When Brian Tuohy spoke to the class he opened my eyes to seeing that in professional sports there is fixing games and that it no one in America monitors betting in this country but they do it in Europe. That college sports are the easiest sport to fix.
Between 2004-2008 a survey of 19000 student athlete were surveyed less than admitted 1% shaved points/fixing games while it was 2-3% when asked if they knew people that did.
When asked why the media doesn’t try to go into seeing why they fix sports game some of the answers were mixed. “The media is afraid of the backlash they’ll receive from whoever it is they’re accusing of fixing games,” said Andrew Fair.
While others aren’t surprised there is fixing in sports. “Game fixing isn’t a new thing. And there really hasn’t been an obvious case of it lately to trigger such controversy,” said Shane Riordan.
When journalists have tried before they have been black mailed/listed or blue balled when they try to say there is a concussion problem in football in the late 90s-early 2000’s which is not fixing but still the NFL tried to discredit there work. ESPN even wouldn’t let their own reporters from doing a book/documentary on their findings which is where we know they tried before them to bring up.
So fixing in any sport can happen but do people have the courage to speak up and if they find out who did what happens?
“Whenever there was proof of fixing games someone got banned from the league in which they were playing/coaching in,” said Jon Halpert. “The Black Sox, Pete Rose, also the people thought that the Super Bowl was fixed last year but there was no proof.”
Some think the media doesn’t know or are in the fix as well. “There is unwritten rule that probably will never be mentioned because it’s something they won admit to on paper”, said Jesse Gonzalez.
Also, “Well perhaps the media is simply unaware of the occurrences”, said Dan Ammer. “Or the professional media is also being paid to remain quite about fixed games also that perhaps discussing a fixed game could lose their audience.”
Some even have a reason that would make all of us afraid if we did. “They know the mob is behind that fixing and they’d kill anyone in the media that rats them out,” said Matt Bray.
So in the end it can be cluelessness, mob threatening them, the sport blacklisting/mailing, or that there in the fix or just there isn’t enough proof out there for the journalist to waste his time finding when he could be killed or lose his job or make his job easier.