What's the cost of an NCAA violation? If your Miles Bridges, leading scorer of Big Ten Conference men's basketball champion Michigan State, it's a couple $20 bills.
Bridges reportedly made a $40 donation to the charity of his choice to clear his name in an NCAA violation discovered during a university probe prompted by Yahoo! Sports coverage of the ongoing FBI investigation of corruption in men's college basketball at large.
According to ESPN.com, documents related to the FBI investigation indicated that Christian Dawkins, a former employee of NBA agent Andy Miller, filed expense reports claiming that he paid Bridges' mother $400 in cash and that he paid $70.05 for dinner with the Bridges family. Michigan State's own examination, conducted Friday, found those claims to be untrue, but did discover that Bridges' family had dinner with an agent last winter without the player's knowledge. Once notified by Michigan State, the NCAA declared Bridges ineligible while it reviewed the violation, then reinstated him ā all within the span of a day.
Bridges scored 10 points in the Spartans' 68-63 win Sunday over Wisconsin, which clinched the Big Ten regular-season title.