Feds Bust KU Ticket Black Market

For years, someone in the office that allocates Jayhawk basketball tickets to boosters has been funneling them to brokers, making big bucks in the process. At least they caught it before Kansas received its Final Four tickets — oh wait.

It's complicated, and much is still shrouded in the secrecy of an ongoing probe. But we know this: federal investigators are looking into a long-running scheme by which NCAA Tournament tickets and KU season tickets meant for boosters and university staffers have instead been sold to area ticket brokers.

We also know this: an assistant athletic director, in charge of the fund that handles those tickets, was placed on administrative leave earlier this month, pending an internal investigation.

Are those two things related? The school's not saying, but the anonymous sources are basically jabbing you in the ribs, telling you to connect the dots.

The Williams Educational Fund is a fancy name for who boosters write their checks out to when donating to the athletic program. It receives an allocation of tickets for both regular and postseason games, and doles them out as it sees fit. Since 2004, Rodney Jones has been in charge of the fund — until his suspension this month.

With hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of those tickets unaccounted for, and a public school the victim, this is about to turn into serious business.

Federal and KU inquiries look into sales of Jayhawks basketball tickets [Kansas City Star]