The state of college basketball in 2026 is a mixed bag. The talent level might be as high as it’s ever been, but all the noise, money, and legal chaos surrounding the sport has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. The latest scandal, with former Chicago Bulls guard Antonio Blakeney among 26 people charged by the FBI in a massive point-shaving scheme, feels like a new low for a game already stretched thin by controversy.
What did Antonio Blakeney Get Himself Into?
The scale of what came out today is honestly hard to wrap our heads around. Federal prosecutors say more than 39 players across at least 17 D-I programs ‘fixed or tried to fix’ 29 games over the past two seasons, all tied to a gambling operation that funneled millions of dollars into mid-major matchups nobody was really paying attention to.
Today we announce the historic indictment of an extensive transnational conspiracy to fix NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball games spanning three years, 26 defendants, 17 Division I college programs, and dozens of players and fixed games.Spearheaded by former LSU standout and…
— US Attorney Metcalf (@USAttyMetcalf) January 15, 2026A lot of the bets were on first-half spreads and totals, the kind of thing you don’t notice unless you’re actively looking for it, which is exactly why this went on as long as it did before Sportsbooks started raising red flags.
What makes it even worse is how deliberate it all sounds. Two non-athletes, Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley, are accused of running the whole thing, targeting players at smaller schools and offering them anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 to quietly shave points or manipulate outcomes. Schools like Kennesaw State, Eastern Michigan, DePaul, Fordham, Tulane, and Saint Louis all had players pulled into this, including a few guys who were still actively playing.
The NCAA was already circling a lot of these cases, and anyone found guilty is facing a lifetime ban, which is about as serious as it gets in college sports.
And for Bulls fans, the name that hits hardest is Antonio Blakeney. A former Chicago Bull, now accused of fixing games while playing in China and then helping bring college players into the scheme back in the U.S.
BREAKING: Former college All-American Antonio Blakeney is among 17 basketball players charged in a point-shaving scheme to fix games in the NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association and rig bets, according to a newly unsealed indictment. t.co/hiLUypOPgi pic.twitter.com/CyYbb1e3o6
— ABC News (@ABC) January 15, 2026Antonio Blakeney was once a five-star recruit and played two seasons for the Chicago Bulls, so seeing him allegedly pop up as a middleman in a gambling ring like this is jarring. With all the drama popping up in college basketball, it’s not just disappointing; it also makes the whole thing feel a lot closer to home, and a lot more messed up.
Is College Basketball Broken Beyond Repair?
It definitely feels that way.
Over the last few years, college basketball has lost its amateur charm and started to look like a professional league with no real guardrails. The product on the court is still incredible, but the money surrounding it has warped everything. What was once a development league for young players now feels like a marketplace, and not always a healthy one.
NIL, legal sports betting, an unstable transfer portal, and pro-level athletes suiting up as “college” players have all contributed to that. The Antonio Blakeney situation feels like the ugly intersection of all of it. When money, gambling, and loosely regulated player movement collide, it creates the perfect environment for something like this to happen.
College athletes are making life-changing money at incredibly young ages, sometimes more than they’ll ever earn again. The window is short, the pressure is real, and that can make people greedy. That’s why the players named in this case aren’t the household stars; they’re the ones on the margins, making less, with less to lose and more incentive to take risks.
That’s also how someone like Antonio Blakeney could operate overseas, in places where nobody was really paying attention. It’s not just about one former Bull making bad choices; it’s about a system that made those choices feel possible in the first place.
Can the NCAA fix it? Maybe, but only if it finally stops pretending this is still an amateur sport. College basketball isn’t some purity project anymore; it’s a professional league in everything but name. Treat it like one.
That means something like an NBA-style structure: real contracts, a salary cap, and actual rules around how money moves. Close as many of the doors that money has blown open as possible.
Right now,w the sport lives in a gray area where everyone is getting paid but nobody is really accountable, and that’s how you end up with scandals like this instead of just basketball.
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