RJ Bell's take on point shaving in college basketball

[HamGlaze]

Do you think any major league or division 1 athletes are currently working with gamblers for point shaving or inside information?
For me the best approach to these sorts of things is to follow the money. In professional leagues, even the guys at the end of the bench are making enough money that it’s most likely not economically viable in relation to their legal, career, and reputation risk. It just doesn’t make sense — it’s not like you’re going to get paid $10 million for that.
On the flip side of that, there’s a lot of college basketball athletes that not only are not getting paid for playing, they’re never going to be. A chunk of them are going to have pessimistic career prospects, so now if you have a chance to make a relatively modest amount of money — in the neighborhood of $10,000 per game — all of a sudden, it becomes economically viable.
Therefore, my answer is extreme in both directions. It’s extremely unlikely that anyone in the professional leagues who’s a player — though the referees, as we’ve seen with Donaghy, are a more viable possibility — is on the take. But, in college basketball, there are almost certainly multiple games being fixed in any given year.

 

[Willie99]

Plausible

And we know it actually has occurred

Maybe we should pay attention to significant action or movement in smaller school games

 

[HamGlaze]

I agree that it's plausible Willie but the guy is making it sound as if their is no doubt it's happening on multiple games every year. I guess I would have figured it to be not so commonplace. If it was multiple it seems as if we'd hear about more investigations other than just the famous ones like the Boston College scandal.

 

[RenoChazz]

It's plausible, but that's really all RJ knows. He doesn't know how often it's happening or if it's happening. You want to know how often it happens, ask a sports book manager in Vegas. They're the ones that know when something fishy is happening and are the ones that point the feds in the right direction. A few years ago the guy at Cal Neva (now william hill) told me there was fixing going on, on some Mexico La Liga games and they stopped taking bets on them that year.

 

[quantumleap]

How much money would someone need to make on a fixed game? $100k? $200k?

Certainly there are enough whales out there betting $10k-$20k per game. That much could be spread around to 10 different books without it affecting the line that much.

 

[FairWarning]

How much money would someone need to make on a fixed game? $100k? $200k?

Certainly there are enough whales out there betting $10k-$20k per game. That much could be spread around to 10 different books without it affecting the line that much.

I think the PG from Toledo got around $15K in benefits, kid was barreled-in at a Detroit casino. The thread should still be on here. I believe Ace Ace knew something about it. The lower-profile games would be hard to get big action in vegas without drawing attention.