Phil Mushnick HOW DO WE 'FIX' THIS?
Suspicious betting petterns reveal where legal wagering will take us
DON’T KNOW who Bob Dylan has for his Final Four, but he must’ve had gambling in mind when sang, “It’s a hard rain that’s a-gonna fall.”
What should’ve been the biggest story of the week — five Division I college basketball games being examined for highly suspicious or “irregular” betting patterns — can’t compete with the latest speculation of free-agent linebackers of varied achievement.
According to multiple reports and the schools’ acknowledgments, four of those games include Temple’s team and the other was played by Loyola (Md.). Both teams had rotten seasons.
But the most conspicuously suspicious among the games in question was University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at Temple on March 7, a barely contested 100-72 UAB win. As curious games go, this one stood out for not standing out. It was a so-what game between a 19-11 visitor and 11-19 Temple. Not a game of national note, which may not have been a coincidence.
In the afternoon before the game, the line soared from UAB giving 1 ½ or 2 to giving 8 — and on the road — an enormous move that could only leave a stink given the final score. There was no good reason — not an injury or suspension — that could explain such sudden, one-way, heavy action on a visiting team.
And these days, sophisticated game-fixers would avoid suspicions and detection by spreading their action among several legal bookmakers as there are now so many to choose from. That would prevent the line from sudden surges into shady territory.
Perhaps a two-point move would go unnoticed, but not six. That would ring the alarm that has been rung. The most glaring in-game stat was that UAB outrebounded Temple by a stop-right-there 41-19. And UAB had 10 offensive rebounds to Temple’s one. Impossible
to ignore as rebounds so often reflect effort.
Less remarkable but nonetheless noteworthy was that Temple, which this season shot 72 percent from the foul line, was 16-for-24, 66 percent, and its average of six steals per game declined to three.
My educated guess is that if any of these games are found to have been fixed they’re inside or at least neighborhood jobs bereft of sophistication. Several players, in a losing season and with minimal professional basketball futures — not to mention the getrich-quick commercial prompts that daily flood their senses — appeared to have had exceptionally bad games.
And the absence of a reasonably slight betting movement would not be the work of wiser wiseguys. But it may reflect this column’s previous prediction that college players are now more susceptible to the demands, threats and loyalties of street gangs than to the cigarchomping, needs-a-shave hoods from long-gone central casting.
All we know for sure is that something very odd and extremely suspicious happened before UAB-Temple. And it still emits a terrible odor.
In 2019 when legalized sports gambling became the primary commercial come-on to watch sports, this column examined another game for its wagering oddities. Marshall’s football team defeated Louisiana Tech, 31-10. Two days prior, the betting line underwent a sudden, significant change. Marshall went from a two-point favorite to five. Why the sudden, one-way action?
Louisiana Tech, after all, had won eight straight, and this was a conference game between title contenders. But La. Tech without releasing the info to the public until Thursday night, a full day earlier had suspended three players, including star QB J’mar Smith. Who knew? Just those on the inside and those they told.
Oh, yeah, a hard rain is a-gonna fall.