Christian Dawkins Sentenced on Bribery Charges in NCAA Corruption Trial

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos sentenced aspiring sports agent Christian Dawkins to one year and one day in prison Thursday after he was found guilty on two counts of bribery, per Jeff Borzello of ESPN. 

Dawkins was convicted on the counts in May after bribing college basketball assistant coaches to steer players to sign with his management company and his hand-selected financial advisers. He was previously sentenced to six months as part of a pay-for-play scandal at Adidas-sponsored schools.

"He was the one leading a lot of these conversations," Ramos said. "... He is a person who, by nature of his upbringing, knows better. He had opportunities to go a different way."

Attorney Steven Haney said Dawkins plans to file an appeal on the charges. He is currently appealing his six-month sentence in the first case. 

"We're not done fighting," Haney said. "This was punitive. [The government] was mad he would not cooperate, mad he wouldn't snitch on college coaches. He was a bait fish that didn't wiggle on the hook like they wanted him to."

Dawkins conspired with USC's Tony Bland, Arizona's Emanuel "Book" Richardson and South Carolina/Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans to influence players while he was attempting to build an agency. Richardson and Evans each received three months in jail. Bland was sentenced to probation.

"Christian may be sentenced to prison for engaging in conduct that has been going on for decades without criminal sanction," Haney wrote in a sentencing memo. "[I]n the vast majority of cases, NCAA rule-breaking, where detected, is handled outside the criminal justice system, almost always by the NCAA and in the instance of alleged bribery, never by the Federal Courts ...

"[M]any of the other individuals that the Government knows participated in the exact same conduct as Christian Dawkins, and the co-Defendants, have not been, and apparently will not be criminally charged. Notwithstanding the terms of the current protective order, the Government is fully aware numerous Division I head basketball coaches engaged in the same conduct as charged in his case, but for some inexplicable reason were not charged."