College Basketball: How is Brian Bowen involved in FBI investigation?

Huge news broke across the college basketball landscape, as the FBI charged four assistant coaches among others for fraud and corruption. Five-star Louisville commit Brian Bowen may be at the center.

Brian Bowen was one of the most highly sought-after recruits in the Class of 2017. The five-star, McDonald’s All-American was rated as the No. 5 small forward in the country by 247 Sports and No. 21 overall player by Rivals.

Bowen, who committed to the Louisville Cardinals, was the perfect addition to Rick Pitino’s squad and helped take the team from a NCAA Tournament lock to a favorite to win the National Championship.

That being said, a recent FBI investigation led to fraud and corruption charges being brought against four assistant college basketball coaches as well as several businessmen — and Bowen might be at the center.

If you Google “Brian Bowen,” one of the first articles that pops up is one from CBS entitled “Louisville lands surprise commitment from Brian Bowen.”

However, the commitment might no longer be a surprise, as it has been reported that Bowen is likely at the center of a pay-to-play scandal that led to the charges.

From the information that has been released so far, it looks as if Adidas and Louisville conspired to pay Bowen’s family $100,000 in order to get him to go to the Adidas school.

If true, you cannot blame the family, as $100,000 is a life-changing amount of money and stories of this kind of thing happening in college sports have been coming out for years. However, this could have massive consequences for Louisville and the rest of college basketball.

Next: 2017-18 ACC basketball power rankings

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll keep you covered on Busting Brackets as more information is released.