Alabama Betting Scandal 😱

Buckle up because this story is absolutely insane. Recently, we have seen players getting suspended for a whole year for betting on sports outside of their own sport, which seems unfair. However, it becomes a completely different story when a coach is involved in rigging games and placing bets on them.

Illegal gambling has a long history in baseball, with infamous scandals like the 1919 Chicago White Sox and Pete Rose's permanent ban from baseball (which I get to later in this newsletter). The most recent incident involves the University of Alabama's head baseball coach, Brad Bohannon, who was fired after a sports betting controversy involving the program came to light.

The controversy began with suspicious wagering activity involving the team's series with No. 1 LSU, in which large wagers were placed at the BetMGM Sportsbook at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio. I feel like any wagering on college baseball should be considered suspicious 🤣. I don’t know though, maybe there is some money to be made here. However, if you walk into a sportsbook and place anything over $2,000 on college baseball, they have the right to call the police.

Surveillance footage indicated that the individual who placed the bets was communicating with Bohannon at the time, and it was later discovered that the bettor was a former high school baseball coach.

Alabama was definitely an underdog in this game but still had a chance with its best pitcher scheduled to take the mound. But, things got interesting when their starting pitcher was scratched shortly before the first pitch. If the coaches and players had prior knowledge of this information, it becomes very valuable in the sports betting world.

Now, we don’t know exactly what happened, but after a thorough investigation, Bohannon was dismissed from his position as head baseball coach at the University of Alabama.

(Source material for this newsletter comes from ESPN.)

While this is an unacceptable behavior, it raises the question of whether betting on less popular sports can be profitable.

Betting on unpopular sports can be a smart strategy for a number of reasons. First, the betting market for less popular sports is typically less efficient than that for more popular sports. This is because there are fewer people betting on these sports, so bookmakers may not have as much information or be as skilled in setting the odds. This inefficiency can create opportunities for astute bettors to find value bets that are mispriced by the bookmakers.

In addition, because there is less attention paid to these sports, there may be more opportunities to gain an edge through careful research and analysis. With less information available, a knowledgeable bettor may be able to spot trends, patterns, or other factors that are overlooked by the bookmakers. That is where we can help 😉.

Finally, betting on unpopular sports can be a way to diversify a betting portfolio. By spreading bets across a variety of sports, a bettor can reduce their risk and potentially increase their overall returns.

Betting on unpopular sports can be a smart strategy for a number of reasons. We cover a wide spectrum of sports at 👉 TheGameDay.com.

My Personal Favorite ⚾️ Gambling Scandals

In the 1919 World Series, eight players from the Chicago White Sox, including their star hitter "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and pitching ace Eddie Cicotte, conspired to throw the games in exchange for payoffs from gamblers. The players believed they were underpaid and mistreated by their owner, Charles Comiskey. The unsuspecting Cincinnati Reds became world champions. Despite being acquitted of fraud in 1921, the players were banned for life from baseball by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and became known as the "Black Sox."

Pete Rose, the holder of baseball's career hit record and manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was found to have bet on 52 Reds games during the 1987 season as part of a pattern of betting tens of thousands of dollars per week on sports. Initially denying the charges, Rose later admitted in a 2004 memoir that he had been betting on baseball for years. In 1989, Rose accepted a permanent ban from baseball. He also served a five-month prison sentence for tax evasion in 1990.