Yahoo Sports National Columnist Dan Wetzel is joined by Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger to discuss the Crimson Tide’s firing of baseball coach Brad Bohannon and how that adds to a rough start to the year in Tuscaloosa. Listen to the full conversation on “College Football Investigator” – and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
Video transcription
(AUDIO LOGO)
DAN WETZEL: Our first potential major gaming scandal since sports betting became heavily legal across the country.
ROSS DELLENGER: Give up, SEC.
(ALL SINGING SARCASTICALLY) DRY, DRY, DRY.
DAN WETZEL: So what happened was last Friday night. LSU is going to… LSU and Alabama are going to play a baseball series. Someone walks into the sportsbook at Great America Park in Cincinnati, Ohio. Someone comes in and makes two what they call big bets, one on LSU to win and a parlay featuring LSU to win.
But you can imagine it’s not the fucking Super Bowl. How many people are betting on the LSU-Bama baseball game in downtown Cincinnati anyway? So according to ESPN, the sportsbook surveillance video shows… I don’t know how they know that. But it shows that the guy who made the bet was, quote, “communicating” with Brad Bohannon, the Alabama baseball coach.
The more legal it is, the more people watch, the more analysis there is on this kind of thing. Absolutely crazy to get involved in this. It was certainly interesting to see how quickly Alabama moved toward Bohanon. What was it, three days and he was gone?
PAT FORDE: Three days and he was gone, which is probably an indication, A, they had things that they knew he got wrong. But B, now is not the time to make mistakes in Alabama. I think they’ve probably reached their saturation point when it comes to scandal.
ROSS DELLENGER: I was in Phoenix for the conference meetings. The SEC was the topic of discussion with the common theme: What’s going on in Tuscaloosa?
DAN WETZEL: So to recap, we have young Darius Miles charged with capital murder for the death of Jamea Harris. There were two other teammates there, including Brandon Miller. Last month, rookie Jaykwon Walton was arrested in Tuscaloosa. He had marijuana and three guns in the vehicle he was sitting in.
Football recruit Tony Mitchell has been charged in Florida with possession of marijuana with intent to sell or deliver. Nick Saban suspended him. On Monday, Alabama Compliance Director Matt Self was arrested for third-degree domestic violence. All this over a period of, what, four months, five months, less than five months. Now we have the potential gambling scandal that caused the baseball coach to be fired.
PAT FORDE: I will say that the system actually worked here. Instead of people, some people’s immediate reaction is, oh, my god. We can’t bet on college athletics or certainly college baseball, because that’s the type of thing that’s going to happen. But the system worked. The system found someone trying to bet on inside information, identified them and blew them up.
