Fresno State masculine basketball was not a team that was not going anywhere, right in a terrible 6-26 season in 2024-25. They were prepared to receive New Mexico on the eve of the New Year as heavy heavy, up to 17.5 points.
The desperate nature of a forgettable game could have taken into account the apparent belief of the Bulldogs Guard, Jalen Weaver, that no one would realize when he made a daily fantasy commitment of $ 50 for himself.
He thought he would score more than 11 points that night, and he did, measuring 13 in defeat 103-89 against the wolves.
However, from the dark and apparently notable statistics line in a dark and irremediable game, this is not the Fur Four, the NCAA was able to nail Weaver for its actions.
The Weaver of $ 260 won that night ended up costing his university eligibility, NCAA said on Wednesday, while announcing the banishment of two other players who competed in Fresno and San Jose State last season.
“I just made a bad decision, and I shouldn't even have involved with that,” Weaver told David Purdum from ESPN.
Let Weaver, not mentioning the 13 additional players in six additional schools, the NCAA announced the investigations on Thursday, is a lesson for all involved or tempted to participate in the manipulation of the so -called individual support bets.
To quote Nike (more or less): you just don't.
Certainly not players; No matter how easy it is to seem a bet on your phone or tell a friend to take the bass, for example, the totals of rebounds in the first half so that the two can share some profits. If they catch you and could very well, the NCAA is the slightest of your concerns.
And certainly not sports players who are inclined to bet on such strange things, especially that they involve low and medium greater games. Unless it is in the scam, I could very well cheat. These types of bets are too easy to manipulate. Why would someone risk him?
“I bet in a game in which I played, but I never tried to sabotage the season,” Weaver told ESPN last February. “I never bet we get lost; I never bet on my bass.”
It is not difficult to see temptation. Sports bets and the necessary “fixation” that accompanies it have been present for generations, but sports bets have never been more in front of athletes and possible players.
Ads. Associations. Betting applications.
It is everywhere, and thus tempting for everyone.
Easy money, just by scoring two points more than the line in a fantasy game? Everything while playing for a loser team?
However, possibly, or even probably, it will not work. That is the lesson of all these cases of the NCAA that continue to appear. Many do not involve the games and players in which the public focuses, but on the most distant corners of sport.
A day after announcing the cases in Fresno and San José, the NCAA revealed that 13 more athletes are suspected of “betting on and against their own teams, sharing information with third parties for sports betting purposes, manipulating to knowing the score or the results of the game and/or refusing to participate in the investigation of compliance staff.”
Previously they competed for six schools: East of Michigan, El Temple, the state of Arizona, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T and the Mississippi Valley. This is not exactly Duke, Kansas and Uconn.
The NCAA's story to enforce its own bulky rules book is incomplete in the best case, but this is a completely different treatment. It has been associated with avant -garde integrity surveillance groups that can analyze the data and trends of wholesale bets. The NCAA is also only one of several entities focused on this problem, from casinos and state regulators to the FBI.
It is impossible to know how many athletes are not trapped in the drag network, but many are clearly.
“The NCAA monitors more than 22,000 competitions every year and will continue to aggressively seek risks of integrity of competition like these,” said NCAA president Charlie Baker.
The NCAA is diligent in its educational efforts, trying to reach the 500,000 athletes, repeatedly, with a message about the dangers, including that it is not just about great players in large teams. They are all, even to division III.
“In terms of educating athletes, we [constantly repeat that] You do not have to be the star player to be at risk, “Mark Hicks told ESPN, who heads the anti-game and anti-support education efforts of the NCAA,” that is something that is a key message point in each delivery session on the campus. “
If the information and workshop sessions and posters in the costumes have not been enough to reach everyone, then perhaps more of these high profile cases in low profile in low profile games will do so.
Because while technology has made these things so easy and tempting, it has also made being trapped easier, if not inevitable.
