Suspicious betting patterns emerging in sports wagering now

Don’t know who Bob Dylan has for his Final Four, but he must’ve had gambling in mind when sang, “It’s a hard rain that’s a-gonna fall.”

What should’ve been the biggest story of the week — five Division I college basketball games being examined for highly suspicious or “irregular” betting patterns can’t compete with the latest speculation of free-agent linebackers of varied achievement.

According to multiple reports and the schools’ acknowledgments, four of those games include Temple’s team and the other was played by Loyola (Md.). Both teams had rotten seasons.

But the most conspicuously suspicious among the games in question was University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at Temple on March 7, a barely contested 100-72 UAB win. As curious games go, this one stood out for not standing out. It was a so-what game between a 19-11 visitor and 11-19 Temple. Not a game of national note, which may not have been a coincidence.

In the afternoon before the game, the line soared from UAB giving 1 ½ or 2 to giving 8 — and on the road — an enormous move that could only leave a stink given the final score. There was no good reason — not an injury or suspension — that could explain such sudden, one-way, heavy action on a visiting team.

And these days, sophisticated game-fixers would avoid suspicions and detection by spreading their action among several legal bookmakers as there are now so many to choose from. That would prevent the line from sudden surges into shady territory.

Perhaps a two-point move would go unnoticed, but not six. That would ring the alarm that has been rung. The most glaring in-game stat was that UAB outrebounded Temple by a stop-right-there 41-19. And UAB had 10 offensive rebounds to Temple’s one. Impossible to ignore as rebounds so often reflect effort.

Less remarkable but nonetheless noteworthy was that Temple, which this season shot 72 percent from the foul line, was 16-for-24, 66 percent, and its average of six steals per game declined to three.

My educated guess is that if any of these games are found to have been fixed they’re inside or at least neighborhood jobs bereft of sophistication. Several players, in a losing season and with minimal professional basketball futures — not to mention the get-rich-quick commercial prompts that daily flood their senses — appeared to have had exceptionally bad games.

And the absence of a reasonably slight betting movement would not be the work of wiser wiseguys. But it may reflect this column’s previous prediction that college players are now more susceptible to the demands, threats and loyalties of street gangs than to the cigar-chomping, needs-a-shave hoods from long-gone central casting.

All we know for sure is that something very odd and extremely suspicious happened before UAB-Temple. And it still emits a terrible odor.

In 2019 when legalized sports gambling became the primary commercial come-on to watch sports, this column examined another game for its wagering oddities. Marshall’s football team defeated Louisiana Tech, 31-10. Two days prior, the betting line underwent a sudden, significant change. Marshall went from a two-point favorite to five. Why the sudden, one-way action?

Louisiana Tech, after all, had won eight straight, and this was a conference game between title contenders. But La. Tech. without releasing the info to the public until Thursday night, a full day earlier had suspended three players, including star QB J’mar Smith. Who knew? Just those on the inside and those they told.

Oh, yeah, a hard rain is a-gonna fall.

Authoratative Experts Corner: Mike Francesa, who ignores the fact that he has spent his career being colossally wrong, this week declared on his podcast — he once declared he’d never lower himself to host a podcast — that “Nobody will give Saquon Barkley any kind of real money, OK? It’s just not going to happen.” The indisputable evidence appears on the @BackAftaThis account on X, formerly Twitter.

Within hours, Barkley signed with the Eagles, three years for $38 million.

On ESPN, Stephen A. Smith whose bombastic bluster and dialect hustles can’t hide his elementary ignorance of sports, declared that free agent RB Derrick Henry guarantees wins by “just handing the ball to the brotha 20-25 times a game.”

Gee, if the Titans only knew the simplicity of it all they’d have never even bothered to punt. And they’d have finished last season 17-0 instead of 6-11.

Wonder if Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had Francesa and Smith in mind when he spoke of those who “exhibit a strenuous vagueness that produces an atmospheric disturbance without transmitting a message.”

Art Shamsky, 82 and retired in Florida, recently told this since-verified story: As a rookie with the Reds in 1965, he was summoned to pinch hit for, gulp, Frank Robinson.

“Frank was livid, but the [Mets’] pitcher was Tom Parsons, and the manager didn’t think he could hit a sidearm thrower. I was petrified. All I wanted to do was not strike out. I was hitting for Frank Robinson! I’d have been fine with a grounder to second.”

So what happened?

“I hit a home run.”

These days the most undignified folks in sports seem to be the coaches of top women’s college basketball teams. LSU’s tough-talkin’ attention-hog Kim Mulkey, South Carolina’s foul-mouthed Dawn Staley and UConn’s old reliable opponent-stomper Geno Auriemma.

On the other hand we have DIII Manhattanville’s men’s coach, Chris Alesi. In addition to a strong season — 18-10 — Alesi often dressed as many as 21 for games.

Why so many? He refused to cut anyone. You put in the effort to find the time, you make the team.

Former NFL All-Pro WR and career lowlife Antonio Brown, now a rapper, may have moved to the top of Roger Goodell’s list to perform at the next Super Bowl.

Last week Brown failed to respond to legal charges that he failed to return $1.1 million in jewelry he borrowed from celebrity jeweler Jean Louis Shuki. Brown instead texted Shuki, [sic] “U caint get s–t cracker”, “Cracker u beat”, and “Stop call me u bitch.”

While recently departed Alabama head coach Nick Saban, now with ESPN, said that last season “student-athletics” was revealed to him as a total con, Brown, in three years, 2007-2009, matriculated through his junior year at Central Michigan. The academic con that Saban recently lamented has been in conspicuous view for decades.

Brown, by the way, has released a rap album, “Whole Lotta Money,” a curious name given that he was arrested for alleged failure to pay child support. He has six children from three women.