On Friday the Feds charged a University of Toledo football player with point-shaving. According to a criminal complaint, a kid named Harvey "Scooter" McDougle jr. was recruited by a shadowy Detroit gambler named "Gary" to intice Toledo Football and basketball players to influence the outcome of games.
My response is two-fold: 1) This sort of thing is widely suspected in basketball from time-to-time and games have been fixed, most recently and notoriously at Tulane, one of my alma maters. But I don't know how you go about this in football unless you got to a quarterback or running back.
2) The fact that someone is trying to affect the outcome of games played by the Toledo Rockets is proof that some guys will damn near bet on whether the sun will come up in the morning.
Granted, Toledo is pretty low on the radar screen. But I can't imagine that much interest in action on Toledo games sufficient to run such a risk. This kid is looking at 5 years and a quarter-million dollar fine upon conviiction. Trying to fix games in the Mid-America Conference?
Either these clowns are not real good at risk calculus or gambling on college sports is more insidious than even I imagined.
Hey, enjoy the Final Four this weekend.
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