(Editor’s Note: James Wolfe, author of How to Rig the NCAA Basketball Championship for Fun and Profit, shares the following excerpt from his book with readers of Legal Issues in Collegiate Athletics. The book can be purchased at many book stores, on Amazon.com and at his Website — www.jameswolfebooks.com.)
Perhaps the most important factor is determining which games offer the best betting opportunities. Don’t bet every game you work, only the games that set up correctly. For example, if the underdog is underrated or if the favorite team’s star has the flu or a pulled groin muscle that is not common knowledge, it might be a good game to bet. Another good bet could be a favorable match-up, like dominating guards versus freshman opponents.
Then help the chosen team with selective calls during the actual game. That means reading the flow of the game and going with it. See who’s hot and who’s not; what’s working for each team, and modifying your officiating as required to help the team you’re betting on. For example, if the team you’re betting against has a guy shooting lights out, put a couple of early fouls on him. His coach will have to sit him down. That should keep the team you bet on close without too much further effort. If your team is behind and having difficulty scoring, put its best free throw shooter on the line for an easy point or two. If that doesn’t get the team rolling, do it again. Subtly, always subtly.
Vary the team you bet on and the methods employed. You don’t want to leave a detectable pattern. Sometimes bet on the favorite, sometimes the underdog. Sometimes rely on a foul in a critical situation, sometimes on turnover call (traveling, palming, five and ten-second calls, etc.). In an emergency, when your team is in danger of not covering the spread, call a technical on a key player. Use this ploy rarely, unless, of course, the player gives you a legitimate reason. Sometimes, if you really need a call badly, you can manufacture a technical foul. Once this was simple, like saying something nasty about an athlete’s little sister’s dating habits or accusing his mom of wearing combat boots. Today, something a bit more graphic, more down and dirty, is required to get a response worthy of a technical. I don’t like this technique and have only used it once, as a last resort. I won’t tell you what I said to the kid, but it provoked a response not only worthy of a technical, but an ejection from the game. I didn’’t bother with the usual clichés about little sisters, mothers, ethnicity. I aimed my trash talk squarely at his value as a person. What little respect you may still have for me would disappear quicker than a coach after a lopsided loss to an underdog opponent if I told you what I said.
Another key is recognizing that officials usually work off the same template. An early call on a star player just might prompt a few other calls from the other zebras. You’d be amazed how often one ref starts picking on one team or one player, the other refs follow, thinking that the first guy knows what he’s doing. I guess it’s just the herd instinct. The others pile on, helping your cause without you taking any risks. All refs will deny this until their last breath, just like all their other denials, such as being intimidated by well known coaches, getting lazy in a blowout, or being influenced by their own personal biases.
Not calling fouls on key players may also be a useful technique. In crunch time, you don’t want the star of your team fouling out, so giving him a bit more leeway may help. Or if a team’s star, the big scorer, is having trouble getting going, give him an extra half step on his moves to the basket. This technique is not as reliable as many others because the other refs may make the call that you don’t.
Look for these opportunistic situations, not specific infractions. A drive to the basket, a defender’s arms extended out, not up, screens, big guys dribbling, tip-ins are examples of situations ripe for making advantageous calls. As I previously noted, the rules themselves leave plenty of room for interpretation, and, therefore, room to help your cause. The key is to constantly adjust during the action. If your team is going to win without any further help, counter balance any uneven calls made in the earlier action so that the stats in the box score look reasonably fair. Remember there are usually more fouls called on the visiting team.
Watch as many games as possible to get the idea, preferably in person where you see the whole court, the overall positioning of the players and officials. Your number one observation likely will be how qualitative the whole officiating process is. Every call is subjective, every play has some kind of contact, almost every move involves some traveling. There are no absolutes, no conformity. What’s a good call to one player, coach or even ref, is a bad call to another. What’s a foul on one trip down the floor isn’t on the next. And every call, except the technical, is made without analysis or consultation and in a fraction of a second.
Good officiating means making subjective calls consistently. Good cheating is capitalizing on the opportunity provided by this subjectivity. The subjectivity is what allows my system to work. Who can question a judgment call? Approximately half the interested observers are going to complain regardless of the accuracy of the call. If the foul goes for your team, you’re happy and the call was correct. If it goes against your team, you’re angry and that anger is directed to the guy in a striped shirt who made it. Nobody is truly objective, regardless of what the experts tell you. When was the last time you heard a partisan fan complain that a ref made a wrong call that gave his team the win? Fans love you if their team wins; they hate you if it loses, regardless of the circumstances and evidence. No number of instant replays will change their minds. It’s as simple as that.
I have only one ironclad rule. I do it all by myself. I’ve never considered letting another ref in on the deal, even though it would make the job easier. It would also more than double the probability of getting caught.
In sum, profitable cheating is an art, not a science. Inaccurate or unfair calls should be used selectively, discreetly, and only when they will effectively promote the desired outcome. Bogus calls should be minimized. None wasted. Almost any play can be called a foul. So you simply have to make the great majority of your calls accurate, saving the crooked ones for situations that can change the momentum of the game.
I hate to say it, but successful manipulation of a college basketball game is not that hard. The only absolute solution to the problem is to remove the incentive for an official to purposely make bad calls.
