Hysier Miller - Temple Betting Scandal Update

Former Temple guard Hysier Miller has a new team – a legal team – in the wake of allegations that he bet on and manipulated the outcome of Owls games he played in.

Just because quarterback Bryce Underwood will “reportedly” make ten million dollars in NIL money over four years to ply his craft at the University of Michigan doesn’t mean there aren’t any college athletes smuggling food out of the cafeteria.

NIL and Sports Betting

Even though one of the purported benefits of the advent of name, image and likeness payments to athletes was that they’d be less vulnerable to entreaties from criminals, we’re obviously not all the way there yet.

“We are still in the very early days of NIL and it’s essentially the Wild West,” said Thomas Gable, Director of Race and Sports Book at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.  “In theory, if every athlete is getting paid, then yes, it would theoretically be harder to find an athlete willing to do something like that, but the fact of the matter is there are still plenty of kids who don’t receive anything in terms of NIL.”

Suspicious Line Movement

The game that ultimately brought Miller to the attention of the FBI was a regular season matchup last March between Temple and UAB, for which there was movement on the point spread that was, shall we say, unusual, as UAB went from minus two to minus eight.

“The six-point movement happened over the course of the late morning/early afternoon (with the game being played that evening).  If, hypothetically, someone is attempting to get down on a fixed game, the last thing you want is a line moving like that one did,” Gable said in an interview with Odds Shark. “I can’t say anything much further on that particular game or situation.”

The Borgata halted betting on the game, ultimately won by UAB in a subpar performance by Miller, after Gable was unable to find any reason, such an injury or suspension, that would cause wagering to change drastically.

A report by ESPN said “bookmakers noticed that the same customers who bet against Temple in the UAB game had been wagering on other games involving the Owls, often making wagers on the result and the total points scored in the first half, according to gambling industry sources.”

The future of Sports Betting scandals

Gable passed on the opportunity to offer public advice to the NCAA on what gambling-related steps the embattled organization might take (“I would defer to the NCAA doing what they feel is best for their organization,”), but doubts the Miller case is the last we will hear about point shaving.

“I think the fact that there are more regulated sportsbooks across the country now, you will see things like this crop up every now and then, simply because there are more eyes on it,” he said. “When (the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act) was still in effect, unless a Las Vegas sportsbook saw something suspicious, no one would really be any wiser about it.  I don’t believe the prevalence is increasing or will increase because this has been going on for decades.  Back in the day, if a game was fixed and people could only bet it in an unregulated or illegal market, who was the bookmaker supposed to report their suspicions to?  They couldn’t or wouldn’t, for obvious reasons.  They could refuse to pay, of course, if they thought something wasn’t right, but it typically wouldn’t be looked into at all.”

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What the scandal means for college basketball betting

Asked to describe the resources a sportsbook would devote to detecting unusual or suspicious betting activity, Gable said in his company’s case it’s significant.

“I couldn’t speak to other operators, but it certainly falls on the staff in the risk rooms, and in conjunction with operations in a retail environment,” he said, adding that though there have been college basketball betting scandals in New York and Boston before this one in Philadelphia, that there’s no reason to conclude there is there more suspicious activity surrounding basketball in the northeast than in other areas and other sports.

“I certainly couldn’t say that that is a true statement.  The northeast is definitely a hotbed for basketball, much the way the south is for college football, but I can’t say that there is more nefarious activity in the northeast surrounding basketball.”

After leading Temple in scoring last season, Miller transferred to Virginia Tech but didn’t appear in a game before being invited to leave the program in the wake of federal and NCAA investigations.