Basketball Recruiting on the Nonprofit Margins

Barnes, who said his nonprofit foundation has never solicited boosters of colleges for donations, said one way to raise funds is to ask corporations for donations. "If you write 1,000 letters to them," he said, "you might get 100 responses." Tony Johnson, the director of the Dallas Mustangs, said his program sought nonprofit status because "people told us that is how you make money," although he said he has never solicited boosters of colleges for donations.

A nonprofit foundation with income of more than $25,000 per year is required to complete an IRS Form 990 each year. An examination of 30 nonprofit foundations run by summer league or high school coaches, however, revealed that many failed to file the form or filed an incomplete version.

One of the AAU teams that identified its top donors is the Georgia Stars, a strong program based in Atlanta. The Stars got $40,000 from Nike in 2005, $35,000 in 2004 and $15,000 in 2003, according to tax records.

According to their tax records, George Levert, an Atlanta businessman, donated more than $26,000 in cash and stock to the program between 2003 and 2004. Levert, according to an article on the Web site of the Georgia Tech athletic department, is an alumnus and prominent booster of Yellow Jacket athletics. Georgia Tech recruited the Georgia Stars' Louis Williams, a top 10 player nationally, until he signed with Georgia in 2004. Instead of playing in college, Williams entered the 2005 NBA draft and is now with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Levert said Thursday that he donated to the team because his son, William, played for the Stars six years ago. Levert said he was not asked by any Yellow Jackets coaches to make a donation and was unaware of any possible NCAA ramifications.

The NCAA has attempted to make moves in recent years to curb the influence of summer league programs. Beginning with the 2004-05 season, the NCAA prohibited colleges from holding exhibitions against so-called club teams, which received as much as $25,000 for games. The problem was that colleges sometimes recruited from the summer league programs whose coaches were affiliated with the exhibition opponent. There was no policing where the money went. The NCAA adopted the rule change in the spring of 2004 after an exhibition between Connecticut and a makeshift traveling team brought attention to the longtime practice.

"As soon as someone does something new," one prominent summer league coach said, "everyone else will be doing it within 90 minutes."

For example, one summer league coach suggested that he will create a 1-900 phone number so he can make money when college coaches call him each day. Summer league coaches already charge college coaches for what they call scouting reports that are often little more than lists with players' names. The AAU coaches have also earned money from speaking at summer camps run by college coaches.

The Baylor Case

The only documented case of a coach donating to an AAU foundation in exchange for recruiting favors received almost no national attention. The revelations came as part of the NCAA investigation that followed the 2003 murder of Baylor player Patrick Dennehy and were overshadowed by the other, more unseemly details of the case.

NCAA investigators uncovered a pattern that mirrors what The Post found: A college coach urges boosters to make donations to AAU programs, and the AAU coaches then steer their players to that school. In Baylor's case, Bliss, then the head coach at the school, also made personal donations to the programs.

One of the AAU teams involved in the case was the Houston Superstars, which is called the Texas Superstar Foundation on its tax forms. It counts NBA players Daniel Ewing and T.J. Ford among its former players.

In October 2002, according to the final NCAA report, Bliss met with Jim Turner, a Baylor booster and member of the school's board of regents. At the meeting, Bliss asked Turner to have his company contribute $50,000 to the Houston Superstars foundation. Bliss told Turner that the money would help offset the AAU team's travel expenses and enable Baylor to better recruit players in the program, the NCAA said.