Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon after sports betting probe
Some interesting news came out of the world of college baseball on Thursday, May 4th, as the Alabama Crimson Tide fired coach Brad Bohannon. The move comes five days after there were suspicious bets placed on a meeting between Southeastern Conference rivals Alabama and LSU. Crimson Tide athletic director Greg Byrne says that Bohannon is in the process of being terminated for “violating the standards, duties, and responsibilities expected of University of employees.”
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Last Friday, two unusually large bets were placed at The Great American Ballpark’s sportsbook. Both wagers were made on LSU to win the game, and both were traced back to the same bettor. The Ohio Casino Control Commission heard about the bets from the firm U.S. Integrity, which is based out of Las Vegas, and that ultimately led to the OCCC taking all Alabama baseball games off the board.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania ended up following suit and putting a halt on Alabama baseball betting. It’s unclear when Crimson Tide games will be available to the betting public, but one of the reasons the two bets set off so many alarms is that this is one of the smaller betting markets available right now. When a lot of people aren’t betting on a certain sport, it raises some eyebrows when the same person is putting down two big wagers on the same game.
Two weeks ago, five NFL players were suspended for betting, but this new story is an interesting one. We’ll have to wait for more details to come out, but it certainly seems as though Bohannon, or potentially somebody associated with him, was attempting to bet against his own team. Match fixing has been something of an issue in individual sports, like tennis, but we haven’t had any stories come out about it impacting team sports. If this proves to be something along those lines, it’ll definitely put a dark cloud over the industry. Here’s what SEC commissioner Greg Sankey had to stay on the matter:
"As many states have acted to legalize sports gambling, we are reminded of the threats gambling may pose on competitive integrity. Together with our member universities, we will continue to emphasize the importance of regulating, overseeing and providing education related to sports gambling activity."