Toledo Surprise! Corruption Extends to Hoops
Today’s not-so-savory news comes to us courtesy of the case of The Drowsy Chaperone:
| Toledo Surprise = AAA-version of a Cleveland Steamer … right? |
A year ago, the Toledo Rockets were thrust into the most unfortunate of spotlights, when former football player Scooter McDougle was implicated in a point-shaving scandal.
But, as everyone knows thanks to the Tarkanian years at UNLV, point-shaving is the preferred method of cheating on the hardwood, not the gridiron. Which made it practically no surprise at all when the U.S. Attorney’s continued investigation of point-shaving at U of T led them to former Rockets guard Sammy Villegas, who was formally charged in Detroit yesterday.
But the prosecutor’s bill of information seems to, well, get its information wrong. The feds claim that Villegas’ intentionally missed two free throws to fix a game against Central Michigan on February 4, 2006. But when Villegas missed those free throws, Toledo had already covered the published spread. So, unless there is something going on here that we don’t understand - and, since we don’t gamble on sports, we admit that the universe of shit we don’t know here is HUGE - we’re not quite sure how that game represents any kind of smoking gun against Villegas.
The bigger indictment against him (hardy har har legal wordz) might be the rapid decline in his play cited by The (Toledo) Blade - Villegas was the MAC Freshman of the Year in 2003, but his play deteriorated so quickly that his coach publicly wondered what happened (registration required for link).
We’ll let the U.S. Attorney do his own investigation, but … and we can’t be the only ones wondering this … doesn’t the federal prosecutor for Detroit, named only last year as the most vulnerable point of illegal entry into the U.S., have bigger fish to fry than a two-bit guard in a Mid-American Conference RICO scheme?
(HT: It’s MAC news, so you knew it had to be Chuck.)
