OT: State of Ohio Prohibiting Bets on Alabama Baseball Games After 'Suspicious' Activity; Alabama baseball coach is fired
David Purdum of ESPN reported gambling regulators in the state informed licensed sportsbooks to stop taking bets on Alabama games due to "suspicious wagering activity" for Friday's contest against the LSU Tigers.
The Alabama head baseball coach has been fired, I would guess in direct relation to the betting angle:
"In the 5th, your ass goes down. Say it."
My name’s Paul and this between y’all
My name’s Pip, and your ass ain’t talking your way out of this shit.
This watch...
I don't need you to tell me how good my coffee is.
You an oak man?
Bama... standing up for all things ethical and right.*
*Terms and Conditions: Make sure it is not related to football or basketball activities before taking any action.
Coach should have let an accessory to murder play - that's OK at 'Bama.
That’s nothing. Urban Meyer let a serial killer play and covered for him when the police came asking questions.
He was a good kid, his mama said so. And he was good at football. I mean, surely you can see Urban's side of it, right?
Lmao I assume this is an Aaron Hernandez joke but he didn’t become a serial killer until later.
He was questioned about a murder in Florida while in college (or before). Nobody was ever charged in that one, so its quite possible (and, IMO, probable) that he was involved somehow.
Oldie but goodie
Well, it's new to me. This is amazing.
Alabama isn’t exactly known for rigid conduct standards. To have him fired this rapidly suggests that there’s real fire under this smoke.
And it’s worth remembering that while this isn’t football, SEC baseball is a big deal.
Without reading the article, I am curious as to why the state of Ohio would be particularly concerned with fixed sports betting for a cheating college team in Alabama? Is Ohio really intent on having only home-state sports factories cheat, or what?
The article doesn't say why Ohio in particular is prohibiting bets.
I assume it's because the suspicious bets in question were placed in Ohio.
Don't let rationale get in the way of a flimsily, stretched barb.
Yes, he should definitely not let rationale get in the way of anything
Is this English?
Cleveland mob money.
Then I’m really glad I did t read it!
52-24
You mean to tell me that people are doing shady stuff when it comes to gambling?! The audacity!
I am disgusted. Who would have thought.
From a different article:
ESPN reported the suspicious activity took place at the BetMGM sportsbook located at Great American Ball Park, the Cincinnati Reds' home field. Notably, Johns said both bets were on LSU to win the game.
The Tigers were -245 favorites on the money line, meaning bettors had to wager $245 to earn $100 in profit.
I don't know shit about betting, but it seems like you would have to drop some serious cash to make enough of a profit in this case. I wonder how much money we were talking about here.
In addition to that, sports books limit max wagers more than normal on sports that aren't super popular because they know they could be susceptible to not knowing all the information. So here I would be surprised if they could have bet more than a couple grand, which gets back to your point you'd be making $800 betting -245. I know they aren't in the handing out money business, but cry me a river if they lost roughly a grand because someone knew information they didn't, that's a big part of their game is knowing things sooner than the public.
This all seems weird.
The suspect Alabama/LSU game was on Friday night --- the Reds weren't even home on that Friday, and their most recent previous home game was on Wednesday afternoon.
Can you bet on a random college baseball game 48 hours in advance? From my days when I would bet a lot of MLB - lines weren't posted until 24 hours ahead of time. If you couldn't bet Alabama/LSU on that Wednesday, why was the GABP on-site SportsBook open afterwards when the Reds were out on the West Coast playing Oakland?
You get into the SportsBook room from outside the ballpark; it's open every day.
Pete Rose nods approvingly.
If as you step out of the sportsbook doorway you look a little to the right, maybe 130 or 200, you're looking right down the length of East Pete Rose Way.
Gotcha. Your description below, I can picture it perfectly --- I used to live there, but haven't been back downtown for a couple years.
That would make the SportsBook's address "Joe Nuxhall Way", but damn it, how ironic would it have been if the SportsBook's was on "Pete Rose Way"?!?!?!
The story at the D1Baseball website also points out that Alabama was going to start their #1 pitcher in the Friday game but scratched him from their lineup a couple of hours before the game. It also suggests the bet was a parlay of two bets on the game (perhaps "over" with the LSU money line?).
What appears to be the most likely scenario is that the Alabama coach knew that their #1 starter was out for the series but kept that information from going public before he (the coach) or a friend got a bet down.
It doesnt have to be a ML bet. It could have been a spread bet or even LSU to score more than x amount of runs in the game. Then we are talking closer to normal juice
Either way, I don't think it's the damages to MGM that are the regulator's issue here.
You are generally correct. Which is probably why it was suspicious. Books have a lot of data on betting patterns and can identify ones outside of the norm pretty quickly. Your average college baseball game probably gets 1/100th or less action compared to tonight's Lakers-Warriors game for instance, so big wagers are already outside of the norm. It also becomes suspicious if someone tries to bet $5000 on LSU, is told the max is $3000, they place the 3K then also try to place some huge bet on the over for LSU team runs. Then has that limited and tries to place a huge wager on LSU -1.5 runs, etc. When someone starts acting like they can't lose on an outcome of a smaller market sport, it is going to get attention.
Man if only college sports had an independent governing body to oversee activities like this, or say murder, and was able to adjudicate appropriate punishment as needed to prevent others from doing similar things.
C'mon man, seriously? You know as well as any of us that colleges would never go along with one organization running all of college sports. Such an organization would be filled with power to regulate cheating behavior, maintain competent referees, and make sure recruiting remains ethical throughout the land. Besides, it would probably make more money than the various conferences and be able to hold national championship tournaments that would generate enough money that it could pay players.
You really think universities would be okay with giving up all that power to some outside group?
Apparently they do. It's called the Gambino Family.
What a great idea. I wonder if anyone's thought of it before.
And the person in Ohio who was responsible for all those suspicious bets on an SEC regular-season baseball game?
You guessed it - Frank Stallone.
oh come on - stallone is good, but pete rose was right there.
I was at the game when MLB let Pete Rose come on the field for an ovation but wouldn't allow him to speak.
It was weird.
Don't bet against an Art Schlichter joke in this thread, either!
or so the Germans would have us believe
RIP Norm
Sure am glad every league in sports fell over themselves to take gambling money as if this wasn't inevitable. Can't believe we're so lucky to now get to live in a world where we'll have a yearly match fixing scandal.
Yep. As recently as 5 years ago, it was a running joke, Brian would post a preview of a big U-M hockey game, and part of the preview would say "Betting Line: what?!?!?! this is college hockey, get out of here you degenerate, nobody bets on college hockey, there's never a line for college hockey, even for the National Title!!!"
Now, there's sites out there which post lines for virtually ANY college hockey game! Lindenwood is facing off against Alaska-Fairbanks in a battle of teams with a combined 7-46 record? Well, it may not be every sports book, but someone is probably posting a line.
It's simply trouble waiting to happen.
This doesn't even cover the ridiculousness that people can bet on stuff like WWE.
Yeah, some of these *HEAD* coaches of low level college sports teams are barely making a living, let alone any assistant coaches. The idea that widespread gambling wouldn't result in people trading their insider information, or worse as in this case, actively sabotaging their own team in order to hit a big lick is just madness.
Before gambling was legalized, state legislatures had all the cards and could have put limits on what sports could be bet on, like say limited betting to pro sports or whatever. But nah, gotta get the cash, now every time you watch a low revenue sport you're gonna think in the back of your head "i wonder if the coach threw the game to win a bet so he could pay his mortgage?"