Premise: The FBI investigation of college basketball as told by the guy who got the longest jail sentence.
This documentary is very useful for anyone who isn't as deep into following college basketball as me. That's not a weird humble brag. I just follow college basketball closely. It's my biggest non-movie, non-TV obsession. I followed the news as the events covered in The Scheme were going down. I know many of the names. I understood the conflicts of interest and how weak the government's case was. So, a lot of the movie was review for me. Even still, there was a good amount in The Scheme that I learned about the FBI investigation that rocked the college basketball world in 2017.
I actually do recommend this even to non-college basketball fans. It's well made. It explains how this FBI investigation went down in an orderly fashion. At the end, it even spells out the larger hypocrisy of it all. At the center of it, there's the story of Christian Dawkins, who went to jail for defrauding universities. Dawkins is a genuinely impressive individual. He's a hustler since birth. Business is an actual skill for him. Even after all this, I'd be surprised if he's not a multi-millionaire at some point. He just has that drive.
So, this is a very slanted documentary. Dawkins surely isn't as clean as this movie makes him seem, although the irony is that what he was doing before the FBI got involved was all legal. Dishonest, but legal. I'm sure the FBI or NCAA would push back on a number of points in this movie. I don't mind the slant as much here though. This does a great job laying out an investigation that most people misunderstood from the headlines alone. More importantly, it explains why it's dumb that this was turned into a federal case in the first place.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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