The NCAA will tell you that college students are in trouble. On campuses across the country, they are subject to a dangerous gambling culture.
Student bookies, gamblers and fixers are everywhere, knowing just how to tap into a poor victim. So college athletes can find themselves in trouble, and asked to shave points or throw games for money. It's not just a sports issue regarding the integrity of games, but also the NCAA will tell you it's a human issue.
So it's no shock, really, to see the point-shaving scandal at Toledo.
Sammy Villegas, a guard for the Toledo basketball team until 2006, has been charged with point shaving during the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 seasons.
Another player who Villegas paid with a check to shave points to has yet to be charged.
Villegas was charged with conspiracy to influence sports contests by bribery and received money and other gifts in exchange for fixing games, prosecutors said. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The charges were first reported Wednesday by WUPW-TV in Toledo.
Prosecutors also didn't name who paid the players. Villegas traveled to Michigan several times to meet with another participant in the scheme, court documents said.
A year ago, a member of the Toledo football team was charged with participating in a bribery scheme to influence sporting contests but those charges were later dropped. The gambler tied to that (he wasn't charged) hasn't been directly linked to Villegas but that some members of the hoops team knew him.
Prosecutors are saying that Villegas intentionally missed two free throws late in a game against "Central State" (possibly Central Michigan University).
Villegas has been playing pro in his native Puerto Rico.
8:58am - It's 8:58am local time here at the Hard Rock Hotel and the temporary sports book arrangement in "The Joint" (the hotel's normal concert venu) is packed with fans sporting every piece of college gear imagineable. Highlights from the pre-tipoff portion of the morning include a trio of Duke fans walking down the line waiting to get in and being shunned as if they were wearing Taliban State t-shirts - they are the clear social pariahs of the day. The Hard Rock setup is terrific this year, with 5 projection screens, all sorts of basketball themed arcade games, pool tables and traditional casino table games and a $35 all you can eat, all you can drink special for the entire day - I wish we had a line on the over / under for how many people will be carried out by security after passing out on their table from a combination of 3 hours of sleep, 12 hours of basketball, 4 plates of chicken wings and a dozen Bud Lights ... I'd be taking the over in a heartbeat. For the early morning session I like Kansas to cover against Portland State and I like Xavier big over Georgia .. who do you guys have? I'll be updating every couple of hours and trying to pass on some of the Vegas excitement to those of you stuck at work, so keep checking in.
11:44am - First round games just finished ... the last minute of the Xavier and Georgia game was complete pandemonium as everyone with Butler -8.5 was screaming for Georgia to foul and let Xavier cover from the free throw line and everyone with Georgia was dying for a desperation 3 to fall. Xavier covered, half the crowd celebrated ... first great "Vegas" moment of the weekend and it's not even noon yet. We also have our first random former college / NBA player sighting as Scott Padgett is in the house putting a few bets down and watching his Wildcats (most surprisingly ... he's sitting with some Louisville fans!). Both my choices for the early session went well, Kansas and Xavier both covered. I'm liking UNLV as a slight dog to Kent State and Butler to cover -5 right now, lets see how that goes.
I'm off to Vegas this afternoon to soak in the awesomeness that is the opening weekend of the NCAA Basketball Tournament - make sure to check in tomorrow on the Fanhouse for a live blog of the festivities. As part of my now yearly pilgrimage to Vegas for this weekend, I started preparing simple cheat sheets with the pertinent information for each game of the first two days. I've found that making them too complex just leads to confusion, so there's only a few key highlights included. All the games are listed in sequential order - trying to read a normal bracket sheet and divine the next game that will pop up can be difficult. For each game there is the Ken Pomery rating for each team as well as the log5 predicted winner based on his pythagorean ratings. A quick glance at these ratings will show that games such as the #6 USC v. #11 Kansas State matchup are likely upsets. The other key piece of information is each teams performance against the spread during the season from VegasInsider.com - an easy to way to see if that #1 seed is likely to cover that enormous line (in UNC's case, yes ... for Memphis, probably not).
Download the cheatsheets for Thursday and Friday and then follow along the next couple of days from your cubicle if you can't make it to Vegas - Fanhouse will try to bring some of the buzz and excitement from the sports books to your desk.
According to Jeff Sagarin and Ken Pomeroy, both UAB and Houston are two of the better teams in Conference USA -- at least of the teams not located in Memphis -- and UAB was able to pull off a win against Kentucky last Saturday. Knowing those facts, I can't decide whether or not I'm surprised that when Kentucky takes the floor tonight against the Cougars in Houston, Big Blue will be underdogs. At least they will be in many sportsbooks, where UK is getting 3.5 points in tonight's game (of course, this is all "for entertainment purposes only," natch).
After all, this isn't Phi Slama Jama Houston, although they do some things well. They can shoot from behind the arc: UH is ninth nationally in three pointers made (and good for 38%). The Coogs take a lot of shots overall, and that means chances for rebounds. Statistically, Houston's a slightly better rebounding team, but they haven't played nearly the schedule Kentucky has. In a rebounding matchup, Patrick Patterson could have a big night for UK.
After all, Kentucky -- while reeling a little right now -- is still Kentucky. They've got Ramel Bradley, who can shoot the lights out, and they'll get some minutes from Jodie Meeks, who hasn't played since the 'Cats loss to Gardner-Webb in the second game of the season. That loss started the downward spiral that claimed four Kentucky losses in seven games, but a big win tonight could pull UK out of the nose dive.
So again I ask: would you take Kentucky and the points? Or will struggles continue for Billy Gillespie and co.?
With the sports world buzzing over the NBA's gambling scandal involving a referee, the commissioner for the Atlantic Coast Conference has come out to say that they've been performing background checks on their officials since the last school year. Commish John Swofford:
"It's not a catchall, end-all by any means, but it does show a proactive way of looking at this and hopefully raising red flags if there are any to be raised."
"There wasn't anything that we saw that concerned us, that stimulated our belief that we should take this route," Swofford said. "But this whole issue of gambling is so prevalent in our society. ... We just simply want to do everything we can proactively to have that kind of integrity in our officials as well as our student-athletes."
The ACC is primarily doing this with their football and basketball [both men's and women's] officials. According to Swofford, the ACC and Big Ten are the only leagues to do these checks ... though more could follow suit in the wake of the NBA's problems. The domino effect of this could be mistrust in all officiating, especially in basketball. According to the article, the league has been looking into "any ties to gambling on sports, officials' credit histories and criminal and driving records at the local, state and federal levels."
Most long-time ACC fans know the snide remarks of officials favoring the "Big Four schools" [UNC, Duke, NC State, Wake Forest] ... with Duke, specifically, being targeted as a program that gets beneficial calls.
We got the Bruins at 3.5 and it wouldn't surprise us if UCLA won. The Bruins are far stronger a squad than last year in virtually every category. Collison is a true guard; Farmar was a scoring point. Shipp is the perfect three to neutralize Corey Brewer. UCLA just stopped the best offensive team in the tournament, and forced them into 53 turnovers. Key to Florida, as always, is Lee Humphrey. If he hits five triples, Gators win. Four or fewer and UCLA takes it.
Good points throughout that blockquote. Especially like the Shipp being able to neutralize Brewer argument. Though I don't think Humphrey's gonna be the difference. A few threes (or missed threes) could swing things, sure, but the Gators' towers might be too much for a physical, yet not terribly tall Bruins squad.
Betting isn't so much my thing -- it can take the fun out of a great game if things don't you your way -- but if it's yours, the guys at TBL are good, so UCLA +3 might be your best bet.
Money won at gambling is taxable income. So with both the Final Four and April 15 coming up, remember that if you win your office pool this year, the IRS wants some of that money. And if you won your office pool last year, you'd better mention that on your tax forms.
USA Today's personal finance columnist, Sandra Block, has some friendly reminders. First of all, any income you win gambling has to be reported on Line 21 of Form 1040. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm advocating tax evasion or anything (I can just feel my name being added to the audit list as I write this), but if you win a low-level office pool, Block indicates that there's approximately zero chance of you getting prosecuted for tax evasion if you forget about that office pool when you're doing your taxes a year from now.
On the other hand, if you win good money at a track or a casino, the IRS probably already knows about it -- those places are required to report it. And if you win more than $5,000, the casino is supposed to withhold 25% of it right then and there. Gambling losses are tax deductible, but that only works if you itemize your deductions.
Honestly, though, does anyone who wins the office pool actually put that money down on their tax forms? An H&R Block survey found that nearly 60% of taxpayers said they would "not be very likely" to report their NCAA tournament winnings to the IRS. I think that means about 40% of taxpayers are lying.
USC basketball coach Tim Floyd drew a technical foul late in his team's loss to North Carolina, and that technical raises some real questions about Floyd's ability to keep his cool. His team still had an outside chance of winning the game until he decided to lash out at the referees like they were Mike Wilbon.
But his technical didn't just cost his team an outside shot of winning. As Marco at Just Call Me Juice notes, it also cost his team a very good shot of winning against the spread. That means some people are very unhappy with Floyd.
Tim's technical came with the Trojans down 6 to the Tar Heels. The key here is that the line on the game was North Carolina -8.5. Of course, the Heels proceeded to go to line and hit the technical free throws. They then got the ball again and hit two more free throws. Heels are now up and covering the spread.
That gave North Carolina its final winning margin of 10 points. Marco was at the game and says a lot of people in his section wanted a piece of Floyd. You generally don't want a bunch of gamblers wanting a piece of you. That's yet another reason Floyd needs to keep his temper in check in the future.
Speaking of Saturday's games ... did anyone notice that just one favorite covered? Forget your brackets for a moment and let's look at the gambling lines from Saturday's action:
Ohio State favored by 7.5 ... won by 7 Texas A&M favored by 3 .... won by 3 Pittsburgh favored by 7 ... won by 5 Georgetown favored by 8 ... won by 7 UCLA favored by 7 ... won by 5 Maryland favored by 5.5 ... lost Washington St. favored by 2.5 ... lost
The only favorite to cover was North Carolina, which pulled away late from Michigan State to register an 81-67 victory, beating the 10.5 point spread.
Does this not freak anyone else out? Even if you're a non-gambler, does this not surprise you? How could anyone predict so many games in such a close manner, even if it's their job? It's enough to scare a gambler away from Sunday's games - where, if you ask me, there are no 'locks' whatsoever.
That being said, underdogs such as USC, Virginia Tech, Memphis and Nevada will be sexy picks today. But if you're into the law of averages ... then all those picks will be wrong.
Sammy Villegas, a guard for the Toledo basketball team until 2006, has been 
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With the sports world buzzing over the 
Money won at gambling is taxable income. So with both the Final Four and April 15 coming up, remember that if you win your office pool this year, the IRS wants some of that money. And if you won your office pool last year, you'd better mention that on your tax forms. 
USC basketball coach 
For every correct gambling prediction like my brilliant 
