Indiana Basketball: Romeo Langford mentioned in Nike payment scheme

The former Indiana basketball star freshman has his name mentioned in the newest round of tweets and Yahoo! Sports article.

The FBI has been involved in the NCAA payment schemes for the past two years and there has still yet to be any real closure to the process. Now, one former Indiana basketball player was mentioned in the newest news released about Nike’s payment schemes.

Michael Avenatti who has been in the center of the scandal released more information last night regarding Zion Williamson and former Hoosier Romeo Langford and the alleged willingness from  Nike’s grassroots programs to pay both players to attend Nike schools.

The reports mentions that Nike was ready to pay $35,000 to Williamson and $20,000 to Langford while they were still in high school. The quote that mentions Langford is as follows,

"“Nike EYBL manager Jamal James texted EYBL director Carlton DeBose and Nike recruiting coordinator John Stovall ‘in February 2017, asking whether they would be ‘willing to do … whatever may be needed for the Zion/Romeo situations as well as the money we’re now going to do for the [redacted due to the player being a minor] kid in Michigan?’”"

Furthermore,

"“DeBose responded ‘that he was willing to pay Langford, Zion and [minor] the $70,000 and that they should ‘stay aggressive’ while he got ‘creative’ with the budget,’ the motion reads.”"

All of this is minuscule however, since Langford didn’t play for a Nike grassroots team or on the Nike EYBL AAU circuit, and attended Indiana, which is an Adidas university.

While it is still not ideal to see Langford mentioned in the article, nothing whatsoever points to any sort of payment that the family received, and rather Nike was behind this but nothing came to fruition.

Keep with Hoosier State of Mind in order to get all of your Indiana University sports news, updates and rumors.