The Blob is not one for I-told-you-so's, except when it is. And this is one of those times.
And so: I told you so.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, when the NFL suspended five players for betting on sports and the Blob said, see, this is what happens when you crawl in bed with Bet MGM and DraftKings and the rest of the Vegas crowd? And where the Shield now has an actual franchise?
Well ... it's happened again, boys and girls.
This time it was the University of Alabama firing its baseball coach, Brad Bohannon, during an investigation into "suspicious betting activity" surrounding the Crimson Tide's game against LSU last week.
A bettor in Ohio, it seems, got caught on surveillance video placing bets on the game while in communication with Bohannon. Why some guy in Ohio is betting on Alabama baseball is the answered question here, except to wonder what kind of loser bets on Alabama baseball to begin with.
At any rate, this is what the proliferation of sportsbooks has wrought, and it won't be the last time it wreaks it. You climb in bed with gamblers, you get up with scandal. The NFL is finding that out, and now so are college athletics. You can impose the strictest rules you like regarding your workforce betting on sports, but it's damn near impossible to take you seriously when out of the other side of your mouth you're trumpeting "the official sportsbook" of your league.
Hard to convince folks you run a clean game when you tacitly endorse betting on that game. That you forbid league personnel from doing so is a distinction too fine to discern for some folks -- most notably, on occasion, those same personnel.
In other words: We haven't heard the end of this stuff. Fact is, we've barely heard the beginning.
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