On more than a couple of occasions, I’ve made fun of Mark Cuban for his assertion that any publicity about a sport/league is good for that sport/league because it gets people talking about it and therefore might increase interest. In the vast majority of situations, I think that’s pretty silly, but maybe today we have the exception that proves the rule?
We now have reports of a possible betting scandal in men’s tennis. Point shaving by players and/or less than fully impartial referees/judges do not enhance a sport’s attractiveness in most circumstances; but in this case, these allegations have put men’s tennis on the front page of the sports section. And that is unfamiliar territory for men’s tennis over at least the last 10 years – - and maybe 20. In this case, it’s not that the scandal is getting more people talking about men’s tennis; it’s that people are not entirely ignoring men’s tennis and that is potentially a benefit – - even if the news is pretty bad.
In case you have ignored the story because you don’t follow men’s tennis, here’s a brief summary:
A British Internet wagering company, Betfair, actually voided all bets on an ATP match in Poland last weekend. They saw “irregular betting patterns.”
There were large sums of money wagered relative to the normal interest in such a match (approximately ten times more than Betfair would have expected) and lots more money was bet against the defending champion (Nickolay Davydenko) in this tournament than was bet on him. That’s always something bookmakers need to observe.
However, the “voiding of all bets” happened when wagers against the winner of the first set (Davydenko) actually increased as he acquired the lead in the match.
Davydenko retired with a foot/leg injury in the third set so those large wagers against him would indeed have been winning bets.
Normally, I ignore men’s tennis in these rants; it is a sport that flourished in the 1970s and 80s but it now commands about the same level of interest as professional lacrosse. And today, I led off with several paragraphs about men’s tennis. So, maybe Mark Cuban was correct in this instance. Or maybe this just shows the wisdom of the adage:
“Every cloud has a silver lining.”
Of course, the obverse of that adage would be:
“Every silver lining has a cloud around it.”
By the way, I’ve never seen tennis wagers or props in any of my trips to Las Vegas – - but then again I’ve never been to Vegas when major tennis tournaments like Wimbledon or the US Open were happening.
Apropos of nothing, here’s an item from Mike Bianchi’s column in the Orlando Sentinel last week:
“Did you see where O.J. Simpson turned 60 recently? A belated birthday song: ‘Happy birthday to Juice. He is no recluse. He’ll never rest easy. While the real killer’s still loose.’ “
C’mon and sing along. You know the tune…
With NFL camps in full swing, I want to identify three NFL players that I think are severely under-rated/under-appreciated.
1. Randy Thomas – OG, Washington Redskins: He is a very good player in the middle of a decent but hardly outstanding offensive line. Chris Samuels gets all the recognition on that OL, but Thomas is the better player. If Thomas gets hurt in training camp and can’t go this year, the Redskins may not win more than the 5 games they won last year.
2. David Carr – QB, Carolina Panthers: The reason he “didn’t get it done” in Houston is that he was routinely buried under a significant fraction of a ton of defensive players. I’m not saying he is the next coming of John Unitas, but he’s not someone who should have been run out of Houston by such a bad football team.
3. Tommie Harris – DT, Chicago Bears: All I can say here is that the Bears’ defense was significantly less fearsome once he got hurt last season.
College football teams are preparing for their seasons too. The following is a statement from Wake Forest defensive lineman, Matt Robinson, which shows that he has definitely been practicing his interview skills wherein he says a lot of words that don’t add up to a lot of information. He may be ready for the pros already based on the following:
“There is no one in the country that can come out on the field and beat us. But we also realize there’s no one that we can’t get beat by. So long as we keep that in our heads …”
Let me finish that last sentence for him.
So long as we keep that in our heads we’ll be sufficiently confused about the capabilities of our opponents that we might not be able to remember whether our protective cups go in the front or the back.
Lon Krueger is the head basketball coach at UNLV; before that, he had been at Illinois. Recently, Krueger had sextuple coronary bypass surgery taking four hours. The news release said this was not an “emergency procedure”. I guess that means he didn’t arrive at the hospital in an ambulance having had the paddles discharged across his chest a half dozen times because the idea of having to replace SIX portions of the arteries that feed the heart muscle seems pretty much like an emergency to me.
Finally, here’s an observation from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:
“Parting thought: In Pamplona, nine people were gored in the annual ‘Running of the Bulls’. Medics said all nine were suffering from being idiots for allowing themselves to be chased by wild bulls.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…