NCAA Basketball: Former Louisville recruit Brian Bowen II sues Adidas

Former NCAA Basketball recruit Brian Bowen is back in the news. This time, he’s taking legal action against a major shoe company.

In another twist in what has been a topsy-turvy journey of sorts, former Louisville recruit and current Sydney Kings’ player Brian Bowen II has sued Adidas. Bowen’s legal team claims that Bowen was a victim of Adidas’ impropriety under a statute known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (also known as RICO). Sports Illustrated’s Scooby Axson presents the case that Bowen’s team is making:

"The McLeod Law Group, which is representing Bowen, accuses Adidas of “spearheading” a criminal racketeering enterprise in order to influence big time high school recruits to sign with schools under contract with Adidas.“Adidas has thus far infiltrated college basketball with complete impunity,” the firm’s statement said. “It is now time for them to answer for what they have done and to suffer the consequences of their corporate misconduct. Brian is an exceptional young man who is determined to right this wrong and to do his part to help free other student athletes from corporate corruption that has no place in college basketball.”"

This legal strategy represents an interesting framing of events by Bowen’s team; to put it mildly, this is a very creative recollection of what transpired in Bowen’s case.

I suppose it’s well within the bounds of legal defense, but Bowen’s team painting him as a victim who was taken advantage of truly understates Bowen and his team’s agency in making the choices that lead to today. It’s laughable to anyone with a basic understanding of what has been going on in recruiting circles for decades. In order to win, both sides have to play the game that the NCAA has set forth.

Based on the testimony that Brian’s father, Brian Bowen Sr. presented, Brian the younger was never involved in these backdoor dealings. If you take everything that Brian Bowen Sr. has said at face value, basketball was all that his son ever focused on, never entertaining the idea of illegal activity for the exchange of the services that he could provide a higher education institution.

Any reasonable observer of this situation will tell you that it’s extremely difficult to give any of these participants the benefit of the doubt. Brian and his father sought to cash in on Brian’s basketball skill; Louisville and other schools are interested in winning basketball games, and usually winning teams have the best players; most importantly, the NCAA has presented a convoluted student-athlete model that renders players as pawns in a larger game of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

Bowen II is just looking to cash in on this situation; at this point, can you really blame him?