Summer Programs Feeling the Heat

"I was careful who I recruited, if someone had a hold on a guy," Harrick said. "It's really a complex thing. There used to be a saying about teenage drivers: So few give so many a bad name. Half [of the summer league coaches] are good and half have an agenda of some kind, either to make money, charge you to talk to their kid. . . . You learn if the guy has a good job and just does it for the love of it. Or is that all he does and he lives off what the shoe companies give him? There is a lot of difference between those two guys."

Some believe the NCAA's focus to curtail the growing influence of summer league basketball began with Myron Piggie, a former Kansas City summer coach who pled guilty to felony fraud in 2000 after paying five players more than $35,000 to play for his team.

And thus, some say, the national reputation of hundreds of legitimate coaches, many in the game to coach sons or to help the community, was tarnished. Proponents of summer league basketball argue that most coaches are legit, offering kids a positive outlet for their summer free time and giving a few a chance to travel around the country.

But critics, the NCAA included, contend that some AAU coaches have curried increased influence in the recruitment of players.

"The NCAA's ability to reach these folks is limited," Yeager said. "For one, they are not employees of NCAA member institutions. They operate outside the high school ranks. It's kind of indicative of what the problem is. They are in between the cracks on some governing organizations. . . .

"The kids need to be aware that playing on some of these teams as information starts to come out that they are paying players, they are going to spend a lot of time clearing their own name. . . . [Players] better think long and hard with who they are signing on with."

Because of Komara's success in finding talent -- more than two dozen players have earned college scholarships -- some say he's been the NCAA's elusive target in its recent attempts to manage summer league basketball.

"I think the NCAA always needs a fall guy and a scapegoat," Reebok power broker Sonny Vaccaro said, "and they pick and choose who these people are."

Komara had refused the NCAA's interview request during Auburn's investigation because, he said, he was not given a list beforehand of the allegations that would be addressed. He had been down this road before. The NCAA's investigation of another former player Komara had coached, Marvin Stone, found no violations but cost Stone a portion of his senior season at Louisville.

Komara repeatedly called the Auburn ruling "comical", said it angered him and called the depth of the probe "embarrassing" during two days of interviews last week.

"They went into every nook and cranny to try to investigate me . . . " Komara added. "And here I am, I felt like a criminal, and that's crazy."

Recently, there have been other attempts to control the power of amateur basketball. Dana and David Pump, founders of the California-based Double Pump summer league program, were most affected by the NCAA's ruling last month that restricted college teams from playing exhibition games against AAU clubs.

The Pumps are twin brothers who own the five EA Sports teams -- comprised of former college players and sponsored by the video game company -- that play exhibitions against college teams for tens of thousands of dollars each year. The NCAA was concerned about colleges paying money to AAU clubs for an exhibition game while concurrently recruiting players within that AAU program.

"It's going to hurt us," Dana Pump said. "We're going to lay down. We're not going to fight them."