October 30, 2025 • 40 mins
A gambling scandal hits the NBA and Zig wonders is this just the tip of the iceberg, some important elections next week, is it Newsom, Harris and Trump in 2028, the dead Epstein victim's book and the crazy coverage and some thoughts on football and dementia.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to episode two hundred and sixty five of the
Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zigler. I'm
your host on today's show. A massive gambling scandal hits
the NBA, but the sports media tellingly has relatively little
interest in the story. One of the most important off
year elections in our history is coming up in days.
(00:20):
I'll have some predictions. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris both
indicate they may run for president in twenty twenty eight,
But is Trump also going to give it another shot?
More on the media insanity surrounding the dead Epstein Victim book,
as well as the continuing chaos in college sports. We
(00:43):
begin this episode of the podcast with a quick content note.
After listening to episode two sixty four, I feel like
I need to apologize to the audience of this podcast
for the excessive number of F bombs that I used,
Especially towards the end of our last episode, when I
was talking about a particularly infuriating story that related to
(01:07):
the whole Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky saga. I
was stunned myself. I knew I had dropped a lot
of F bobs, but it went way too far, even
considering the circumstances of that story, which were extremely frustrating
and certainly F bomb worthy. But I'm going to make
a pledge to try to cut down on the f
(01:28):
bobs going forward. I'm not going to be able to completely,
one hundred percent eliminate them. I understand myself. I get
myself very very well. I know my strengths and weaknesses.
This is definitely a weakness that I have, and occasionally
an F bomb can have impact if used properly. But
it went way way too far in the last episode
(01:49):
of the podcast. So I'm going to make a concerted
effort to cut down on that. Whether or not I'll
be successful or not, I don't know, but I will
be trying, at least for this episode of the Death
of as a podcast. Now, I want to begin from
the standpoint of topics with a subject that I'm sure
that a lot of you are anticipating me discussing, because
(02:10):
this is something that I have predicted for quite some time,
and that is that there was a major gambling scandal
in sports, specifically the NBA, and to me, the fact
that this actually came to fruition was about as surprising
as people who predicted that the Donald Trump Elon Musk
(02:30):
relationship wouldn't make it through an entire term or even
an entire year of the Trump presidency. This was easily predictable.
Anybody with any sense could see it from a mile
away that sports in general, professional sports in the NBA
in particular, we're playing with fire. This was inevitable. The
(02:50):
only shocking part of this was the details of this
story that exploded when the FBI arrested over two dozen
people related to this gambling operation. There was actually two
different elements to it, at least two different elements to it,
one involving a con of a poker game that involved
(03:16):
Portland Basketball Portland Trail, Milaizer's basketball head coach and Hall
of Famer Chauncey Billups, where he was directly involved in
the use of a fake poker game, a rigged poker
game that turned out to be essentially a fundraising mechanism
for the mafia. And then you have the more sports
(03:39):
related element of this story in the FBI RS where
NBA star player Terry Rozier was arrested and charged because
he apparently, according to the FBI and based on the facts,
I tend to agree that this is obviously the reality
that he threw a prop bet on himself back in
(04:01):
twenty twenty three. A prop bet, for those that do
not know, frankly is idiotic to me. It was always
one of those situations where this was going to be
exploited in very nefarious ways. But essentially, you can bet
on a particular player. You're not betting on the outcome
of the game. You're betting on how a particular player
(04:24):
would do. And in twenty twenty three in the NBA,
Rosier came out of a game early, allegedly because of
an injury, and all of his prop bets lost, and
there was some very suspicious betting at the time, and
also there was some social media posts that I've seen
(04:44):
the aftermath of the fbis then dedicated that this was
not even a closely held secret that Rosier was on
the take here, that he probably came out of the
game on purpose, pretending to be injured. Therefore or everyone
who bet the under on his prop bets would win
their bets. And so when this story broke it was shocking.
(05:09):
I think was shocking mostly because of the fact that
the FBI was involved. The number of arrests, the fact
that Chauncey Bhillips is a head coach and a Hall
of Fame player, and the connection to the mob. All
this was very shocking in some ways, although, as I've
already implied, not that surprising that you would have this
(05:31):
kind of a situation occur in some way, shape or form.
And frankly, I'm in the camp of people who believe
that this is probably I don't know if you call
it the tip of the iceberg, but it's certainly not
the entire iceberg. Because if this is happening so easily,
then the culture, at least in the NBA, the culture
(05:53):
is consistent with this happening a lot more than we
already know. I think anybody with any sense of logic
would conclude the same thing. For this to have been
found out, and for this to have gotten to the
point where the FBI ends up charging, arresting and charging
people with serious crimes, then it's probably far more widespread
(06:17):
than we know. And the reason why this was always
so easily predictable is that professional sports in general and
the NBA in particular, have embraced betting to the point
where there's no longer any stigma attached to it. This
is not difficult to understand, which is why this was
(06:37):
so easily predictable. I mean, I started off this podcast
with a guest a pseudo apology about using too many
f bops. Well, I'll use an analogy related to that.
As parents, and this is not going to surprise you,
but I am guilty of this on a consistent basis.
As parents of young children, you don't want your kids current. However,
(07:01):
it is very very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce
the idea that your kids can't curse when you yourself
curse in front of them, which is something as a
parent I should not do, but I have done far
too often. Well, that sends the message that cursing really
isn't that bad because dad's doing it. Well, it's the
(07:22):
exact same philosophy. It's the exact same concept when it
comes to betting. If the league is in bed with betting,
and the media partners of the league are in bed
with betting, then clearly betting really isn't that bad. And
even though there are still rules against players doing this
kind of stuff, they're not going to take them seriously.
(07:46):
And it's frankly from a psychological perspective, pretty understandable, and
it's remarkable to think in the sports world in general,
how dramatically this whole concept has shifted in just a
few decades. And the most obvious example of this was
Pete Rose, who was banned from baseball in the early
(08:11):
nineteen nineties for betting on other baseball games. There's never
been any definitive evidence that Pete Rose ever bet against
his own team. I'm not even sure there's evidence that
he bet on his own team. He may have at times,
I can't remember that, but regardless, there's no evidence at
all that Pete Rose ever purposely through a game or
(08:36):
didn't perform as well, or as a manager, didn't you know,
did things to make sure his team didn't perform as well,
because back then it was did you win the game
or did you lose the game? There was none of
this prop bet bull crap. And so, you know, that
was a situation where Pete Rose was given the literal,
figuratively literal death sentence in the sport of baseball because
(09:00):
he broke a cardinal rule and it was understood, it
was understood that there's this thing called the slippery slope
and that you cannot have any ambiguity in this area
because as soon as that you allow anything to happen
in this area, it's eventually going to end very, very badly.
(09:20):
So that's why you had to have a firewall. That's
why there was no advertising regarding sports and betting. You
had none of the leagues that would forget about being
invested in betting. They had to keep on arms leand
beyond an arms land. We've talked many times in this
podcast before about how the NFL today because the Pete Roselle,
(09:43):
the commissioner of the NFL at the time, during the
heyday of Brent Musburger and Jimmy the Greek, would not
even allow Jimmy the Greek to talk about point spreads
even though there was it was a TV show that
wasn't owned by the NFL. It was obviously promoting the
NFL was on. But that's how much sports leagues understood
(10:04):
that you must protect the game at all costs. I've
referenced many times my phrasing of you must protect the
magic that was, like I think even the title of
our last episode of the podcast, Well, it's the same
idea here. This is something you must protect at all costs.
The magic is that everyone believes the games are on
(10:26):
the up and up, but that the players and the
coaches are doing everything they possibly can to win every game.
Now that's gone by the wayside in so many different manners,
it's to almost be ridiculous. But to me, from a
culture perspective, it's maybe more important than from a sports
standpoint to see how far we have fallen. And I
(10:48):
actually was one of those people who thought Pete Rose
got punished too much. I mean, I'm not saying you
should have been punished. What he did was wrong, and
I totally get the principle of the matter and making
sure that firewall exists and the slippery slope doesn't get
out activated one hundred percent. But in a fairly short
amount of time thirty five years, essentially, we've gone from
Pete Rose getting the figurative death penalty in baseball for
(11:13):
betting not against his own team, to a situation where
now we have a player betting against himself having other
people profit from that. And as of right now, he's
been put on leave, he's still being paid, he's on
a vacation, he's getting paid millions and millions of dollars
(11:37):
through series to do nothing. Now his career is probably over,
but the difference in the way this thing is going
out is stark. And it should be pointed out that
the NBA investigated this situation involving Rosier and they found
no wrongdoing, or at least they couldn't prove any wrongdoing,
(12:01):
which to me is ridiculous. It's ridiculous and its indication
of one how powerful the player's union is because they
were afraid of coming to a different finding without one
thousand percent proof. But it's also an indication of how
invested and conflicted the NBA and other sports leagues are
(12:25):
when it comes to betting. Because they understood that there
were very few sports in general, understood that there were
very few ways of increasing revenue, especially as the television
business model was breaking and the cable business model was
a catastrophe. They had to maintain or potentially increase revenues,
(12:47):
and the only way to do that was by embracing
gambling and the dangers that were inherent in that. Be damned,
no one cared, and people like me have been warning
about this. Bob Costas has been warning about this. This
was always inevitable and I don't think that Rosier is
(13:11):
an aberration. It's within the culture, clearly within the NBA
and probably within most of sports. Now, the NBA is different.
The baseball is in a similar boat here, where their
regular season games are so meaningless that it's actually remarkably easy,
(13:34):
especially when you don't even have to throw a game itself.
You could just throw a prop bet that it doesn't
make any difference even within the season. You could throw
a prop bet and still win the game in theory.
But even if you happen to lose the game, one
NBA regular season game or one Major League baseball game
is really not that significant at all, And yet the
(13:57):
significance of the game is irrelevant to whether or not
the bet pays. Now, we are living in a world where,
you know, we have so much data than any kind
of irregular betting is going to set off red flags,
and that's what happened in the Rosier situation. But the
NBA said, eh no, we can't really find any crime here.
(14:18):
We're not sure about this, so we're going to just
let this go. And now the FBI, now it's quite
possible the FBI has the ability to get more evidence
than the NBA. I get that concept, but I also
think that's a cop out by the NBA. That's what
their claim is. We looked into this, but we just
don't have the same kind of authority that allows us
(14:39):
to get, you know, the same kind of hardcore, hardcore
evidence that the FBI does, and that's why they were
able to come to a different conclusion than than we were.
I don't buy that. Really, this was this was pretty
darn clear cut that there was a problem even before,
even before the FBI arrests, and as far as the
(14:59):
Chauncey Billups thing, I mean, this is just so weird.
And this is probably the part of the story that
has been the most understated, even though it is the
most shocking. But I mean, here we have a guy
who's in the Hall of Fame as a player, a
head coach of an NBA, a major NBA basketball team,
(15:19):
the Partland Trailblazers, who is effectively scamming people out of
millions of dollars in this fake poker game, this rag
poker game as a fundraiser for the mafia, and he's
also on administrative lead. Now I realized it's not a
perfect analogy. It's not a perfect analogy, but I still
(15:40):
think it's it's worth mentioning, especially given who I am.
They compare the Chauncey Billups situation to the Joe Paterno
set of circumstances. I mean, Joe Paterno at twenty eleven
was a prosecution witness in a case that turned out
to be total bull crap against Jerry Sandusky. Without Joe Paterno,
(16:03):
Jerry Sandowski never even gets arrested, and within just a
couple of days of Jerry Sandanski's arrest, the media firestorm
was so great that Penn State panicked and fired Joe Paterno,
the winning as coach in the history of college football,
and a literal institution at Penn State, all because of
the media firestorm. No crime committed. He was actually a
(16:26):
prosecution witness. The prosecutor said he did nothing wrong. He
was being praised at first before the media narrative changed.
That was the media sports media culture, specifically at ESPN.
In twenty eleven, Chauncey Billups gets arrested and charged by
(16:47):
the MBI in these incredibly bizarre circumstances where he's scamming
people out of millions of dollars on behalf of the mafia,
and he's on leave now I have probably I'm guessing
he's probably never gonna coach again. But there's nowhere near
the same kind of frenzy, the same kind of panic.
(17:11):
Everyone's fine with him just being paid and you know what,
well innocent until proven guilty. Well Praternal wasn't even charged
with anything. He was presumed after this half a century
stellar career being morally bankrupt all because we lost our
goddamn minds. It's I mean, so the comparison, well not perfect,
(17:32):
is stark, and I think there's a lot of different
factors involved in this. The players union in the NBA
is extremely strong. The NBA is terrified of this issue.
You might even argue that there's a racial issue involved
here because both Rozier and Billips are black, and inherently
the media finds it more difficult to attack a black person.
(17:56):
So there's a lot of different elements to this, but
the lack of panic and frenzy among the media, especially ESPN,
is extremely telling. Now, they did this story for a
day and they got humiliated. ESPN did a lot of
jokes online about you know how they're so invested in betting,
(18:17):
and at one point they were even having to reference
their own conflict of interest, and they took off the
ESPN bet advertisement at the bottom of the screen, which
is ubiquitous because ESPN once they had the greatest boondoggle
in sports media history. The way that cable television used
(18:39):
to run was an extraordinary boondoggle on behalf of ESPN,
And once that died, ESPN became desperate and gambling was
their only lifeline. So now they are completely totally, one
thousand percent invested in gambling. So they have no moral
authority whatsoever to be one reporting on this objectively and
(19:03):
two to be condemning it the way that they should be,
because the entire essence of sports is on the line here. Now,
I get if you look at this in the micro
and you go, oh wow, it's just you know, one
one player, Terry Rozier. It's a prop bed, not that
much money was bet, it didn't didn't impact a game necessarily,
(19:25):
So who really cares? No, No, No, there's two problems.
Number one is you're presuming absurdly that this is an
isolated situation. It's not. This is now part of the
culture of professional sports because we now have an entire
generation of players that were not brought up in the
Pete Rose era, where we were told emphatically in all
(19:50):
sorts of ways, you cannot allow this to happen because
of the slippery slope. You cannot even start it. You
cannot have you have must have a zero tolerance policy.
Zero zero means zero. Well, the slippery slope is the
second part of why this is an incredibly dangerous situation
(20:12):
that ESPN should be all over, but they're not because
they have an inherent, deep conflict of interest and we've
seen this with regard to their talent Stephen A. Smith.
This should be a career ending situation in my opinion.
Of course, we don't live in a ratchetal world involving
Stephen A. Smith. There's the biggest star at ESPN and
(20:36):
a guy who literally does commercials for sports betting outlets,
and he tried to deflect this whole thing by blaming
it on President Trump that these charges were a part
of a conspiracy by Trump to bring down the woke NBA,
which is gets completely ridiculous on so many levels. Cash
(20:57):
but tell the director of the FBI actually said as
the stupid thing he's ever heard in his life. But
that's got to be saying something considering he's a mega commentator,
so he's heard a lot of very stupid things. But
it's particularly dumb because this investigation began during the Biden administration.
It's been going on for years. The Zeer thing happened
(21:17):
in twenty twenty three, So it's completely ridiculous what Stephen A.
Smith is saying. But it's an obvious set of circumstances
where he is terrified of the fact that he is
conflicted by the fact that he's making money. Literally, he's
being paid. He's an employee effectively of sports gambling outlets.
(21:41):
So that's why he's trying to deflect this and try
to blame it all on Trump instead of focusing on
the culture of the NBA where he could actually have
a very significant impact. Stephen A. Smith, as bizarre as
it is, is extremely influential, especially within the community, and
(22:01):
if he was attacking the NBA culture, then that would
have an impact. But no, no, no, he has to
attack the Trump administration because he has to protect his
own situation. Mad Dog Russo does a lot of work
with Stephen A. Smith on ESPN. He also dramatically downplayed
this conservative commentator Clay Travis, who is deeply invested in
(22:26):
the entire gambling operations in industry. I mean, it's all
over the place at OutKick and he himself and he
bets himself. He's got specials on betting suggestions that he makes.
I mean, Clay is just about as bad as Stephen A.
Smith is on this issue. He's gone out of his
way to try to deflect and downplay the whole thing.
(22:50):
And so here we have a perfect example of where
you know, this is the Death of Journalism podcast, where
corporate conflicts of interest are having a real world impact
on a situation that is a mortal threat to sports.
This is a mortal threat. Once people no longer believe
(23:15):
in the integrity of the contest, eventually the sport will die.
Now you might be saying, but zig what about pro wrestling? Well,
I get what you're saying about pro wrestling. It does
make me think that there's a much larger audience that
just doesn't give a shit about the essence of the
sport being real. But there's a large enough audience that
(23:37):
would be theoretically turned off if they lost trust in
the integrity of the contest that it would implode the
business model in my opinion, not to mention the integrity
of betting itself. I mean, why wouldn't you bet on
any of these games if you did not have any
believe or trust that it was all on the up
(23:58):
and up? Why would you do that? But that's why ESPN,
in particular, in the sports media in general, all which
is tied either directly or indirectly to sports gambling interests,
is so terrified of overemphasizing this story because they are
actually more concerned about people losing trust and betting than
(24:19):
they are in sports fans losing trust in the integrity
of the game. They don't really give a shit that
much about the integrity of the game. They care about
well not people keep betting, because that's what their business
model is based on. And that's why this, to me
is such an important story from the death of journalism perspective,
because I've talked forever and ever about how the broken
(24:43):
business model has directly caused the implosion of journalism, and
we have seen that in the last week since this
story of the FBI arrests became very public. It was
a big story for about a day. It has gone away,
and it has gone away largely because the sports media
(25:06):
has no interest. Literally, they have no financial interest in
getting to the bottom of this story. Now they'll claim, well,
you know, there's no new news. We need to wait
for a trial. Innocent until proven guilty. Again, going back
to the Penn stage, Joe Paterno, Terry Sandusky story, none
(25:26):
of that mattered then, and they didn't know anything about
that story at the time. They knew absolutely nothing. In fact,
most of what they thought they knew was totally wrong. Now,
is it possible some of the stuff we think we
know now is wrong. Absolutely, it's possible. But I think
we already have enough evidence, especially given all the totality
of the circumstances, to be able to at least come
(25:49):
to the conclusion that there's a massive problem within the
culture of sports and the culture of the NBA when
it comes to bedding. We're seeing this all over the place.
We've talked on this podcast previously about we're now in
a situation where we've got major college football coaches like
(26:09):
Lane Kiffen apologizing for his actions which moved the spread
at the end of the game. I mean, and by
the way, this has happened on multiple occasions in a
weird way. I think it's one of the most dangerous things,
and I actually like Lane Kiffin. I don't think this
is his intent. I think Lane Kiffen just thinks he's
(26:29):
being funny. But I actually think this is one of
the most dangerous things that's happened this year in sports,
where it's become commonplace for players and coaches to joke
about what they did that impacted the result of bets
spreads on games and why you might be thinking, well,
(26:52):
why is that dangerous? Well, because in a weird way,
this actually makes a betting scandal far easier to pull off.
In fact, I actually think we've now seen the path
for doing this. If you just joke about it act
of the game, everyone presumes you must be innocent. And
I'm not suggesting Lane Kiffen or anybody else so far
(27:13):
that has done this has been involved in an actual
point shaving or betting scandal of some sort. I'm saying
this is a path for how you could easily get
away with it. I mean, we've seen with the Louver
heist in Paris, France, where you know, sometimes the best
way to get away with a crime, although they're not
going to get away with it in the long run,
(27:34):
but in the short run they did is to do
it in broad daylight, where everyone presumes, well that you
know nothing, the faeries must be going on. It's broad daylight.
Well if you joke about it and you acknowledge it,
then people will go haha, oh yeah, okay, well obviously
nothing untoward was going on here. But we're seeing this
constantly in sports, and it's always going to be inevitable
(28:00):
when you eliminate principles, when you eliminate concerns about what
the right thing to do is when money is everything
and that's our value system, especially in sports, when money
is everything and the game barely matters, and when you
(28:20):
are living in this kind of a world, inevitably, when
you have the media on their knees because they're invested
in sports, so they're not going to be looking at
this closely. And even when the FBI arrests two major
sports figures in the NBA, they're not going to make
that big of a deal out of it. They're going
to ignore it as much as possible, deflect whenever they
(28:41):
can because it's in their financial self interests. So all
of the incentive structures have been put into a situation
where you're going to have a scandal. And it is
my very strong belief that what we're seeing in this
end gambling story is probably close to the tip of
(29:04):
the iceberg, that this has already happened in probably multiple sports.
We just don't know about it yet. I mean, heck,
we should have known about this involving Brazier since twenty
twenty three because the evidence appears to have been so obvious.
And it's not just basketball, but that's the sport that
obviously has been in the news over the last week.
(29:27):
And because of what I already talked about basketball and baseball,
because they play so many regular season games, especially with
regard to these stupid prop bets, they're incredibly vulnerable to
having a betting scandal. And you know, somewhat related, actually,
in my opinion, directly related. There was an interesting story
(29:47):
in The Hollywood Reporter a couple of days ago about
a documentary that has been created about the show Hey
O Tani situation now show Heyo Tani, the superstar for
the lot of San Angeles Dodgers, who was having an
absolutely ridiculous postseason up until last night when he was
pitching and lost to Game four of the World Series
(30:09):
for the Dodgers. But he's been absolutely extraordinary, Babe Ruth
type stuff. But you may recall it seems like a
long time ago, and the story disappeared very quickly, maybe
because of some of the reasons I'm about to tell you,
and maybe about some of them implied because of some
of the reasons I've already discussed involving the media being
very very conflicted here. But there's this documentary, according to
(30:29):
the Hollywood Reporter, involving show Hey Otani and his translator
and the betting scandal that ensued there, and that story
has never made any sense to me. I get that
Otani has been completely cleared, but it just never made
any sense. I'm not saying I know what happened. I
just can't make sense of how that story went down
(30:52):
the way that it did. Was show Heyo Tani's translator
having that much control over millions and millions of dollars
and apparently hetting on all of these games, and you know,
claiming now that it was just him and Otani had
nothing to do with it. I'm open to that, but
that scenarios doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Well,
(31:12):
there's this documentary that has been created that the Oliver
Reporter is saying, nobody, none of the major distributors are
buying it, are going to take a chance on it
because they all have corporate conflicts of interest with Major
League Baseball. Now, the first thing I think about it
(31:34):
in the story is, well, okay, then that must mean
that the documentary is not very good for Otani, because otherwise,
why would Major League Baseball care so much or why
would the you know, the media outlets, the corporate media
outlets that were potentially bidders on this documentary, why would
they be so concerned about how Major League Baseball was
(31:56):
going to respond? Because Otani obviously is the superstar balls superstars.
He must be protected at all costs. I get that
if there is a serious allegation against Otani that Major
League Baseball is going to be very, very, very sensitive
about that, and therefore their corporate partners in the media
world are going to be very sensitive about upsetting Major
(32:17):
League Baseball. But I don't know what the allegations are
of the documentary. I just find that to be extremely
telling about where we are that these corporate conflicts of
interests are so great that here we have let's presume
that it's a legitimate documentary that the Hollywood reporter was
talking about, and let's say that they have you know,
(32:38):
they must have some connection to Otani. Otherwise, who would
give a damn about any of this if it's just
a translator? And so here we are where it's just accepted.
It's just accepted. Sorry, we can't. It's a major story,
and maybe this is the truth that should be told,
and maybe it's a very significant story, but we're not
going to tell it because we might we set our
(33:00):
corporate partners. That's the media world we're now living in.
That's a world where journalism is literally dead. Journalism doesn't matter.
I've talked about this constantly when it comes to the
situation involving Trump and ABC and CBS and you know,
Facebook and these these major media outlets that are settling
(33:24):
lawsuits with Donald Trump. The people making the decisions at
the corporate level, they don't give a damn about journalism.
Journalism is a pain in the ass, even at sixty
minutes at CBS at paramount. Journalism is a pain in
the ass for these people. They're much more concerned about
not upsetting the Apple card when it comes to their
(33:49):
media sports relationships. In this particular case, we can't upset
Major League Baseball. We have this massive deal with them.
It doesn't matter that this is an important story that
needs to be told. It's not even a factor. That's
the part of this that's most amazing. From a journalism standpoint,
and from a death of journalism podcast perspective, it doesn't
(34:11):
even rate. It's not even a consideration. The only consideration
I get that this was always a consideration. It's always
been a business to some degree, just like sports has
always been a business to some degree. But both sports
and journalism are now solely businesses. Business considerations are all
(34:32):
that matter. Nothing else matters. And this is a world
where journalism dies. And because of corporate sports entities being deeply,
deeply invested in gambling, you're gonna have gambling scandals. It's
gonna happen, and that is risking the magic. That is
(34:54):
a mortal threat to sports as we know it, and
no one seems to care. And it's a large part
because of ESPN. I mean, almost every problem in sports
can be traced back to ESPN at some level, and
ESPN when they went from being this wonderful little outlet
(35:16):
out of Bristol, Connecticut that you know, that built itself
up and in the nineteen eighties was awesome with Big
East basketball and college football and some other entities, and
then got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then that
got bought by Disney. Once it got bought by Disney,
it was all over because now it's essentially private equity.
(35:39):
It's no longer run by people that love sports and
want to cover sports and actually care about sports. It's
about people that look at this and go, oh, we
can make a lot of money from ESPN. Now we're
gonna squeeze every damn dime out of this. Oh we
lost this cable boondoggle. Well, now we've got to embrace gambling.
And I should mention this every single time the issue
(36:02):
of gambling comes up, and I'm probably derelict and not
doing so, but it should be pointed out. It's not
just a sports integrity issue. ESPN and other sports media
outlets being deeply invested in gambling is essentially like promoting crack,
cocaine or some other very damaging drug that's what they're selling.
(36:28):
They're selling a drug. They're selling heroin. That's what you
should think of when you see sports media outlets advertising
for gambling operations. They're selling heroin. It's incredibly destructive culturally.
People lose their fortunes, they lose their rent, money, they
(36:56):
abuse in families increases because guys lose their money and
they beat up their wives. I don't think that's a cliche.
The amount of damage that is done in the real
world because of sports gambling is incredibly underrated and underreported.
Why because of the same corporate conflict of interest, because
(37:17):
no one wants to talk about this because they're deeply
invested in its succeeding. So that's the part that is
the most corrupt in all of this. We're just pretending
that gambling is a zero sum game. It's not. For
the vast majority of people who bet on sports. It
(37:39):
is a losing, potentially dramatically losing proposition that causes enormous
damage in people's lives. And ESPN doesn't give a damn
because it's their business model now and it's not just ESPN,
but obviously they're the worldwide leader in sports, so they're
the ones that I think deserve to get the more attention.
(38:00):
And they're the ones driving the bus on this. And
you know, going back to the Penn State Joe Paternal
Jerry Sandusky story, they're the ones that drove the narrative
on that because they had no corporate conflict of interest.
They just had an interest. Actually, their corporate conflict of
interest was it was a slow newsweek and they needed
ratings in November, and this was a spectacular story, even
(38:21):
though it was a dark fairytale that was based on
a mythology, and so it's just it's actually amazing. I
was stunned by how quickly this story went away. And
I'm as cynical and I think as understanding of the
factors involved in this circumstance as much as anybody in
the world. And even I thought, oh my god, what
(38:45):
if there was a major sports betting scandal and nobody
in the sports media really cared. That's essentially what happened.
And it's almost entirely it's almost entirely because of the
corporate conflict of interest, which is now completely obliterated any
sense of journalism, of truth, of what's right, of what's wrong,
(39:09):
what's good for sports in the long run. And this
is also another great example of how quickly things can
change in your culture if you aren't vigilant. If you
aren't vigilant, you can get from Pete Rose to Chauncey
Billups in a relative heartbeat. And to me, it's incredibly telling,
(39:33):
and it goes way, way beyond sports, and it's a
topic that I'm sure we're going to talk about again
in future episodes of this podcast, because there's gonna be
more scandals. This is gonna keep happening as long as
sports is deeply invested in gambling, and they have no
choice now because we're living in a private equity world
(39:53):
where the only thing they care about is increasing revenues
in the next quarter. That's all all they care about.
And the only way to do that in sports these
days is through gambling. Thanks for listening to today's free
drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested in listening
to the entire show, you must become a patron. Please
(40:14):
go to Patreon. That's p A T R E O
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z I E G. L E R. That's Patreon dot
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(40:39):
luck to you on that, But that's how you can
subscribe
Welcome to episode two hundred and sixty five of the
Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zigler. I'm
your host on today's show. A massive gambling scandal hits
the NBA, but the sports media tellingly has relatively little
interest in the story. One of the most important off
year elections in our history is coming up in days.
(00:20):
I'll have some predictions. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris both
indicate they may run for president in twenty twenty eight,
But is Trump also going to give it another shot?
More on the media insanity surrounding the dead Epstein Victim book,
as well as the continuing chaos in college sports. We
(00:43):
begin this episode of the podcast with a quick content note.
After listening to episode two sixty four, I feel like
I need to apologize to the audience of this podcast
for the excessive number of F bombs that I used,
Especially towards the end of our last episode, when I
was talking about a particularly infuriating story that related to
(01:07):
the whole Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky saga. I
was stunned myself. I knew I had dropped a lot
of F bobs, but it went way too far, even
considering the circumstances of that story, which were extremely frustrating
and certainly F bomb worthy. But I'm going to make
a pledge to try to cut down on the f
(01:28):
bobs going forward. I'm not going to be able to completely,
one hundred percent eliminate them. I understand myself. I get
myself very very well. I know my strengths and weaknesses.
This is definitely a weakness that I have, and occasionally
an F bomb can have impact if used properly. But
it went way way too far in the last episode
(01:49):
of the podcast. So I'm going to make a concerted
effort to cut down on that. Whether or not I'll
be successful or not, I don't know, but I will
be trying, at least for this episode of the Death
of as a podcast. Now, I want to begin from
the standpoint of topics with a subject that I'm sure
that a lot of you are anticipating me discussing, because
(02:10):
this is something that I have predicted for quite some time,
and that is that there was a major gambling scandal
in sports, specifically the NBA, and to me, the fact
that this actually came to fruition was about as surprising
as people who predicted that the Donald Trump Elon Musk
(02:30):
relationship wouldn't make it through an entire term or even
an entire year of the Trump presidency. This was easily predictable.
Anybody with any sense could see it from a mile
away that sports in general, professional sports in the NBA
in particular, we're playing with fire. This was inevitable. The
(02:50):
only shocking part of this was the details of this
story that exploded when the FBI arrested over two dozen
people related to this gambling operation. There was actually two
different elements to it, at least two different elements to it,
one involving a con of a poker game that involved
(03:16):
Portland Basketball Portland Trail, Milaizer's basketball head coach and Hall
of Famer Chauncey Billups, where he was directly involved in
the use of a fake poker game, a rigged poker
game that turned out to be essentially a fundraising mechanism
for the mafia. And then you have the more sports
(03:39):
related element of this story in the FBI RS where
NBA star player Terry Rozier was arrested and charged because
he apparently, according to the FBI and based on the facts,
I tend to agree that this is obviously the reality
that he threw a prop bet on himself back in
(04:01):
twenty twenty three. A prop bet, for those that do
not know, frankly is idiotic to me. It was always
one of those situations where this was going to be
exploited in very nefarious ways. But essentially, you can bet
on a particular player. You're not betting on the outcome
of the game. You're betting on how a particular player
(04:24):
would do. And in twenty twenty three in the NBA,
Rosier came out of a game early, allegedly because of
an injury, and all of his prop bets lost, and
there was some very suspicious betting at the time, and
also there was some social media posts that I've seen
(04:44):
the aftermath of the fbis then dedicated that this was
not even a closely held secret that Rosier was on
the take here, that he probably came out of the
game on purpose, pretending to be injured. Therefore or everyone
who bet the under on his prop bets would win
their bets. And so when this story broke it was shocking.
(05:09):
I think was shocking mostly because of the fact that
the FBI was involved. The number of arrests, the fact
that Chauncey Bhillips is a head coach and a Hall
of Fame player, and the connection to the mob. All
this was very shocking in some ways, although, as I've
already implied, not that surprising that you would have this
(05:31):
kind of a situation occur in some way, shape or form.
And frankly, I'm in the camp of people who believe
that this is probably I don't know if you call
it the tip of the iceberg, but it's certainly not
the entire iceberg. Because if this is happening so easily,
then the culture, at least in the NBA, the culture
(05:53):
is consistent with this happening a lot more than we
already know. I think anybody with any sense of logic
would conclude the same thing. For this to have been
found out, and for this to have gotten to the
point where the FBI ends up charging, arresting and charging
people with serious crimes, then it's probably far more widespread
(06:17):
than we know. And the reason why this was always
so easily predictable is that professional sports in general and
the NBA in particular, have embraced betting to the point
where there's no longer any stigma attached to it. This
is not difficult to understand, which is why this was
(06:37):
so easily predictable. I mean, I started off this podcast
with a guest a pseudo apology about using too many
f bops. Well, I'll use an analogy related to that.
As parents, and this is not going to surprise you,
but I am guilty of this on a consistent basis.
As parents of young children, you don't want your kids current. However,
(07:01):
it is very very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce
the idea that your kids can't curse when you yourself
curse in front of them, which is something as a
parent I should not do, but I have done far
too often. Well, that sends the message that cursing really
isn't that bad because dad's doing it. Well, it's the
(07:22):
exact same philosophy. It's the exact same concept when it
comes to betting. If the league is in bed with betting,
and the media partners of the league are in bed
with betting, then clearly betting really isn't that bad. And
even though there are still rules against players doing this
kind of stuff, they're not going to take them seriously.
(07:46):
And it's frankly from a psychological perspective, pretty understandable, and
it's remarkable to think in the sports world in general,
how dramatically this whole concept has shifted in just a
few decades. And the most obvious example of this was
Pete Rose, who was banned from baseball in the early
(08:11):
nineteen nineties for betting on other baseball games. There's never
been any definitive evidence that Pete Rose ever bet against
his own team. I'm not even sure there's evidence that
he bet on his own team. He may have at times,
I can't remember that, but regardless, there's no evidence at
all that Pete Rose ever purposely through a game or
(08:36):
didn't perform as well, or as a manager, didn't you know,
did things to make sure his team didn't perform as well,
because back then it was did you win the game
or did you lose the game? There was none of
this prop bet bull crap. And so, you know, that
was a situation where Pete Rose was given the literal,
figuratively literal death sentence in the sport of baseball because
(09:00):
he broke a cardinal rule and it was understood, it
was understood that there's this thing called the slippery slope
and that you cannot have any ambiguity in this area
because as soon as that you allow anything to happen
in this area, it's eventually going to end very, very badly.
(09:20):
So that's why you had to have a firewall. That's
why there was no advertising regarding sports and betting. You
had none of the leagues that would forget about being
invested in betting. They had to keep on arms leand
beyond an arms land. We've talked many times in this
podcast before about how the NFL today because the Pete Roselle,
(09:43):
the commissioner of the NFL at the time, during the
heyday of Brent Musburger and Jimmy the Greek, would not
even allow Jimmy the Greek to talk about point spreads
even though there was it was a TV show that
wasn't owned by the NFL. It was obviously promoting the
NFL was on. But that's how much sports leagues understood
(10:04):
that you must protect the game at all costs. I've
referenced many times my phrasing of you must protect the
magic that was, like I think even the title of
our last episode of the podcast, Well, it's the same
idea here. This is something you must protect at all costs.
The magic is that everyone believes the games are on
(10:26):
the up and up, but that the players and the
coaches are doing everything they possibly can to win every game.
Now that's gone by the wayside in so many different manners,
it's to almost be ridiculous. But to me, from a
culture perspective, it's maybe more important than from a sports
standpoint to see how far we have fallen. And I
(10:48):
actually was one of those people who thought Pete Rose
got punished too much. I mean, I'm not saying you
should have been punished. What he did was wrong, and
I totally get the principle of the matter and making
sure that firewall exists and the slippery slope doesn't get
out activated one hundred percent. But in a fairly short
amount of time thirty five years, essentially, we've gone from
Pete Rose getting the figurative death penalty in baseball for
(11:13):
betting not against his own team, to a situation where
now we have a player betting against himself having other
people profit from that. And as of right now, he's
been put on leave, he's still being paid, he's on
a vacation, he's getting paid millions and millions of dollars
(11:37):
through series to do nothing. Now his career is probably over,
but the difference in the way this thing is going
out is stark. And it should be pointed out that
the NBA investigated this situation involving Rosier and they found
no wrongdoing, or at least they couldn't prove any wrongdoing,
(12:01):
which to me is ridiculous. It's ridiculous and its indication
of one how powerful the player's union is because they
were afraid of coming to a different finding without one
thousand percent proof. But it's also an indication of how
invested and conflicted the NBA and other sports leagues are
(12:25):
when it comes to betting. Because they understood that there
were very few sports in general, understood that there were
very few ways of increasing revenue, especially as the television
business model was breaking and the cable business model was
a catastrophe. They had to maintain or potentially increase revenues,
(12:47):
and the only way to do that was by embracing
gambling and the dangers that were inherent in that. Be damned,
no one cared, and people like me have been warning
about this. Bob Costas has been warning about this. This
was always inevitable and I don't think that Rosier is
(13:11):
an aberration. It's within the culture, clearly within the NBA
and probably within most of sports. Now, the NBA is different.
The baseball is in a similar boat here, where their
regular season games are so meaningless that it's actually remarkably easy,
(13:34):
especially when you don't even have to throw a game itself.
You could just throw a prop bet that it doesn't
make any difference even within the season. You could throw
a prop bet and still win the game in theory.
But even if you happen to lose the game, one
NBA regular season game or one Major League baseball game
is really not that significant at all, And yet the
(13:57):
significance of the game is irrelevant to whether or not
the bet pays. Now, we are living in a world where,
you know, we have so much data than any kind
of irregular betting is going to set off red flags,
and that's what happened in the Rosier situation. But the
NBA said, eh no, we can't really find any crime here.
(14:18):
We're not sure about this, so we're going to just
let this go. And now the FBI, now it's quite
possible the FBI has the ability to get more evidence
than the NBA. I get that concept, but I also
think that's a cop out by the NBA. That's what
their claim is. We looked into this, but we just
don't have the same kind of authority that allows us
(14:39):
to get, you know, the same kind of hardcore, hardcore
evidence that the FBI does, and that's why they were
able to come to a different conclusion than than we were.
I don't buy that. Really, this was this was pretty
darn clear cut that there was a problem even before,
even before the FBI arrests, and as far as the
(14:59):
Chauncey Billups thing, I mean, this is just so weird.
And this is probably the part of the story that
has been the most understated, even though it is the
most shocking. But I mean, here we have a guy
who's in the Hall of Fame as a player, a
head coach of an NBA, a major NBA basketball team,
(15:19):
the Partland Trailblazers, who is effectively scamming people out of
millions of dollars in this fake poker game, this rag
poker game as a fundraiser for the mafia, and he's
also on administrative lead. Now I realized it's not a
perfect analogy. It's not a perfect analogy, but I still
(15:40):
think it's it's worth mentioning, especially given who I am.
They compare the Chauncey Billups situation to the Joe Paterno
set of circumstances. I mean, Joe Paterno at twenty eleven
was a prosecution witness in a case that turned out
to be total bull crap against Jerry Sandusky. Without Joe Paterno,
(16:03):
Jerry Sandowski never even gets arrested, and within just a
couple of days of Jerry Sandanski's arrest, the media firestorm
was so great that Penn State panicked and fired Joe Paterno,
the winning as coach in the history of college football,
and a literal institution at Penn State, all because of
the media firestorm. No crime committed. He was actually a
(16:26):
prosecution witness. The prosecutor said he did nothing wrong. He
was being praised at first before the media narrative changed.
That was the media sports media culture, specifically at ESPN.
In twenty eleven, Chauncey Billups gets arrested and charged by
(16:47):
the MBI in these incredibly bizarre circumstances where he's scamming
people out of millions of dollars on behalf of the mafia,
and he's on leave now I have probably I'm guessing
he's probably never gonna coach again. But there's nowhere near
the same kind of frenzy, the same kind of panic.
(17:11):
Everyone's fine with him just being paid and you know what,
well innocent until proven guilty. Well Praternal wasn't even charged
with anything. He was presumed after this half a century
stellar career being morally bankrupt all because we lost our
goddamn minds. It's I mean, so the comparison, well not perfect,
(17:32):
is stark, and I think there's a lot of different
factors involved in this. The players union in the NBA
is extremely strong. The NBA is terrified of this issue.
You might even argue that there's a racial issue involved
here because both Rozier and Billips are black, and inherently
the media finds it more difficult to attack a black person.
(17:56):
So there's a lot of different elements to this, but
the lack of panic and frenzy among the media, especially ESPN,
is extremely telling. Now, they did this story for a
day and they got humiliated. ESPN did a lot of
jokes online about you know how they're so invested in betting,
(18:17):
and at one point they were even having to reference
their own conflict of interest, and they took off the
ESPN bet advertisement at the bottom of the screen, which
is ubiquitous because ESPN once they had the greatest boondoggle
in sports media history. The way that cable television used
(18:39):
to run was an extraordinary boondoggle on behalf of ESPN,
And once that died, ESPN became desperate and gambling was
their only lifeline. So now they are completely totally, one
thousand percent invested in gambling. So they have no moral
authority whatsoever to be one reporting on this objectively and
(19:03):
two to be condemning it the way that they should be,
because the entire essence of sports is on the line here. Now,
I get if you look at this in the micro
and you go, oh wow, it's just you know, one
one player, Terry Rozier. It's a prop bed, not that
much money was bet, it didn't didn't impact a game necessarily,
(19:25):
So who really cares? No, No, No, there's two problems.
Number one is you're presuming absurdly that this is an
isolated situation. It's not. This is now part of the
culture of professional sports because we now have an entire
generation of players that were not brought up in the
Pete Rose era, where we were told emphatically in all
(19:50):
sorts of ways, you cannot allow this to happen because
of the slippery slope. You cannot even start it. You
cannot have you have must have a zero tolerance policy.
Zero zero means zero. Well, the slippery slope is the
second part of why this is an incredibly dangerous situation
(20:12):
that ESPN should be all over, but they're not because
they have an inherent, deep conflict of interest and we've
seen this with regard to their talent Stephen A. Smith.
This should be a career ending situation in my opinion.
Of course, we don't live in a ratchetal world involving
Stephen A. Smith. There's the biggest star at ESPN and
(20:36):
a guy who literally does commercials for sports betting outlets,
and he tried to deflect this whole thing by blaming
it on President Trump that these charges were a part
of a conspiracy by Trump to bring down the woke NBA,
which is gets completely ridiculous on so many levels. Cash
(20:57):
but tell the director of the FBI actually said as
the stupid thing he's ever heard in his life. But
that's got to be saying something considering he's a mega commentator,
so he's heard a lot of very stupid things. But
it's particularly dumb because this investigation began during the Biden administration.
It's been going on for years. The Zeer thing happened
(21:17):
in twenty twenty three, So it's completely ridiculous what Stephen A.
Smith is saying. But it's an obvious set of circumstances
where he is terrified of the fact that he is
conflicted by the fact that he's making money. Literally, he's
being paid. He's an employee effectively of sports gambling outlets.
(21:41):
So that's why he's trying to deflect this and try
to blame it all on Trump instead of focusing on
the culture of the NBA where he could actually have
a very significant impact. Stephen A. Smith, as bizarre as
it is, is extremely influential, especially within the community, and
(22:01):
if he was attacking the NBA culture, then that would
have an impact. But no, no, no, he has to
attack the Trump administration because he has to protect his
own situation. Mad Dog Russo does a lot of work
with Stephen A. Smith on ESPN. He also dramatically downplayed
this conservative commentator Clay Travis, who is deeply invested in
(22:26):
the entire gambling operations in industry. I mean, it's all
over the place at OutKick and he himself and he
bets himself. He's got specials on betting suggestions that he makes.
I mean, Clay is just about as bad as Stephen A.
Smith is on this issue. He's gone out of his
way to try to deflect and downplay the whole thing.
(22:50):
And so here we have a perfect example of where
you know, this is the Death of Journalism podcast, where
corporate conflicts of interest are having a real world impact
on a situation that is a mortal threat to sports.
This is a mortal threat. Once people no longer believe
(23:15):
in the integrity of the contest, eventually the sport will die.
Now you might be saying, but zig what about pro wrestling? Well,
I get what you're saying about pro wrestling. It does
make me think that there's a much larger audience that
just doesn't give a shit about the essence of the
sport being real. But there's a large enough audience that
(23:37):
would be theoretically turned off if they lost trust in
the integrity of the contest that it would implode the
business model in my opinion, not to mention the integrity
of betting itself. I mean, why wouldn't you bet on
any of these games if you did not have any
believe or trust that it was all on the up
(23:58):
and up? Why would you do that? But that's why ESPN,
in particular, in the sports media in general, all which
is tied either directly or indirectly to sports gambling interests,
is so terrified of overemphasizing this story because they are
actually more concerned about people losing trust and betting than
(24:19):
they are in sports fans losing trust in the integrity
of the game. They don't really give a shit that
much about the integrity of the game. They care about
well not people keep betting, because that's what their business
model is based on. And that's why this, to me
is such an important story from the death of journalism perspective,
because I've talked forever and ever about how the broken
(24:43):
business model has directly caused the implosion of journalism, and
we have seen that in the last week since this
story of the FBI arrests became very public. It was
a big story for about a day. It has gone away,
and it has gone away largely because the sports media
(25:06):
has no interest. Literally, they have no financial interest in
getting to the bottom of this story. Now they'll claim, well,
you know, there's no new news. We need to wait
for a trial. Innocent until proven guilty. Again, going back
to the Penn stage, Joe Paterno, Terry Sandusky story, none
(25:26):
of that mattered then, and they didn't know anything about
that story at the time. They knew absolutely nothing. In fact,
most of what they thought they knew was totally wrong. Now,
is it possible some of the stuff we think we
know now is wrong. Absolutely, it's possible. But I think
we already have enough evidence, especially given all the totality
of the circumstances, to be able to at least come
(25:49):
to the conclusion that there's a massive problem within the
culture of sports and the culture of the NBA when
it comes to bedding. We're seeing this all over the place.
We've talked on this podcast previously about we're now in
a situation where we've got major college football coaches like
(26:09):
Lane Kiffen apologizing for his actions which moved the spread
at the end of the game. I mean, and by
the way, this has happened on multiple occasions in a
weird way. I think it's one of the most dangerous things,
and I actually like Lane Kiffin. I don't think this
is his intent. I think Lane Kiffen just thinks he's
(26:29):
being funny. But I actually think this is one of
the most dangerous things that's happened this year in sports,
where it's become commonplace for players and coaches to joke
about what they did that impacted the result of bets
spreads on games and why you might be thinking, well,
(26:52):
why is that dangerous? Well, because in a weird way,
this actually makes a betting scandal far easier to pull off.
In fact, I actually think we've now seen the path
for doing this. If you just joke about it act
of the game, everyone presumes you must be innocent. And
I'm not suggesting Lane Kiffen or anybody else so far
(27:13):
that has done this has been involved in an actual
point shaving or betting scandal of some sort. I'm saying
this is a path for how you could easily get
away with it. I mean, we've seen with the Louver
heist in Paris, France, where you know, sometimes the best
way to get away with a crime, although they're not
going to get away with it in the long run,
(27:34):
but in the short run they did is to do
it in broad daylight, where everyone presumes, well that you
know nothing, the faeries must be going on. It's broad daylight.
Well if you joke about it and you acknowledge it,
then people will go haha, oh yeah, okay, well obviously
nothing untoward was going on here. But we're seeing this
constantly in sports, and it's always going to be inevitable
(28:00):
when you eliminate principles, when you eliminate concerns about what
the right thing to do is when money is everything
and that's our value system, especially in sports, when money
is everything and the game barely matters, and when you
(28:20):
are living in this kind of a world, inevitably, when
you have the media on their knees because they're invested
in sports, so they're not going to be looking at
this closely. And even when the FBI arrests two major
sports figures in the NBA, they're not going to make
that big of a deal out of it. They're going
to ignore it as much as possible, deflect whenever they
(28:41):
can because it's in their financial self interests. So all
of the incentive structures have been put into a situation
where you're going to have a scandal. And it is
my very strong belief that what we're seeing in this
end gambling story is probably close to the tip of
(29:04):
the iceberg, that this has already happened in probably multiple sports.
We just don't know about it yet. I mean, heck,
we should have known about this involving Brazier since twenty
twenty three because the evidence appears to have been so obvious.
And it's not just basketball, but that's the sport that
obviously has been in the news over the last week.
(29:27):
And because of what I already talked about basketball and baseball,
because they play so many regular season games, especially with
regard to these stupid prop bets, they're incredibly vulnerable to
having a betting scandal. And you know, somewhat related, actually,
in my opinion, directly related. There was an interesting story
(29:47):
in The Hollywood Reporter a couple of days ago about
a documentary that has been created about the show Hey
O Tani situation now show Heyo Tani, the superstar for
the lot of San Angeles Dodgers, who was having an
absolutely ridiculous postseason up until last night when he was
pitching and lost to Game four of the World Series
(30:09):
for the Dodgers. But he's been absolutely extraordinary, Babe Ruth
type stuff. But you may recall it seems like a
long time ago, and the story disappeared very quickly, maybe
because of some of the reasons I'm about to tell you,
and maybe about some of them implied because of some
of the reasons I've already discussed involving the media being
very very conflicted here. But there's this documentary, according to
(30:29):
the Hollywood Reporter, involving show Hey Otani and his translator
and the betting scandal that ensued there, and that story
has never made any sense to me. I get that
Otani has been completely cleared, but it just never made
any sense. I'm not saying I know what happened. I
just can't make sense of how that story went down
(30:52):
the way that it did. Was show Heyo Tani's translator
having that much control over millions and millions of dollars
and apparently hetting on all of these games, and you know,
claiming now that it was just him and Otani had
nothing to do with it. I'm open to that, but
that scenarios doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Well,
(31:12):
there's this documentary that has been created that the Oliver
Reporter is saying, nobody, none of the major distributors are
buying it, are going to take a chance on it
because they all have corporate conflicts of interest with Major
League Baseball. Now, the first thing I think about it
(31:34):
in the story is, well, okay, then that must mean
that the documentary is not very good for Otani, because otherwise,
why would Major League Baseball care so much or why
would the you know, the media outlets, the corporate media
outlets that were potentially bidders on this documentary, why would
they be so concerned about how Major League Baseball was
(31:56):
going to respond? Because Otani obviously is the superstar balls superstars.
He must be protected at all costs. I get that
if there is a serious allegation against Otani that Major
League Baseball is going to be very, very, very sensitive
about that, and therefore their corporate partners in the media
world are going to be very sensitive about upsetting Major
(32:17):
League Baseball. But I don't know what the allegations are
of the documentary. I just find that to be extremely
telling about where we are that these corporate conflicts of
interests are so great that here we have let's presume
that it's a legitimate documentary that the Hollywood reporter was
talking about, and let's say that they have you know,
(32:38):
they must have some connection to Otani. Otherwise, who would
give a damn about any of this if it's just
a translator? And so here we are where it's just accepted.
It's just accepted. Sorry, we can't. It's a major story,
and maybe this is the truth that should be told,
and maybe it's a very significant story, but we're not
going to tell it because we might we set our
(33:00):
corporate partners. That's the media world we're now living in.
That's a world where journalism is literally dead. Journalism doesn't matter.
I've talked about this constantly when it comes to the
situation involving Trump and ABC and CBS and you know,
Facebook and these these major media outlets that are settling
(33:24):
lawsuits with Donald Trump. The people making the decisions at
the corporate level, they don't give a damn about journalism.
Journalism is a pain in the ass, even at sixty
minutes at CBS at paramount. Journalism is a pain in
the ass for these people. They're much more concerned about
not upsetting the Apple card when it comes to their
(33:49):
media sports relationships. In this particular case, we can't upset
Major League Baseball. We have this massive deal with them.
It doesn't matter that this is an important story that
needs to be told. It's not even a factor. That's
the part of this that's most amazing. From a journalism standpoint,
and from a death of journalism podcast perspective, it doesn't
(34:11):
even rate. It's not even a consideration. The only consideration
I get that this was always a consideration. It's always
been a business to some degree, just like sports has
always been a business to some degree. But both sports
and journalism are now solely businesses. Business considerations are all
(34:32):
that matter. Nothing else matters. And this is a world
where journalism dies. And because of corporate sports entities being deeply,
deeply invested in gambling, you're gonna have gambling scandals. It's
gonna happen, and that is risking the magic. That is
(34:54):
a mortal threat to sports as we know it, and
no one seems to care. And it's a large part
because of ESPN. I mean, almost every problem in sports
can be traced back to ESPN at some level, and
ESPN when they went from being this wonderful little outlet
(35:16):
out of Bristol, Connecticut that you know, that built itself
up and in the nineteen eighties was awesome with Big
East basketball and college football and some other entities, and
then got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then that
got bought by Disney. Once it got bought by Disney,
it was all over because now it's essentially private equity.
(35:39):
It's no longer run by people that love sports and
want to cover sports and actually care about sports. It's
about people that look at this and go, oh, we
can make a lot of money from ESPN. Now we're
gonna squeeze every damn dime out of this. Oh we
lost this cable boondoggle. Well, now we've got to embrace gambling.
And I should mention this every single time the issue
(36:02):
of gambling comes up, and I'm probably derelict and not
doing so, but it should be pointed out. It's not
just a sports integrity issue. ESPN and other sports media
outlets being deeply invested in gambling is essentially like promoting crack,
cocaine or some other very damaging drug that's what they're selling.
(36:28):
They're selling a drug. They're selling heroin. That's what you
should think of when you see sports media outlets advertising
for gambling operations. They're selling heroin. It's incredibly destructive culturally.
People lose their fortunes, they lose their rent, money, they
(36:56):
abuse in families increases because guys lose their money and
they beat up their wives. I don't think that's a cliche.
The amount of damage that is done in the real
world because of sports gambling is incredibly underrated and underreported.
Why because of the same corporate conflict of interest, because
(37:17):
no one wants to talk about this because they're deeply
invested in its succeeding. So that's the part that is
the most corrupt in all of this. We're just pretending
that gambling is a zero sum game. It's not. For
the vast majority of people who bet on sports. It
(37:39):
is a losing, potentially dramatically losing proposition that causes enormous
damage in people's lives. And ESPN doesn't give a damn
because it's their business model now and it's not just ESPN,
but obviously they're the worldwide leader in sports, so they're
the ones that I think deserve to get the more attention.
(38:00):
And they're the ones driving the bus on this. And
you know, going back to the Penn State Joe Paternal
Jerry Sandusky story, they're the ones that drove the narrative
on that because they had no corporate conflict of interest.
They just had an interest. Actually, their corporate conflict of
interest was it was a slow newsweek and they needed
ratings in November, and this was a spectacular story, even
(38:21):
though it was a dark fairytale that was based on
a mythology, and so it's just it's actually amazing. I
was stunned by how quickly this story went away. And
I'm as cynical and I think as understanding of the
factors involved in this circumstance as much as anybody in
the world. And even I thought, oh my god, what
(38:45):
if there was a major sports betting scandal and nobody
in the sports media really cared. That's essentially what happened.
And it's almost entirely it's almost entirely because of the
corporate conflict of interest, which is now completely obliterated any
sense of journalism, of truth, of what's right, of what's wrong,
(39:09):
what's good for sports in the long run. And this
is also another great example of how quickly things can
change in your culture if you aren't vigilant. If you
aren't vigilant, you can get from Pete Rose to Chauncey
Billups in a relative heartbeat. And to me, it's incredibly telling,
(39:33):
and it goes way, way beyond sports, and it's a
topic that I'm sure we're going to talk about again
in future episodes of this podcast, because there's gonna be
more scandals. This is gonna keep happening as long as
sports is deeply invested in gambling, and they have no
choice now because we're living in a private equity world
(39:53):
where the only thing they care about is increasing revenues
in the next quarter. That's all all they care about.
And the only way to do that in sports these
days is through gambling. Thanks for listening to today's free
drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested in listening
to the entire show, you must become a patron. Please
(40:14):
go to Patreon. That's p A T R E O
N dot com Patreon dot com. Slash the Death of
Journalism with John Ziggler. My name is j H N
z I E G. L E R. That's Patreon dot
com slash the Death of Journalism with John Ziggler. Good
(40:39):
luck to you on that, But that's how you can
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