New Orleans        I often find myself defending the city and state where I vote, when outsiders and transplants insinuate that there is appalling, deep seated corruption here.  I usually point out that indictments are notoriously political, and Louisiana is a crazy political state and has been for generations.  Actual convictions are less common and more on the par with most cities and states around the country.  I’m not saying that this is always a winning argument, but it is at least good enough to get a welcome change in the conversation subjects.

I’ve let this settle some before digging deeper, but there is something kind of uncomfortably rotten that seems more than coincidental about the number of Louisiana connections to the recent “…college basketball point-shaving scheme involving more than 39 players on 17 NCAA Division I teams [that] resulted in dozens of games in the previous two seasons being fixed by a gambling ring that included a former NBA player, according to a federal indictment … in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.”  Of the 17 schools where the point shaving seems to have occurred almost a quarter were within spitting distance, including Tulane University, the University of New Orleans, and Nicholls State.  An architect of the scheme and primary recruiter seems to have been a former LSU baller who did a brief stint in the NBA, before going down this dark road.

As ESPN reports,

Former NBA player Antonio Blakeney was named but not charged in the indictment. Blakeney allegedly was part of the group that recruited players to participate in the scheme and offered bribes, and he has been charged separately. Blakeney was a star at LSU before playing two seasons with the Chicago Bulls (2017-19). He has since played overseas in China and Israel. The scheme, according to the 70-page indictment, began around September 2022 and initially focused on fixing Chinese Basketball Association games, where Blakeney was a leading scorer. Blakeney allegedly manipulated his own performance and recruited other players from his team to join.

Let’s all agree that this is not a good look.  They all talk about how easy it is.  Only professional gamblers are watching Chinese Basketball, but most of the rest of the teams are smaller Division 1 schools that most don’t follow, and where many would have to strain to remember where the school is located.  The schemes don’t always work, but one or two players turning in subpar performances can affect the spread or the final outcome, and the gamblers that were in on the scheme made millions on heavy six-figure bets.

There’s nothing amateur about sports now when top athletes in hungry fan markets can make millions in name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments.  Players working in the smaller schools and markets want to get paid just like those in the big schools, and likely chafe with smaller to nonexistent payments where they labor in sports, while pretending to be in school.  The reported payments of $10 to $40,000 probably look too good to pass up, particularly if it seems like easy money with high deniability.

But the real problem is not the susceptibility of the athletes, but the flood of betting money that has come into sports at all levels, whether it’s the ubiquitous FanDuel and its top competitors or the emerging prediction markets, where bettors can wager on every imaginable thing in a game.  For all of the soundbites from the winners of this or that who talk about the “love for the game” or “praise God”, it’s hard to deny that way too much of sports, whether totally professional or pretend amateur, is all about the money now.

To pretend that the NCAA or the NFL, NBA, and other pro franchises are able to police the players and the games, when their stadiums are inundated with ads, posters, and hawkers for betting, is a delusional denial of reality.  Whenever it’s all about the money, too many are going to have their hands out, whether on top or under the table.  None of this makes it right, but like it or not, when this is the new normal, we’re going to see more and more of this, with or without the help of my local folks.