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Are games rigged?

SCyclone

SCyclone

Well-Known Member
Mar 11, 2014
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Fort Dodge, IA
Had a big discussion this morning about whether or not college basketball games are rigged. One of my fellow employees, who also happens to like to gamble on sports, believes that many games in sports at all levels have predetermined outcomes. While I'm not naive enough to think the game(s) are 100% lily-white, I have a hard time agreeing with him. What are your thoughts? Are sports "on the level", as they say, or not?
 
SCyclone said:
Had a big discussion this morning about whether or not college basketball games are rigged. One of my fellow employees, who also happens to like to gamble on sports, believes that many games in sports at all levels have predetermined outcomes. While I'm not naive enough to think the game(s) are 100% lily-white, I have a hard time agreeing with him. What are your thoughts? Are sports "on the level", as they say, or not?
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I'm curious to hear how he thinks they are straight up rigged?

Yeah there are some BS calls that skew outcomes, but to say they are completely predetermined seems a stretch.
 
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There are too many people involved for there to be a large scale fix on games. That said, I don't think it's a stretch to believe that some individual games could be. The way college officiating is organized, without answering to any external voice, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to work something out.
 
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In my opinion college games are not rigged, no. There's most certainly some soccer games overseas and I see it a lot while watching the lines in the international games move around but here in the states I don't believe they are. If you watch the lines when they open on games and then see a big swing, I'm talking 5-7 point swing on a game that's just steam. It typically means a guy like RAS or some of your more syndicate type bettors are laying some pretty heavy action. I can speak personally as I'm a RAS subscriber but typically within 3-4 minutes of his play being released the line will be long gone and out of reach for a guy not paying for his service. Hell, even this year our group has ran into a few snags along the way. And when you pay the type of money that guys like this charge, you aren't just playing $50-$200 a game or you could never justify paying what they charge. These guys are betting typically a dime minimum on his games, and account for a very large line move when there's 50-100 subscribers. There's a HUGEEE difference between touts and sharps.

What's rigged about a game is that the officials do not call games the same way in the 1st half as they do in the final 3-5 minutes of a game.
 
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cyhiphopp said:
I'm curious to hear how he thinks they are straight up rigged?

Yeah there are some BS calls that skew outcomes, but to say they are completely predetermined seems a stretch.
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Yup. they will let Kansas take three extra steps with the ball with no traveling call but the Kansas Jayhawk still has to make the basketball. Of course there is the bailout option that if the Jayhawk shot is blocked or missed it can be a foul but even the refs cannot count missed free throws as points so lots of pressure on the kid shooting if the refs put him on the line. :rolleyes:
 
I've watched NBA games and Italian soccer games where I thought they were rigged and then later concrete proof emerged that they were definitely rigged. This was in early 2000s. It does happen. The NBA games that were proven coincide with the idea that many of the worst officiated games/series of that era possibly not being legit. The Italian soccer thing was incredibly rigged too, things like an official pointing to a PK spot and then another rushing in to say no PK, turned out to be totally fixed and decided at least one Serie A championship.

I haven't ever watched a college hoops game I thought was rigged and then it was proven so beyond all doubt later with the guilty parties outed. The most rigged looking game I ever saw was ISU vs KU in Ames a few years ago. It's actually not even close. 6-7 bad calls down the stretch all KU's way, several of them of the flabbergastingly bad unbelievable variety that simple incompetence would be hard to duplicate in one consistent direction. There was some Pac 10/12 officiating scandal a few years back to that I only vaguely remember but I'm pretty sure people resigned over it.

My #1 issue I take with people on this is no huge conspiracy is necessary to fix a game. Take the travesty in Ames a few years back, one or two officials with a KU boner could have done that for no huge payoff and no Big 12 or NCAA involvement. In my example of Italian soccer it was a huge systematic fixing that was blown wide open. In my example of the NBA it was a rogue ref who claims to be part of a vast conspiracy with some evidence supporting him and some contradicting him. In college basketball I think it's more a few rogue actors who most likely aren't even being paid off, they're just poor professionals and tilting a game on purpose is part of what makes them very unprofessional and bad at their job.
 
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If you were to tell me that the refs gambled on games, I wouldn't be shocked. One or two calls from a ref can can put teams over or under the spread, and completely change outcomes. It's not that much a stretch considering it happened in the NBA.
 
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Rigged may not be the right word, but we all know at the end of a game a close call will almost always swing to the blue bloods. We've all seen this countless times. Rigged, indirectly maybe.
 
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srjclone said:
No. But they do skew the tournament placements and seedings so they get the most money out of who is playing where.
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The vast majority of tickets to NCAA tourney sites are sold out well in advance of Selection Sunday. And the vast majority of money they make is from their tv contract, which has nothing to do with where they put teams.

They try to keep as many teams as close to home as possible because any team that has to travel less than 400 miles has to drive and beyond 400 miles has to fly. NCAA pays the travel expenses so they want as many teams to have to drive as possible to save money.

The NCAA esimates it will spend $52 million covering travel expenses to championships of all sports this year, so they work hard to manage that expense.

Google search "Division I Championship Transportation and Per Diem Policy"
 
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casey1973 said:
Rigged may not be the right word, but we all know at the end of a game a close call will almost always swing to the blue bloods. We've all seen this countless times. Rigged, indirectly maybe.
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This makes sense, in that one rogue official might be able to decide a game late, but it still has to be close enough that a few ****** calls can decide it late.

That's different than being a predetermined outcome. If a team has a terrible night and scores 50 points, even with referee assistance, they can still be beat.
 
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I wouldn't go as far as to say games are rigged or predetermined, but I believe that many refs are in someone's pocket. In fact, I think that officials are corrupt in the Big 12. Just in our case, we've seen the TX no-fumble, the Georges laying on the floor foul against KU, and many others. But the fact that we've won some games where we felt it was 5 against 8 or 11 against 18 tells me they aren't predetermined.

The 'good' corrupt refs make the calls that skew the game one way or the other, but that don't stand out (holding in FB for example).
 
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randomfan44 said:
The vast majority of tickets to NCAA tourney sites are sold out well in advance of Selection Sunday. And the vast majority of money they make is from their tv contract, which has nothing to do with where they put teams.

They try to keep as many teams as close to home as possible because any team that has to travel less than 400 miles has to drive and beyond 400 miles has to fly. NCAA pays the travel expenses so they want as many teams to have to drive as possible to save money.

The NCAA esimates it will spend $52 million covering travel expenses to championships of all sports this year, so they work hard to manage that expense.

Google search "Division I Championship Transportation and Per Diem Policy"
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I always wonder how much of it is luck. Baylor seems to play in Texas nearly every year regardless of how high or low their seed is. Since they have a very poor basketball fanbase I think it's just luck. On the flip side ISU would pack any venue within a 12 hour drive and has only been within that distance once in the past 7 tournaments they played in despite having a a 2 seed and 3 seed twice in that time.

I agree in general they do this, but sometimes there are head scratchers like Baylor getting to play near home regardless of their seed.
 
randomfan44 said:
The vast majority of tickets to NCAA tourney sites are sold out well in advance of Selection Sunday. And the vast majority of money they make is from their tv contract, which has nothing to do with where they put teams.

They try to keep as many teams as close to home as possible because any team that has to travel less than 400 miles has to drive and beyond 400 miles has to fly. NCAA pays the travel expenses so they want as many teams to have to drive as possible to save money.

The NCAA esimates it will spend $52 million covering travel expenses to championships of all sports this year, so they work hard to manage that expense.

Google search "Division I Championship Transportation and Per Diem Policy"
Click to expand...
http://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...caa-tournament-seeding-is-financially-driven/
 
Yes, I wouldn't say all of them but some certainly are. Too much money and too much corruption in all areas of our economy these days to believe otherwise.
 
SCyclone said:
Had a big discussion this morning about whether or not college basketball games are rigged. One of my fellow employees, who also happens to like to gamble on sports, believes that many games in sports at all levels have predetermined outcomes. While I'm not naive enough to think the game(s) are 100% lily-white, I have a hard time agreeing with him. What are your thoughts? Are sports "on the level", as they say, or not?
Click to expand...
Why would you gamble on sports if you think the results are predetermined? Unless you know the predetermined results?
 
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