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To Cover or Not to Cover...That is the Question

Even tried and true sports gamblers like Johnny Detroit and Vegas Runner from Pregame.com wonder how many games have been fixed...because they know the number isn't zero.

There are billions of dollars gambled each week on professional sports. Nearly all of this is done illegally (or, if you perfer, quasi-legally through off-shore internet sports books). But that's not the frightening part.

What should concern you, the sports fan/gambler, is that all of this illegal money leads to game fixing and point shaving.

Despite the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NCAA banding together to keep a prohibition on sports gambling here in the United States (while it's legal in places like the United Kingdom and Canada), their reasoning for doing so is false.

1.) It's true that the NCAA and the major leagues work with the Las Vegas sportsbooks to monitor their betting lines, looking for "unusual" movements and betting patterns. This is the leagues' primary warning of a potential fix. But this misses two important truths. For one, these unusual movements still occur without the games being taken "off the boards." There are numerous occassions in which the line moves in the wrong direction. Often times, wagering against those trends is the correct bet.

More importantly, because so much more money is wagered illegally it isn't tracked or cannot be incorporated into the monitoring process. In other words, the major leagues and the NCAA are blind to it. If some gambler or mafia member or a greedy athlete/referee is going to rig a game and bet upon that knowledge, they likely aren't betting through legal channels. The monitoring process is worthless.

2.) The NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NCAA are not naive. They know gambling fuels interest in their respective sports (which is one reason why hockey lacks popularity in the U.S. - it's difficult to gamble on). If gambling were truly illegal and cracked down upon, every sports league would suffer dearly.

But the leagues like to play innocent. They cannot endorse gambling (since its illegal), but they don't have to discourage it, either. They don't publish the betting lines in the newspapers or tell the likes of Hank Goldberg on ESPN to tell viewers who to bet in this week's games. Yet in the case of Goldberg and ESPN, the NFL hasn't told the network to stop, either. You can have your cake and eat it too in this situation.

This "hardline" stance against gambling also keeps the leagues and NCAA looking good to the segment of the population against legalizing sports gambling (while at the same time they give a knowing wink and nod to those in favor of its legalization). This helps to protect the leagues if/when a gambling scandal like the Tim Donaghy saga or the Rick Tocchet incident breaks. They can instantly disavow the act and trumpet their anti-gambling rhetoric.

3.) Perhaps most importantly of all the NCAA and professional leagues cannot profit from legalized gambling. Yes, it does increase interest, but the gambling scandals hurt the image of a "clean" sport. There is no win-win here.

Believe me, if the leagues could book their own bets, sports gambling would be welcomed with open arms by the likes of the NFL. Since legalized sports gambling would be in the government's hands - thus opening up the leagues to more Congressional oversight and general scrutiny - the leagues are better off without it than with it.

The fact that it is illegal has never stopped people from betting. So if it will continue despite its illegality, the leagues are better off with the status quo.

Did you know that the big-time sports gambling syndicates can actually manipulate the line? Watch the video below and learn how even the line itself can be fixed.

 Gambling Athletes

In my opinion, nothing strikes at the heart of integrity in sports than athletes who gamble on sports while still active. Unprofessional gamblers, like athletes, lose more often than win. An athlete or referee losing bet after bet with a mafia-connected bookie will end up in trouble. When he can't pay his marker, the "other way" to pay off that debt is usually to fix a game.

This has happened more often than you'd think.

Below are just a few of the names of athletes known to be gamblers. You might notice that most of these men are Hall of Fame players. The question remains: how many names are missing from this list?

Wilt Chamberlain

Charles Barkley

Michael Jordan

Isiah Thomas

Jaromir Jagr

Jeremy Roenick

Rich Tocchet

Ty Cobb

Tris Speaker

John McGraw

Pete Rose

Paul Hornung

Alex Karras

Sammy Baugh

Recent "Isolated Incidents"

In early April 2011, Chicago Blackhawks back-up goalie Marty Turco was alleged to have made a mid-game bet from the Blackhawks' bench with a Montreal Canadiens fan. Granted, the wager was just for $5--and Turco won the bet--but the two continued trading barbs throughout the game. When the game entered overtime as a 1-1 tie, the fan offered Turco 5-1 odds that the Canadiens would win. Turco accepted, and the Blackhawks promptly lost. Turco reportedly paid the bet off prior to entering the locker room after the game. The NHL, so far, has taken no action on the alleged infraction.

Michael Vick was supposed to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss his rise, fall, and redemption within the NFL.  However, Vick cancelled his appearance a week prior to filming due to "personal reasons."  The real reason was revealed by Larry King replacement Piers Morgan: Vick's agent had called both Morgan's and Oprah's show because the two talk show hosts made a public bet over which would first land a Vick interview. Vick could not be seen to be connected to gambling in the public's eye. Of course, never mentioned in the Vick dog fighting scandal was that illegal gambling goes hand-in-hand with dog fights (you didn't think they fought them for fun, did you?). The NFL glossed over this fact as well, and may have had influence over Vick's final decision.

In January 2011, Memphis Grizzlies Head Coach Lionel Hollins banned gambling on team fights after an "altercation" occurred between Tony Allen and O.J. Mayo (Mayo was suspended by the NBA shortly thereafter for violating the league's anti-drug policy). Apparently Mayo owed Allen money. When Allen pressed him to settle up, the fight broke out. It could've been worse. Just a year earlier, a similar incident occurred within the Washington Wizards when gambling between teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton led to Arenas being suspended for 50 games when he brought four guns into the Wizards lockerroom in a "prank" to get Crittenton to settle his debt with Arenas.

Here's a story that was instantly forgotten: New York Mets clubhouse manager Charlie Samuels admitted to betting on baseball in November 2010. Prior to his suspension by the team, Samuels had been the Mets clubhouse manager for 27 years. He was caught not by Major League Baseball but by a New York Police Department gambling investigation. Details of that investigation have yet to emerge beyond this initial report.

The Sacramento Kings claimed in November 2009 that one of its former assistant directors of scouting, Jack Mai, was gambling while working for the franchise. It was not revealed what sort of gambling Mai was involved in, nor what sort of money was being wagered, but Mai was effectively banned from the NBA for his actions. The NBA has been rather touchy on the subject since the Tim Donaghy affair, but proves that gambling occurs on many levels within the world of sports.

Al Horford of the Atlanta Hawks claimed he made a $10,000 bet with the Boston Celtics Paul Pierce during their teams' 2008 playoff matchup. The bet was that the Celtics would not sweep the Hawks. Horford made the claim during a radio interview saying, "[Pierce] owes me money" as the Celtics did not sweep the Hawks. Horford's statement was backed up by teammate Marvin Williams who was also part of the same interview. While this story was featured on espn.com's TrueHoop blog, the NBA did nothing publicly in response to this story.

Antoine Walker, former NBA All-Star and a member of the 2006 Champions Miami Heat, reportedly ran up over $1 million in gambling debts in the span of a year. This debt began immediately after the end of the 2007-08 NBA season, Walker's last year in the league. Approximately $178,000 of that debt was paid back, but another $882,500 was not - in fact Walker was charged with three felony counts for writing bad checks (10 checks in total) to cover those losses to three different Las Vegas casinos. The question now is, does Walker have a gambling problem, and if so, did it creep into his life while a member of the NBA?

UPDATE on WALKER: In December of 2011, Walker was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay $770,050 in restitution to 3 different Las Vegas casinos. He filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2010.

It's quite possible that mixed martial arts has seen its fare share of fixed fights as well. This comes as no surprise to me, since the "sport" is a cross between pro wrestling (which we know is fixed) and boxing (which has had so many matches fixed over the years, no one can keep count anymore). But what's interesting is that in the October 2008 Kimbo Slice v. Seth Petruzelli fight Petruzelli let it slip that their fight may have been intentionally manipulated. On an Orlando based radio program Petruzelli said, "The promoters kind of hinted to me and they gave me the money to stand and trade with him. They didn't want me to take him down, let's just put it that way. It was worth my while to try to stand up and punch with him."

Pete Rose admitted on ESPN radio (March 13, 2007) that the Dowd Report (MLB's investigation into him gambling) was correct, and that he was betting on the Reds "every night." Of course, he claims he always bet them to win.

Charles Barkley admitted he has a gambling problem in an interview with a Phoenix TV station. In a different interview with ESPN in 2006, he claims to have lost $10 million over the years andonce lost up to $2.5 million "in a six hour period." Of course, he doesn't feel this is a "real problem" because he can afford to lose this kind of money. He also claimed to have won money betting on the Colts in Super Bowl XLI.

More on Sir Charles - in May 2008, the Wynn Hotel/Casino filed civil complaint against Barkley for failure to pay back $400,000 the casino loaned him. Barkley claimed he had no money "problems" but simply forgot/failed to pay the casino back. Once he did, he publically vowed not to gamble "for the next year or two."

Adam "Pacman" Jones, already having endured a year long suspension from the NFL for his off-the-field behavior, was nearly charged with another felony in May 2008 for not paying off a $20,000 marker he held at Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas. The NFL does not forbid its players from gambling (as long as they are not gambling on NFL games) however they cannot have been happy that one of their players - especially someone with Pacman's rap sheet - wasn't paying off his gambling debts on time.