Your obligatory post about the NBA referee scandal

Question of the week: Was anybody really that surprised that an NBA referee was fixing games?  Heck, after watching the NCAA Tournament the past couple of years, I wouldn't be surprised if some college refs were fixing games, too.  Of course, that's primarily because I watched the Memphis-Ohio State game in the Elite Eight this year and was convinced that the refs were jobbing the Tigers because they wanted Greg Oden and the Buckeyes in the Final Four.

Yes, I realize that this is a baseball blog, but this thing's huge.  Of course the sports media is blowing it out of proportion and making me think that yes, in fact, the referees in that Memphis-Ohio State game were in a bookie's pocket.  I'm also really surprised that nobody in the media that I know of has come out and blamed gambling as the root of all of this.

No, gambling itself is not the problem here.  We lived in a society that has a very mixed view on gambling.  We accept it, but there are large segments of society who don't think it's acceptable.  For anyone.  Now, different kinds of gambling have different levels of acceptance.  The lottery?  Heck, that's perfectly fine.  It pays for education, and anything that pays for education is good.  My state, Tennessee, instituted a lottery five years ago in order to start handing out college scholarships designed specifically to keep Tennessee kids in Tennessee.  Based on the kind of people I see buying lottery tickets at the gas station, and based on who still forms the majority of college students, it largely seems that the lottery is a way for the state to make poor people pay for rich people's kids to go to college.

Somehow, that's acceptable to many people, but a far greater number of people dislike the concept of betting on sports.  If we still had a Republican Congress, I'd expect them to come up with some knee-jerk reaction to "address the issue," but with a Democratic Congress and, specifically, a Senate Majority Leader from Nevada who was formerly the head of the Nevada Gaming Commission, I'm not expecting that.  The current "problem," according to a lot of people, is offshore sportsbooks, which really have nothing to do with this problem.  One thing most people don't realize is that anybody who wants to place a bet with one of those, or in Vegas, is that one has to have the money up front.  That's different from your local bookie, who will probably allow you to make bets on credit and "settle" them at the end of the week.  Any time you hear about somebody having a massive gambling debt, that's with a local bookie.  Vegas won't let you bet money you don't have.

Of course, never mind that ESPN televises the World Series of Poker all the freaking time (how that's a sport is beyond me.)  Open any sports magazine and you'll see some ads for online sportsbooks, usually with a bunch of scantily-clad women gracing them, attempting to entice you to go on there and place a bet.  Newspapers outside of Nevada print the lines for basketball and football games, even though that's supposedly illegal (unless you're planning to catch a flight to Vegas that morning before the game.)  Heck, some newspapers even go so far as to print some columnist's picks against the spread on Sunday morning before the NFL kicks off for that day.  And all this is legal?  It's almost as if the media is telling you to put a bunch of money on that afternoon's football game.

The major argument against it is that it "taints" the game.  Players or referees agreeing to fix a game does, but I fail to see how Joe Sportsfan placing a $50 bet (or, heck, a $5000 bet) on a game affects the outcome of the game at all, unless Joe Sportsfan has some great mafia connections.  This issue extends about as far as the players, officials, and others directly involved in a sporting event.  I don't even see why a player betting on a game that he's not involved with would be such a problem.  The only danger there is that if he runs up a debt, he might be tempted to fix one of his own games in an attempt to pay off his gambling debts.  But this issue begins and ends with those people.  It doesn't extend to all the regular Joes out there who might want to do it.  What's the problem with that?

Of course, that's probably not how the media will end up spinning this.

Could this happen in baseball?  I suppose.  But baseball umpires have a lot less leeway than refs in the NBA or NFL have.  The home plate umpire has some leeway as to calling balls and strikes and I suppose that by calling a bigger strike zone than normal an umpire could limit the number of runs scored -- or by calling a smaller strike zone increase the number of runs.  Most calls in baseball, however, are straight forward.  The guy's either out or safe, the ball's either foul or fair.  Just about any blown call by an umpire is going to be obvious.  In other words, it's hard for an umpire to really affect the outcome of a game that much.  Basketball and football referees, on the other hand, have a ton of leeway.  The no-call is an accepted part of both cultures, and in fact is even encouraged to a certain extent.  Officials in football are given so much leeway when it comes to pass interference that we're surprised when an official in that sport actually calls it.  Same for traveling in basketball, or blocking/charging.  Basketball officials can artificially affect the outcome of a game by calling a bunch of fouls on a star player and forcing him onto the bench for a good part of the game.  And don't get me started on star treatment.  That exists in baseball, too, but to a much lesser extent than in football or basketball.  Barry Bonds might get a bit smaller strike zone than most hitters, some pitchers might get a bigger strike zone than most pitchers, but there's virtually no such thing as star treatment by umpires.

But I digress.  I like basketball, but I'm not about to go thinking that any referee who makes a bad call in a game is in a bookie's pocket.  It happens.