The Altogether Predictable Sports Gambling Scandal | The American Spectator

How could anyone not have seen the latest sports gambling scandal coming?

I mean, the Supreme Court threw open the doors of sports gambling seven years ago, and rushing into that financial Eden are the professional sports leagues themselves — the NBA, MLB, the NFL — all greedy for the lucre gambling would provide. They become official partners of betting conglomerates — DraftKings, FanDuel, et al. — so they can benefit directly from the flood of gambling to follow, and soon, we are blanketed by ads pushing sports betting. Celebrities without number plump for gambling sites — Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Kevin Hart, Jamie Foxx, et al. Why, the First Family of Football, the Mannings — even Archie and Cooper — are prostrating before the gods of Caesars Entertainment. Huge betting salons are built next door to sports venues, with some even inside the walls. Sports networks devote hours to oddsmakers and gambling savants — they have their own shows. Even the successor to the great Rush Limbaugh radio show — the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show — features a weekly segment called Clay’s NFL PrizePicks, in which cohost Travis urges particular bets on his listeners.

All of it pushes one message: Bet on sports, bet every day, bet before the sporting event, bet during the sporting event.

And bet on every possible little thing. Bet on who will win and who will lose, sure, but also bet on whether player X will make his next three-point attempt in an NBA game, on whether player Y will gain 55 yards or more in an NFL game, on whether player Z will strike out next time up in an MLB game. And do it from your phone while sitting in the stands watching the game you’re betting on. (RELATED: Danger Signs for Sports Gambling)

Everywhere you look in sports media are betting odds, the money line, the over and under, prop bets, the point spread. You can’t get away from it. (RELATED: Sports Gambling Gone Wild)

So much money is changing hands so rapidly, with so many moving parts in the gambling business, and players are staring point-blank at so much temptation to screw up on purpose, that some are submitting to that temptation and reaping big hauls of illicit cash for themselves or their buddies, or pro gamblers they’re in hock with. (RELATED: What Did Professional Sports Expect?)

No, you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to see this big gambling scandal coming down the pike.

Here’s what went down last week: The FBI arrested 34 people in a wide-ranging conspiracy scandal. Among the 34 were three well-known NBA personalities — a current player, a head coach, and an ex-player and ex-assistant coach. The current player, Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat, is accused of tipping off confederates that he would pull himself out of a game early, feigning injury. This allowed his partners to place “under” bets on his performance. They did so to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The coach, Chauncey Billups, was principally arrested for participating in fixed high-stakes poker games that involved mafia names we haven’t heard for a while — as in Genovese, Gambino, Bonanno, and Lucchese. But he may also be “Co-Conspirator 8” in the other FBI case, who, for a relatively meaningless game in March 2023, told a friend that his team, the Portland Trailblazers, would be “tanking” the game, to better their odds in the next season’s draft. His co-defendants dumped $100,000 on the Trailblazers’ opponent, the Chicago Bulls.

Damon Jones, the ex-player and ex-coach, was arrested for involvement with Billups in the illegal poker games, but is also accused of telling co-defendants a certain Los Angeles Lakers star was injured prior to that star’s placement on the official injury report for a certain 2023 game. He told them to bet on the Lakers’ opponent. The injured star was most likely LeBron James.

And this is only the most recent case. In another high-profile NBA corruption story, Jontay Porter, of the Toronto Raptors, was banned for life last year for pulling a stunt similar to Rozier’s. He told a pal he would be leaving a game early, due to illness, and the pal bet big on the “under” on Porter’s personal statistics. Porter also bet on 13 NBA games, using another’s betting account, and bet parlays that had his own team losing.

Gambling scandals hit baseball last summer as well. Two players from the Cleveland Guardians baseball team were suspended for allegedly engaging in funny stuff with first pitches. You can bet on whether a pitcher’s first pitch upon entering a game is a ball, a strike, or is put in play.

Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase, the latter one of the best closers in the game, were placed on “nondisciplinary paid leave” as the league looks into suspicious betting activity related to their play. A few of their first pitches upon entry into games were “juuuuust a bit outside,” as Bob Uecker would say. Which might have been fine, except that big money came pouring in late on those first pitches being called balls. They remain suspended as the MLB continues its investigation.

In the NFL, at least 13 players have been suspended for gambling violations. And colleges are awash in gambling scandals, touching coaches or athletes at Temple, Alabama, Iowa, Iowa State, LSU, and Notre Dame.

Naturally, in the wake of the FBI revelations, the gambling apologists are out in full throat defending their industry. The most common defense is that the legalization of gambling makes the detection of corruption easier. Regulators and sports leagues can monitor betting activity and blow the whistle on unusual betting behavior. This was impossible in the unregulated gambling world.

This argument may be partially valid, but the volume of money and bets is so great — and growing so fast — that authorities cannot hope to catch most, and certainly not all, of the shenanigans.

This scandal has damaged other favored arguments for gambling, however. One is that athletes today make so much money as to indemnify themselves from temptation. Athletes making millions have no motivation to throw a game, or shave points, or fudge performance in any way. However, the jocks in the FBI case are worth millions. Rozier brings home over $25 million per season.

This hasn’t stopped media celebrities from their sometimes stupid takes. The stupidest came from Stephen A. Smith. The ESPN gasbag went full TDA — the NBA gambling scandal is about Donald Trump, he said.

The crux of this current scandal is this: Gambling is a vice. The industry can call it gaming and dress it in a three-piece suit and stick it in a top-floor corner office, but it’s still a vice. It always has been and always will be. It is an enterprise where people are trying to make money for doing nothing. Undesirables and ne’er-do-wells will always hover about its fringes waiting to get their fingers in the game.

And more gaming scandals are as inevitable as the current one.

It’s the tip of the iceberg, FBI director Kash Patel said.

Tom Raabe is a writer and editor living in Arizona. He has published a novel, Call of the Prophet, which, he says, is “religious humor with a punch.” It is available on Amazon.

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