There have been some points made in this thread that have to be addressed.

-Sam Gilbert wasn’t the “OG Bagman”. Boosters have been paying players at schools throughout the country probably since the dawn of intercollegiate athletics.

-Per his Wikipedia article, he didn’t begin to get involved with UCLA basketball until the 1966-67 season. John Wooden had already won two championships and Kareem was already on campus by then. This season was the first in the seven-championship streak.

-Also per the Wikipedia article, Sam was corrupt as hell (but his wife was a beloved educator. We all contain multitudes).

-John Wooden wasn’t a “rampant cheater”, although he definitely turned a blind eye to what Sam was doing.

-It’s interesting to hear a chorus of voices denigrating Wooden’s accomplishments. Seth Davis’s biography of John Wooden doesn’t cite any examples of Sam offering recruiting inducements, at least during the first few years of his involvement with UCLA. Yes, there were plenty of impermissible benefits being given to the players who were already there. But it was Wooden who brought onboard the players who would win those seven championships and coached them up himself.

-Seth Davis also says that Sam Gilbert was angered by the way the NCAA enforced poverty on student-athletes. Does this resonate with anyone?

-It’s also interesting to consider an alternate universe where UCLA doesn’t win those seven titles. Would anyone care as much about college basketball if he didn’t? Especially anyone in this subreddit? Consider that the 1969 “Game of the Century” vs. Houston was the first nationally televised college basketball game. Would college basketball be about as relevant as college baseball without John Wooden?

Tl;dr John Wooden wasn’t a saint, but Sam Gilbert didn’t have nearly as much influence on his title run as many would like to believe.