And the fun continues. Minnesota (as well as UL) is one of the 11 schools mentioned in the article. FWIW, not an NCAA violation it seems and more unsure why we didn't get better recruits out of it.
http://on.si.com/1QLXC7V
Foreign tours are at least a $5 million-a-year business, and one in which approximately 90% of team trips are booked through U.S. companies specializing in athletics travel and/or staging early-season tournaments—the most prominent being Basketball Travelers, of Shoreline, Wash., and Anthony Travel, of Dallas and Ontario, Calif. But Sports Illustrated has found that since at least 2010, between 3% and 7% of this business has shifted to a company registered on a tiny island off the coast of Morocco. According to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, seven Division I programs—Louisville, Minnesota, N.C. State, Oklahoma State, Troy, UAB and UNC-Greensboro—contracted to spend $944,737 with Promosport & Tours, S.L., on Gran Canaria, a Spanish island. Four more private colleges exempt from public-records requests—Loyola Marymount, Portland, Seton Hall and Valparaiso—have also been Promosport tour clients, potentially raising its D-I business to well more than $1 million over the past six years.
What did these 11 colleges have in common, aside from booking travel with an obscure Spanish company with a rudimentary website? Each school signed one or more recruits who had played at Canarias Basketball Academy, a private, amateur academy that was founded in 2007 by Rob Orellana, a former assistant coach at Cal State-Fullerton, Fairleigh Dickinson and St. Francis. Not only is Canarias Basketball Academy (CBA) registered at the same business address in Gran Canaria as Promosport & Tours, but also one of CBA’s assistant coaches and its operations director, Samuel Sosa Cruz, is listed on contracts as Promosport’s president. Promosport’s college clients added at least 19 former CBA players to their rosters over the last six seasons, and in multiple cases, colleges signed Promosport contracts or took Promosport trips within months of adding former CBA players.
http://on.si.com/1QLXC7V
Foreign tours are at least a $5 million-a-year business, and one in which approximately 90% of team trips are booked through U.S. companies specializing in athletics travel and/or staging early-season tournaments—the most prominent being Basketball Travelers, of Shoreline, Wash., and Anthony Travel, of Dallas and Ontario, Calif. But Sports Illustrated has found that since at least 2010, between 3% and 7% of this business has shifted to a company registered on a tiny island off the coast of Morocco. According to documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, seven Division I programs—Louisville, Minnesota, N.C. State, Oklahoma State, Troy, UAB and UNC-Greensboro—contracted to spend $944,737 with Promosport & Tours, S.L., on Gran Canaria, a Spanish island. Four more private colleges exempt from public-records requests—Loyola Marymount, Portland, Seton Hall and Valparaiso—have also been Promosport tour clients, potentially raising its D-I business to well more than $1 million over the past six years.
What did these 11 colleges have in common, aside from booking travel with an obscure Spanish company with a rudimentary website? Each school signed one or more recruits who had played at Canarias Basketball Academy, a private, amateur academy that was founded in 2007 by Rob Orellana, a former assistant coach at Cal State-Fullerton, Fairleigh Dickinson and St. Francis. Not only is Canarias Basketball Academy (CBA) registered at the same business address in Gran Canaria as Promosport & Tours, but also one of CBA’s assistant coaches and its operations director, Samuel Sosa Cruz, is listed on contracts as Promosport’s president. Promosport’s college clients added at least 19 former CBA players to their rosters over the last six seasons, and in multiple cases, colleges signed Promosport contracts or took Promosport trips within months of adding former CBA players.