Anything but a safe bet

Fri Jul 27, 12:20 AM ET
In an age when billions of dollars are bet on pro and college sports, the obvious question is: Are games fixed?
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Until a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't asked often, much to the relief of those who oversee the various leagues.
But news last week that NBA referee Tim Donaghy is under federal investigation for betting on games and sharing inside information with gamblers changed everything. Fans now have good reason to be suspicious. Perhaps they always should have been.
Much about big-time sports tempts just this sort of criminal behavior — so much opportunity, so little real deterrence, so much money to be made.
In Nevada alone, where betting is legal, more than $2.4 billion was bet in 2006 — $635 million of it on pro and college basketball, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Illegal betting? Experts estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars change hands each year.
What's more, to get very rich, very fast, a gambler doesn't even have to win all the time: 60% will do quite nicely. And there are all sorts of people who might be tempted to aid them — from referees, who in the NBA earn $90,000 to $300,000 a year; to trainers, who know who's playing hurt; to those college players who have little or no money and know they're not destined for the pros.
NBA Commissioner David Stern on Tuesday described his league's elaborate background checks on officials and the auditing of game calls, yet Donaghy may well have slipped through all those filters. Nor is law enforcement that successful in ferreting out such corruption in college sports. Since 1951, there have been five major betting scandals in college basketball involving point-shaving. "We know it's out there," Matt Heron, a top FBI official told USA TODAY in May. "Whether we can prove it is a different matter."
The very fact that there is point-spread betting on games gives gamblers an easier route to fix games. Players don't have to throw games, nor do officials have to assure that a certain side wins. All a player has to do is shave a few points. As for referees in basketball, one could call enough fouls to provide an opportunity for a team to score a few more points to ensure that a bet pays off.
On Tuesday, Stern did his best to paint the Donaghy investigation as a lone incident. "We think we have here a rogue, isolated criminal." The NBA and other major sports — which have a lot of dedicated, honest professionals — will be fortunate if Stern is right.
But don't bet the farm on it just yet.