Purdue's Matt Painter Suggests CBB Players Were Getting Paid Illegally Before NIL

Purdue head coach Matt Painter dropped an eye-opening quote during his Sunday press conference ahead of the Boilermakers' National Championship Game matchup against UConn Monday night, suggesting that college athletes were getting benefits on the sly before the NIL era.

"NIL wasn't put into place so the schools with the most money could get the best players," he told reporters. "But if you want to be honest, that was happening before but illegally."

Plenty of scandals emerged throughout the years suggesting that programs, boosters, agents and recruits found ways to skirt the NCAA's previous amateurism model.

There was the FBI's investigation into a scheme that saw coaches being paid to push recruits toward certain schools or financial advisors, leading to arrests in 2017 and prosecutions across the college basketball landscape. There have long been accusations about players who allegedly received some sort of benefit in similar schemes. In 2010, former sports agent Josh Luchs openly admitted to paying college football players. The list goes on.

One of the dirty secrets in college sports in the pre-NIL era was that players were receiving impermissible benefits.

Here's what Pat Forde wrote for ESPN back in 2010 after the Luchs scandal broke:

"Was it a shock? No. Not for those of us who cover college athletics, not for those who work in college athletics, perhaps not even for most fans. But there is a difference between suspecting something and learning the real story."

"Regardless of his motivations, Luchs pulled the inner workings of an oily business out of the shadows. He showed us how long it's been going on and how pervasive the problem is. (And as bad as it is in football, multiply it by 1,000 and you have college basketball.)"

So, while it's rare to hear a coach or administrator openly imply that programs and athletes weren't always adhering to the previous amateurism rules, it wasn't some shocking revelation.

To borrow one of the Internet's favorite phrases: He just said the quiet part out loud.