Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Ohio U players accused of gambling activities

It's not every day that I see my alma mater's baseball team mentioned on BBTF. Shame it comes due to something like this:
Yesterday, OU's 20-year baseball coach sadly acknowledged that three of his players apparently did not heed his advice or OU and NCAA prohibitions against sports gambling.
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There is no evidence that the operation involved wagers on OU sports, the Bobcat baseball team or other student-athletes, officials said.
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The gambling involved professional sports, Lang said.
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Under NCAA rules, athletes who wager on their schools' teams are permanently ineligible. Those who bet on other collegiate or professional sports are banned for a year and lose that year of eligibility.
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Mark DeCoster, Brent DeCoster's father, said the charges are overblown. He said the case involves friends making "friendly" $10 or $20 wagers, including on a fantasy football league. His son will plead not guilty, he said.
Sounds to me like some guys who were just being stupid. The active players, in particular, though, surely were aware of the NCAA rules associated with this kind of thing...

5 comments:

  1. As a fellow Bobcat, I share your concern.

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  2. Love your blog. Just wanted some input on who you think the Reds 5th starter will be, Livingson, Volquez or Cueto? I have Harang, Arroyo, Belisle and Bailey already pencilled in. I am running a pre-season simulation of each league matching up all of the NL Central teams and need some input on who the Reds 5th starter will likely be. So far the four NL Central teams are all bunched near the top.
    vr, Xei

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  3. Hi Xei,

    I need to get your blog in my bloglines, because your simulation work is pretty interesting. ;)

    Livingston is coming off of shoulder surgery. A lefty soft tosser, returning with likely less velocity than he had...honestly, I'm going to be surprised if he pitches in the majors again. Which is a real shame.

    So it's between Volquez and Cueto. Volquez, I think, is out of option years, so he's virtually guaranteed to be on the roster either in the 'pen or in the rotation. Also, Krivsky tends to be rather conservative in terms of promoting prospects, and Cueto hasn't pitched in AAA much yet. So my guess is that unless Cueto lights up the Grapefruit league, he'll start in AAA and Volquez will be in the rotation.
    -j

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  4. Thanks for the quick reply Justin. I will plug in Volquez and see how this adjusts the results. The Reds are right up there with the Brewers, Cubs and Astros. I will post the results when it's done. By the way, I love all your sabemetric related articles/primers. Keep up the good work.
    vr, Xei

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  5. Ok, here is the NL Central (Winter) rankings via my simulator. 1000 H2H games with each team facing each of the other teams with #1 starters going up against #1 starters and #2 vs #2 etc..., 1000 games at each park, everything summed up and averaged.
    vr, Xei

    ReplyDelete