Investigating Salinas: SI.com Follows the Money

Sports Illustrated's Pablo Torre fleshed out Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman's initial report on the dead Houston AAU backer and investor, David Salinas, yesterday. In addition to adding two coaches to the original nine listed by CBSSports.com, Torre puts dollars by everyones names. Here's a table summarizing the new findings.

This is a huge deal. Accounting for non-basketball related investors, the total amount of money on the line here is "several tens of millions of dollars" according to Torre. 

BallinIsAHabit's Rob Dauster did some legwork and found that at least nine of the eleven coaches had recruits who were at one time in Salinas' AAU program. While ESPN.com's Andy Katz says the NCAA has no interest in investigating this situation, CBSSports.com confirmed that the NCAA is investigating (even if it's only "looking into" the situation for now).

The Houston Chronicle and The Daily's Dan Wolken independently confirmed stories that at least two coaches were explicitly told that investing with Salinas would have players steered towards their respective schools.

To state the obvious: that's a major NCAA infraction. Now, the money is outrageously high for a fairly paltry number of recruits at this point, but I get the feeling we're only scratching the surface of this story.

Tomorrow, I'll have a look at how this could affect the Big 12 coaches implicated.