Beyond Kansas, a Shadowy World of Tickets, Influence, Cash

The plot thickened late last week in the University of Kansas ticket fiasco, as David (right) and Dana Pump -- the twin brothers who run high-profile youth basketball camps in Southern California and have a consulting firm that matches coaches with college athletic departments -- vehemently denied any involvement in a scheme to scalp hundreds of valuable NCAA tickets over the last decade.

In a statement on Friday to a cbssports.com columnist, the brothers wrote that they have never been contacted by the university or "any governmental entity" regarding illegal ticket sales and claimed they would be "happy to cooperate" with any inquiry into the scandal.

The scam, which was first reported by Yahoo! and confirmed by a Wichita law firm's investigation of Kansas' athletic department, centers on a group of Kansas staffers who conspired to sell more than $1 million worth of basketball and football tickets over the last five years. The law firm's report, however, did not address the claims made in the Yahoo story, which detailed an earlier scalping operation that reportedly involved the sale of Final Four and Big 12 tournament tickets in 2002 and 2003 to clients with connections to the Pump brothers.

The main source for the Yahoo article was David Freeman, a Kansas real estate developer who is a three-time felon and is currently facing jail time on an unrelated bribery charge. Freeman was allegedly the middle-man in the earlier scheme, utilizing his ties with Rodney Jones, Kansas' former ticket operations manager, and Roger Morningstar, a prominent Kansas graduate and the father of former Jayhawks guard Brady Morningstar, to obtain the university's allotment of unsold seats. The Pumps, who host an annual retreat for top college coaches and athletic directors, reportedly helped orchestrate the scam by providing buyers and brokers for the tickets.

Beyond Kansas, the revelations shed light on the shadowy nexus of connections between and among college coaches, athletic department officials, and ticket brokers. In recent years, the so-called "secondary ticket market" has migrated online and become increasingly legitimate, with pro teams and suppliers such as Ticketmaster, StubHub and Razorgator angling to cash in on demand for last-minute and unsold tickets. The shifts in the industry have made it tougher for independent ticket brokers to get access to hot tickets -- and made it easier for insiders with ticket connections to cash in on their access.
"It goes on everywhere, Kansas is just the only school that somebody told on."
-- Southern California broker
According to veteran ticket brokers, college coaches and athletic department officials have long been scalping tickets on the side, often with the help of middle-men like the Pumps, wealthy alumni or other influential executives with links to college sports.

"It goes on everywhere, Kansas is just the only school that somebody told on," said one Southern California broker who has sold school-owned tickets in the past. "I guarantee you there's a lot of nervous people out there right now."

Several ticket brokers indicated that the Pumps often passed on tickets to Barry's Ticket Service, a prominent Los Angeles-based broker whose commercials boast about the company's long-standing "relationships" with venues and season-ticket owners. Barry Rudin, the company's founder, did not return FanHouse's calls seeking comment.

For big events such as the Final Four, brokers such as Rudin often advertise tickets that they do not actually possess – and based on interest, they hustle to fill orders with tickets they get from ticket holders, their own supply, or insiders like coaches, broadcasters, or family members of players.

The Kansas scheme is hardly the first of its kind. In 2005, former Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Tice admitted to selling several of his allotment of Super Bowl tickets for $1,900 each, and conceded that he had scalped Super Bowl tickets when he was an assistant coach as well. All NFL players and coaches can purchase Super Bowl tickets at face-value price, which this past year was between $500 and $1,000, depending on location.

At the college level, schools that advance to the Final Four are given an allotment of desirable, lower-bowl seats by the NCAA. "It's really, really hard to get the good seats unless you know someone on the inside," said another long-time broker in Los Angeles. "If you're a guy making $50,000 working at a school, why wouldn't you sell them if you could?"

In the Kansas scheme, Freeman alleged that the Pumps approached Morningstar, the high-profile alum, about acquiring and selling the university's unused tickets. At the 2002 Final Four, Freeman claimed the Pumps' network of clients paid him more than $400,000 for desirable seats that were supplied by Kansas staffers and ticket managers at other schools.

Allen Fieldhouse: Home of Jayhawks, controversy
After the Jayhawks lost to Maryland in the 2002 NCAA Tournament semi-finals, according to Freeman, the school's athletic department was flooded with tickets for the championship game, and he, Jones and Morningstar allegedly were able to offload dozens of title game tickets to the Pumps' clients for $1,500 each. All told, Freeman said the scam netted over $800,000 over the course of the 2001-2 and 2002-3 seasons.

The fallout has already been considerable: Five athletic department staffers implicated in the scandal have resigned or been fired, and there's been heavy criticism of Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins, who earned more than $4 million in 2009, making him the highest paid college sports administrator in the country. Perkins has denied any knowledge or involvement in the ticketing ring, but the allegation put him in an awkward and unflattering light.

As athletic director at Connecticut, Perkins hired Jones, the ticketing manager, and later brought him to Kansas and promoted him within the athletic department. Perkins also has a longstanding relationship with the Pumps and has attended their camps and retreats often in the past. "It's not easy to learn that people you trusted let you down," Perkins said last week. "We thought we had just about every safeguard in place. Nobody picked up on it. I certainly didn't. It caught me totally off-guard."