beyond scholarship limits. There is no limit. Ohio State football coach Ryan Day infamously said that he needs $26 million per year to pay his starting lineup.

Today, student-athletes at Arizona can be paid $5,900 per year for showing academic progress toward graduation. The UA and its contemporaries provide free meals for each athlete, every day.

But in 1993-94, Smith and Burton were mostly broke. It was a scandal waiting to happen, at ASU or anywhere.

Smith and Burton were caught shaving points and fixing four games. The illegal maneuver was guided by Chicago bookie Joe Gagliano Jr., who, before being caught, banked more than $5 million thanks to Smith and Burton.

But it all blew up in a late-season game against Washington, when unusually heavy betting action on a meaningless game between the 5-20 Huskies and the 13-12 Sun Devils activated warnings in the Las Vegas gambling industry.

Following an FBI investigation, Gagliano, Smith and Burton were all convicted and sent to prison.

As “Hoop Schemes” begins, Smith, now 50, is sitting in a dark locker room, wiping away tears, shaking his head in disgust at “the people behind the scenes who ruined everything.”

“I needed the money,” Smith said, reflecting on three paydays of about $20,000 when he shaved points in victories over Oregon State, Oregon and USC.

“Every time you get a paper bag full of money, it’s addictive. It changed me. It changed me.”

In 1994, college athletes lived by the seat of their pants, no different than when I was the basketball manager at Utah State 20 years earlier, when the most anticipated event of each week was a free pregame meal in the school’s Student Union. Almost every player ordered seconds.

Now it’s not about food. It’s about money.

By the mid ‘90s, college football and basketball coaches made the first serious move toward contracts worth $1 million per year, which now reach $10 million annually. For the first time, assistant coaches’ salaries soared into six figures.

The athletes were given scholarships, which paid for tuition, books and a monthly check to pay for a small apartment, usually shared to multiple teammates.

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Two years earlier, Smith experienced legal problems when he and three teammates scammed to use an assistant coach’s university-issued phone credit card. They ran up a bill of $13,474 and, when caught, were each sentenced to serve 100 hours of community service.

Two years later, an ASU student linked Smith to the Chicago bookie.

“I needed the money, I wasn’t turning back,” Smith says in “Hoop Schemes.” “It was a (expletive) no-brainer. We win and I get money.”

Smith said he bought a car and about $5,000 worth of basketball gear, mostly shoes, with his money.

Now married with three daughters, Smith helps to operate an organization for underprivileged kids in Dallas, his hometown. His NBA career was limited to eight games for the Dallas Mavericks in 1997. He then went to prison.

The 1994 scandal became a cautionary tale of how college athletes ached to be part of the high-roll created by mega-million-dollar TV contracts. Was ASU the only school to shave points and fix games?

It has been the only school to get caught in the last 28 years, but hardly the first.

In the winter of 1950-51, what was then the best basketball team in Arizona history, 24-5, flew to New York City to play defending NCAA champion CCNY at Madison Square Garden. The Wildcats produced what was said to be a historic upset, 41-38.

But a few months later, the FBI busted CCNY for shaving points and fixing games. CCNY’s basketball program was ultimately diminished to Division III status.

Today, everything has changed. Players can transfer to another school and gain immediate eligibility. So far this season, 21 Arizona football players have taken that route. Some of those who stayed have benefited.

Arizona quarterback Jayden de Laura, for example, was recently given a new car at a Jim Click auto dealership. So was receiver Tetairoa McMillan.

A low-key school like Texas Tech recently said it is paying each of its football players $25,000 per season. Washington State quarterback Cameron Ward made about $90,000 this season.

Today, someone like Stevin Smith, an All-Pac-10 point guard in 1993 and 1994 who became the school’s career leading scorer, could transfer to Kansas and hope to obtain NIL benefits, like former Sun Devil point guard Remy Martin did a year ago, helping the Jayhawks win the national championship.

Today, the NCAA enforcement division probably isn’t looking for point-shavers as much as it is monitoring the vast transfer portal industry. Schools are not allowed to induce anyone to join their program. Pay-for-play contracts are forbidden.

But it wouldn’t be surprising if, 28 years from now, someone produces a latter-day version of the “Hoop Schemes” documentary, focusing not on fixing ball games, but on pay-for-play contracts.

The temptations aren’t much different in 2022 than they were for Stevin Smith in 1994.