I’m not going to recommend clicking this link, because Sports Illustrated’s website is such a disaster that it could crash your computer and also My Sworn Enemy Pat Forde™ still probably doesn’t know shit about the NIT. (Also, while Forde did great reporting here, he does a really bad job telling this story, injecting it with unnecessary commentary at every turn when the bare allegations are hilarious and do the work he intends themselves. My Sworn Enemy Pat Forde™, if you’re reading this, you would do well to inhale things other than your own flatulence now and then.) But, here’s the link, and now here are the renowned excerpts:
On April 28, Bert Eugene Neff Jr. walked into the BetMGM Sportsbook at Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati in possession of a large amount of cash, looking to make a huge score. His proposed wager quickly aroused concern and suspicion among the staff.
Three people familiar with the investigation told Sports Illustrated that Neff wanted to bet more than $100,000 on a college baseball game that night: Alabama at No. 1 LSU. The game had gotten virtually no gambling traffic, and Neff’s desired bets on the Tigers far exceeded the sportsbook’s established house limit on college baseball.
…
Neff – an obscure youth-league coach from Mooresville, Ind., with a penchant for networking in recruiting circles—stood at the window and pleaded his case for making the huge wager to the book’s staff, the sources say. He indicated that he had inside information on the game—and he did, in the palm of his hand.
Neff was texting with Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon via the encrypted messaging app Signal while at the betting window, attempting to place the wager, the sources say. His texting was indiscreet, to the point that the book’s video surveillance cameras were able to zoom in on the details of Neff and Bohannon’s text exchange, making Bohannon’s name visible later in screenshots.
“[Video cameras] can see the [text] conversation back-and-forth,” a source familiar with the incident says. “It couldn’t have been any more reckless.”
The inside information that Neff had received: Alabama was scratching its ace starting pitcher for the game, Luke Holman, due to back tightness.
Was Neff using the old–person setting where the font size is all the way up?
It’s a hilarious way to get Alabama’s baseball coach fired, and if the goal for Bohannon was to make a bunch of money, he picked a terrible partner in the insider trading attempt. If the goal wasn’t that, then Bohannon really messed this up. To be honest, I have more of a problem with Bohannon if he wasn’t trying to make money here than if he was. No, he didn’t need the money, he was making $500,000 a year in a city with a comfortable cost of living, but betting on sports is dumb, and because everyone who agrees to do it is agreeing to a high probability of losing money, betting using inside information feels like a pretty fair thing to do. It’s one of those things people think is a problem because Martha Stewart went to prison once for doing it with the stock market, but is it really a problem? Explain to me why it’s a problem, somebody. With insider trading, there’s a little bit of a case, but insider betting on college baseball? How is that hurting anybody in the world?
What’s a problem is being Brad Bohannon and thinking giving explicit inside information to Bert Eugene Neff Jr. is a good idea. If you’re close enough with someone to text them your starting pitcher plans, you should know whether or not they’re going to wave your text exchange into the security camera lenses at a sportsbook. (Were those HD cameras, by the way? Even if it was large text…goodness.) Clearly, Neff was the kind of guy who was going to do that, because Neff was the kind of guy who went and did that. That’s one of those things you should be able to tell about a person, and if you can’t tell, don’t give them insider betting tips!
This is all only allegations, but it’s a funny look for Alabama, and it makes Nick Saban’s capacity to remain scandal-free even more impressive. We thought Nate Oats made himself look like an idiot when he said his player was in the wrong place at the wrong time when that player delivered a murder weapon to a murder. Now Bohannon goes and does the ol’ “hold my drink.”
To be honest, this is a little bit of a relief. With Alabama basketball getting good lately, the fear has been that Alabama is figuring out how to win in all sorts of college sports. This wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, I don’t have any big problems with Alabama, if someone is going to rule college sports, sure, why not them. But it’s concerning when any fanbase gets too broad of success into their trophy case, because college sports fans are nuts and feeding the egos of nuts is a recipe for headaches. Thankfully, that isn’t going to happen. Thankfully, the Alabama athletic department is full of idiots. Turns out, they were only smart enough to throw the most money at Saban in 2007 and get the hell out of the way. That was a great move, but it’s unclear if there is anything else competent going on at that school.
(I really hope the Brandon Miller Comment Section Legal Defense Team is gearing up for a full-throated condemnation of all who dare criticize Alabama. Fire away, guys. Tell me how actually Alabama is genius because they fired this guy right away. Share an article with me from your “unbiased outlet” that begins with Brad Bohannon’s career win/loss record.)
Yeah, Fire His Ass!
Sorry, Alabama, this is no longer about you.
Congress invited the PGA Tour–LIV dealbreakers to share details of their conquest today, and I enjoyed the details. Specifically, two things:
First, the PGA Tour wanted Greg Norman out of LIV leadership, and board members Ed Herlihy and Jimmy Dunne (the 9/11 guy, NOT a guy who did 9/11, those guys work with LIV) were going to run it in his stead. This appears to have been a PGA Tour pipe dream which went absolutely nowhere, but it does make Herlihy and Dunne look like buffoons who thought they were about to rule the world:
As part of its investigation, the subcommittee uncovered a series of emails sent between PGA Tour policy board chairman Ed Herlihy and board member Jimmy Dunne on May 15, with Herlihy telling Dunne, “Jimmy, I raised the idea with Jay [Monahan] of you overseeing LIV going forward. He really liked it.” Dunne replied, “You and me,” to which Herlihy responded, “Definitely.”
I love this so much. Dunne and Herlihy and Designated Clown Monahan dreaming up how great their deal is going to be and then not even getting that deal. It’s like a group of eight-year-olds talking about how they’re going to stand up to their bully: “Yeah, and then we’re gonna fire Mean Greg!” “Yeah! And we’ll run LIV ourselves!”
Second, a British man named Roger Devlin was involved:
The subcommittee memo says the first communications regarding the possibility of an agreement between the PGA Tour and the PIF occurred Dec. 8, when British businessman Roger Devlin wrote Dunne.
Devlin revealed to Dunne that Al-Rumayyan and Amanda Staveley, a “valued advisor” to Al-Rumayyan and chief executive of international private equity firm PCP Capital Partners, had invited him to “help find a solution to the issues that divide LIV and the PGA [Tour].” Devlin wrote that he had helped Staveley facilitate the PIF’s takeover of English Premier League soccer team Newcastle United.
[Devlin set up a meeting between Rory McIlroy and Al-Rumayyan, Al-Rumayyan is the governor of PIF, Devlin referred to Al-Rumayyan as “His Excellency,” yada yada…]
Devlin attempted to revive the discussion in April, sending an email to Dunne that said, “I believe we have a window of opportunity to unify the game over the next couple of months, otherwise I fear the Saudis will double down on their investment and golf will be split asunder in perpetuity.”
It’s possible Devlin is just British, and that this is just how British people email, but I do love the drama in the last sentence. The way to an old person’s panic zone is to email them that something disastrous is going to happen if they don’t do what you want. This is how we ended up electing Donald Trump. Now, Devlin is doing it, and he’s using the words “asunder” and “perpetuity” in the same three-word stretch! What a move.
The article goes on and on and on, but the gist of what we learned today is that these guys haven’t fully figured out yet how the new, reunified golf world will work, that it’s still weirdly not been explained why the DP World Tour got involved, and that the world of powerful people in golf is still as goofy and bumbling as Caddyshack made it appear. No number of really cool things Tiger Woods did or monster drives by Bubba Watson and his counterparts has succeeded in changing that. Golf is a sport we can bully.
(I’m glad Newcastle got caught up in this, by the way. Those guys are crooks.)
Still Thinking About ‘The Piss Boys’
After learning about The Piss Boys yesterday and texting an impish friend that he’s a piss boy, I continued to think about The Piss Boys for the next 24 hours, on and off. That brings us to right about now. It turns out the name was uncovered by Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic, and that it refers to how the coaches in question—Matt LaFleur, Kyle Shanahan, probably Mike McDaniel—all used to get “pissed on,” meaning they had to do a lot of gruntwork like making copies and getting coffee. This was a disappointment for me, I was hoping for a specific piss story, but it does confirm that it was a term of endearment, which feels good. Gritty times are fun times on the way up, especially when you look at them in hindsight.
The All-Star Game’s Tonight!
Man, I love the All-Star Game. Similarly to the Home Run Derby, there’s not a lot to say about it, but it’s just so darn fun. Something magic about it. I might go buy a box of Drumsticks and have one during the later innings like I did as a kid between seasons of managing low-budget ball clubs in MVP 04. Few things say summer like ice cream treats and the All-Star Game.
