College basketball's 30 biggest cheaters that tainted the game

College basketball’s 30 biggest cheaters that tainted the game

ATHENS, GREECE - APRIL 23: Rick Pitino, Head Coach of Panathinaikos OPAP Athens react during the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Play Off game 3 between Panathinaikos Opap Athens v Real Madrid at Olympic Sports Center Athens on April 23, 2019 in Athens, Greece. (Photo by Panagiotis Moschandreou/EB via Getty Images) /

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UNITED STATES – JULY 28: Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Brown, 64, speaks during a noon news conference in the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where he was formally introduced as the new head coach of the New York Knicks. The Knicks will be Brown’s eighth NBA coaching job in a career (not including college jobs at Kansas and UCLA) that has taken him to Detroit, Philadelphia, Indiana, Los Angeles, San Antonio, New Jersey and Denver. He’s believed to have secured a four-year contract with a salary of at least $8 million annually. (Photo by Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) /

16. Larry Brown

There are two things that everyone knows about Larry Brown: he wins everywhere he goes and he doesn’t stay very long in any place. While most people associate Brown with his tenure as an NBA head coach with various organizations, including the Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons, he does have a college reputation that includes winning and cheating.

Brown’s first coaching job came in 1979 when he was the head man at UCLA for a team that went to the Final Four. That appearance ended up being vacated due to a bunch of financial-based rules infractions, perhaps a sign of the future for Brown.

After leaving UCLA, Brown ended up at the University of Kansas, where he easily built a winner. Brown ended up winning a national championship with the Jayhawks in 1988, departing for the NBA and the San Antonio Spurs after the victory.

It turned out that Brown left a series of rules violations in his wake, including recruiting infractions such as providing money for a potential transfer to visit his sick grandmother. Kansas got slapped with a postseason ban for the violations while Brown happily coached in the NBA.

After his NBA run ended, Brown returned to the college ranks at SMU in 2012. Brown quickly turned a mediocre squad into a team that went 94-39 in his four years at the helm, but he got himself suspended for failing to report rules violations when an administrative assistant committed academic fraud on behalf of a player.

That would prove to be the end of Brown’s SMU tenure as he resigned after the violations came out. SMU got hit with a one-year postseason ban, and Brown hasn’t coached in college since.