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00:00Let's get started and start off with our sports betting story of the day, which comes in favor of the state of Missouri.
00:06As of right now, the Gaming Commission has decided, at least for the time being, that the request by the NCAA to prohibit player prop bets and unders and first halves has been officially denied.
00:18So as of right now, that's where they stand. If you live in Missouri, you can still make all of these bets.
00:24And will this be a landmark across the country? The NCAA wants to start prohibiting certain bets to protect their collegiate athletes.
00:30But as of right now, alas, they have not been able to do so.
00:33Big story right now by the FBI reporting that they have caught Ryan Wedding.
00:38He's a former Olympic snowboarder in Canada, and he was among the FBI's top fugitives.
00:44He was on their most wanted list. He faces charges related to multinational drug trafficking and the killing of a federal witness.
00:50He was arrested this morning. Authority has offered a $15 million reward for leading to his arrest.
00:56They found him in Mexico. They will extradite him, and wedding certainly has been a hot topic over the last couple of years for his alleged involvement in drugs and murders and everything else.
01:06Okay, brighter days ahead. Let's get to that. The National Football League has a new head coach.
01:10It's on the Baltimore Ravens, and his name is Jesse Minter, defensive coordinator, who kind of looks like a Ravens head coach, to be honest with you, right?
01:17He succeeds John Harbaugh. He was the Chargers DC.
01:21They could potentially be looking for a new DC and a new offensive coordinator if Mike McDaniel decides not to take this job with the Buffalo Bills.
01:30If you hadn't heard, McDaniel, former Dolphins head coach, has already accepted the defensive coordinator or the offensive coordinator job with the Chargers,
01:38but he may not get that job and end up in Los Angeles.
01:43And if he doesn't get the job, it may be because Philip Rivers got the job in Baltimore.
01:48Yes, folks, that Philip Rivers, according to ESPN, is interviewing for the head coaching gig in Buffalo today.
01:56How about that?
01:57Of course, he played for the Colts this past season, did Rivers coming out of retirement.
02:01And a big breaking story yesterday in the world of the NFL that pertains to the Colts.
02:05The FBI is seeking records and information about Jim Ursa's death.
02:10They're investigating the fact that there could have been a doctor involved.
02:14His name is Harry Houtunian, a California addiction specialist with words like ketamine and substance use being involved as they look further into this to see if there was any foul play or mismanagement of Ursa's medicals.
02:27National Football League players lawyer reveals that she was fired in the wake of raising legal concerns.
02:32Veteran lawyer who sued the union and top executives last month, according to a court document, filed in federal court this week.
02:38Heather McPhee, the NFLPA's associate general since 2009, revealed in a court filing that the union fired her on December the 30th.
02:44Dismissal came less than two weeks after she sued the union and Lloyd Howell Jr.
02:50In college football, 12-team playoff does remain for next season.
02:55It's official, not expanding to 14 or 16.
02:58A couple of wrinkles, most importantly notable, that if Notre Dame finishes in the rankings in the top 12, no matter what, they are in the college football playoff.
03:09Can't get bounced by another team like Miami, I suppose.
03:12Texas Rangers make a trade yesterday to get a front-line starter.
03:15It is Mackenzie Gore.
03:17He goes from Washington to Texas.
03:19The Nationals get four prospects back in return.
03:21Gore has done a nice job in Washington the last few years since being traded over by the Padres.
03:27And naturally, it looks like Washington going into a deeper, further rebuild.
03:31Last night in the NBA, the Lakers led big over the Clippers.
03:34That lead didn't last.
03:35Kawhi Leonard leads them back 24 points.
03:38Clippers are hot.
03:39They've won seven out of their last eight.
03:40This, despite Lucas' 32 points, 11 rebounds, and eight assists.
03:43112-104 was the final.
03:46Ty Lue, very appreciative of the big comeback win against their rivals in L.A.
03:52We just got to do a better job of taking care of the basketball.
03:54You know, we know they're going to junk the game up.
03:56They got down 26.
03:58Started, you know, blitzing and firing.
04:00And we prepared for it.
04:02But we just did handle it good.
04:03You know, so they got turnovers.
04:05You know, it was up 26.
04:07LeBron gets offensive rebound, makes a three.
04:08We turn the basketball over.
04:09They score again.
04:10And then they kind of got momentum just off of our turnovers.
04:13But, like you said, our guys just, you know, stay in the course
04:16and find a way to win the game.
04:18And I told them at halftime, you know, we was up 19.
04:20But every single game has been this way since I've been up for six years.
04:23Either they're up big, we're up big, another team comes back
04:26and makes a game of it.
04:28Just a poor job of just defensive coverage execution.
04:36And then we just didn't trust each other on the offensive end.
04:39Not enough passing.
04:40And that was a lot of the game.
04:43Not enough passing.
04:46You know, and that's, you know, I think that's a consistent thing
04:52when we don't play well.
04:54We don't pass to each other.
04:55And we don't execute defensively.
05:01Dallas Mavericks pull off a pretty big upset yesterday.
05:04Cooper Flagg had 21 points.
05:06As six-and-a-half-point underdogs, the Mavs beat the Warriors outright.
05:09Outright, 123-115.
05:12This, despite Steph Curry's 38 points.
05:14Naturally, without Jimmy Butler, someone on the Warriors is going to have to score more.
05:19Maybe it is Steph Curry in this situation.
05:21Jason Kidd gives all the credit for Curry to be one of the first players in NBA history
05:26with 10,000 career three-point attempts, but likes the fact that his team beat Curry,
05:32even with him blowing up a little bit.
05:34Just composure, taking care of the ball, but defensively understanding.
05:39Steph can get going.
05:41He got going up, but I thought the group kept his composure when he went on a little mini run there
05:45on the defensive end.
05:47And then on the offensive end, I thought we did a good job of executing and sharing the ball.
05:53Chrissy was great again tonight.
05:56Najee was really, really good tonight, too.
05:58So those two kept us together down the stretch.
06:01But it's a great team win against a very good team.
06:05Yep, fourth quarter.
06:06I mean, they got 39 on us.
06:08A lot of free throws, I don't know how many, probably 10 or 12.
06:15And we got killed on the glass, you know, 54-35.
06:21That negated the turnovers that we forced from them.
06:25I liked our offensive game.
06:27We got a lot of great looks.
06:28It just was a night where shots weren't going down.
06:30But we did a good job, you know, taking care of the ball and moving the ball.
06:35Um, but, um, yeah, they're, they're rebounding, uh, their free throws, um, just too much.
06:44Last night, Philly beat Houston in overtime, 128 to 122.
06:50This despite a big game from the 76ers big man, Joel Embiid, who had 32 points, 15 rebounds,
06:58and yes, 10 assists, a triple-double for Embiid.
07:00But the story in this one was Tyrese Maxey.
07:02He had 36 and 10.
07:04Maxey said it was a grind in overtime despite picking up the win.
07:08Uh, I think we were just resilient tonight, man.
07:10We had to fight through some adversity, like you said.
07:13Reece Shepard came in and gave them a big, big lift.
07:16Hit some big shots.
07:17But, uh, you know, we stayed with.
07:19Yeah, Trenton was a big voice in there just saying five-minute game.
07:21Five-minute game.
07:22Joel stepped up and said, listen, if things happen, let's go get a W.
07:25You know, I was kind of like, that shouldn't happen.
07:28But, you know, it happened.
07:30So, but, uh, that was good resilience by us, man.
07:33Like, that's a tough, those are tough games to win.
07:35Uh, you get down, you go up, you get down, fight all the way back, think you about to win it, basically.
07:41And then, you know, got to go to overtime.
07:43And, uh, we won it, so that was good.
07:44Turnovers.
07:45Um, you know, didn't convert some pretty easy shots, some good looks.
07:49And then, uh, like I said, let, let Maxie get to his spots too easily.
07:54How tough is it in a game that goes to overtime to miss 12 free throws?
07:58Yeah, I mean, that's part of the story for sure.
08:01I think our defense in the first half wasn't good enough.
08:03We got better in the second half.
08:04And then, um, you know, turnovers, miscues on defense, and then the free throws compounded.
08:11Speaking of upsets, another one in the NBA last night.
08:13Looks like Minnesota's going through their slump.
08:15They've lost four games in a row.
08:16They were nine and a half point favorites last night and lost to the Chicago Bulls.
08:20Final score, 120 to 115.
08:23All right, welcome back to Newswire here on Sports Grid.
08:25Hey, great to have Sam McQuillan back in the house here on Newswire.
08:29Feels like everybody we're bringing on today, and all of our crew who are based up north
08:34are getting ready for this big snowstorm of sorts here.
08:39Now, I'm not used to this sort of thing, Sam, but I would tell you that while it does seem
08:44like an incoming nightmare to some degree, it will give you some more time to write some
08:48great columns for us that we can talk about next week here on Newswire.
08:52Yes, quite a gift, the snowstorm and a very subtle flex by you that you're down in Miami
08:57where it's nice and warm.
08:58So congrats on that, Craig.
08:59Just saying.
09:00Just saying.
09:00Just saying.
09:01Sunny outside.
09:02Not bad.
09:02Tennessee's supposed to get some crazy storm too, right?
09:05Tennessee also as well, but that's not what we're focused on, Sam and I.
09:08We're talking about maybe potentially facing a college campus ban betting on sports.
09:15Naturally, you would think to yourself, okay, well, does this involve 18-year-olds?
09:18Yes.
09:19Does it involve 21-year-olds?
09:21Yes, too.
09:22And I think, Sam, that's part of the dynamic where you're 21 years old.
09:25Man, it seems like this is going to be a hard thing to push through, but if it does,
09:29it would be the first of its kind.
09:30Yeah, if you're 18, if you're 19, if you're 20, 21, 22, 23, that's effectively what these
09:38two bills that were proposed in Tennessee would ban all kinds of legal sports betting
09:43from college campuses in Tennessee.
09:45These two bills were introduced in the legislature this week as lawmakers came back to decide
09:50on laws, which come about a week after we had that huge FBI indictment, which named about
09:5639 players at 17 different Division I men's college basketball programs in this wide-sweeping
10:03point-shaving scandal where first-half-unders were targeted, where there was the Chinese
10:08Basketball Association was involved, where you had this group of mafia-linked alleged bad
10:14doers bribing these student-athletes up to $30,000 in some cases.
10:20We're now seeing the reaction to all of these huge scandals in this form, I would say.
10:26This is probably the biggest thing we've seen yet.
10:27It would be on an entire college campus in Tennessee.
10:31You can't have sports betting.
10:32That means that the campuses would be forced on their Wi-Fi networks, too, to block access
10:37to legal sports books.
10:38So not only would the sports books have to comply with this rule, it would even extend
10:42as far as a mile radius off campus or at, you know, let's say, like, I'm in New York,
10:48for example, St. John's plays at MSG.
10:51You know, obviously, it's a Tennessee scenario, but in this instance, for the entire day, I
10:57would not be able to bet at Madison Square Garden because a college game is happening there.
11:04So it's a very, very wide-sweeping ban, something, obviously, the legal sports books would not
11:09like to have happen.
11:10You know, if I pull my crystal ball out, I would say because of that, I don't think this
11:15will happen in its entirety.
11:17What could end up happening is these bills get, you know, whittled down a bit and you see
11:21some other form of restriction passed.
11:23Obviously, we've seen a lot of other states try to take some sort of action to combat this
11:27as well.
11:28I would just kind of, you know, if you're banning the legal sports books from campuses and
11:33colleges, you're not banning the offshore sports books, the illegal websites that people
11:37can access, in some cases, prediction markets, which states have tried to get out of their
11:41states entirely, those will still all be there.
11:44So if you're going to ban legal sports betting, you have to make sure you're also enforcing
11:48the illegal sports betting, which I would argue is even worse because in the case of all
11:52these scandals, that's how these things were caught.
11:54They were all, you know, whether it was a smart move or bad move, these bad actors allegedly
11:59placed these bets on legal sports books.
12:02So that's how they were caught.
12:03If they're not available on college campuses, you know, I know college kids find a lot of
12:08ways to get things that they can't access legally on campus.
12:11So I would just kind of urge lawmakers to keep that in mind as well.
12:15But we'll definitely see how this keeps progressing throughout what should be a really interesting
12:19legislative cycle.
12:20Well, if there's any pushback there, maybe the indicator would be our next topic of discussion
12:26where the NCAA and Charlie Baker, the president, had decided to say, hey, you folks in the state
12:33of Missouri who did not have any profit on our athletes, maybe getting rid of unders in
12:39the first half.
12:40But it seems as though that's a losing battle, at least for now, Sam, which tells us that as
12:46strong and as, I would say, outspoken as the NCAA is against sports betting, there's just
12:52too much money it would appear at stake.
12:53And so Missouri, the first state to say no.
12:55And is there even a fight for Charlie Baker anywhere else after this?
13:00Yeah, the irony of this whole thing is really just incredible.
13:04The actual lawsuit that got overturned to basically allow sports betting in states is the NCAA versus
13:11Murphy, who was the governor of New Jersey.
13:13So the NCAA was suing to stop New Jersey from legalizing sports betting.
13:17They changed their tune once they realized they could get a lot of money from it.
13:21It was something they couldn't stop.
13:23But now with all these scandals happening, Charlie Baker has been over the past year or
13:26so really banging the drum, urging states to ban player props.
13:30We've seen states like Vermont comply with this, Ohio comply with this.
13:33And now the latest, his latest form of basically asking states and sports books to, you know,
13:39take more steps to regulate this stuff and kind of, you know, safeguard integrity is asking
13:43states to ban betting on first half unders, which, you know, is no coincidence that that
13:49is really the huge bets that we saw mentioned in this FBI indictment.
13:53There is a lot of kind of conversation out there in the sports betting world, you know,
13:57whether you should be able to bet on things like that, whether you should even be able
13:59to bet on a player's underperformance, you know, things that are manipulated by one player
14:05very easily.
14:05It's very easily at the end of a half to just, you know, stop scoring.
14:08I think that was kind of the case that was outlined in the FBI indictments that were unsealed
14:13last week.
14:14But so far already, you have one state saying we're actually not going to do that.
14:18And the reason isn't so cut and dry in terms of they disagree with him.
14:22It's Missouri only legalized sports betting in December.
14:25It's only when it launched.
14:26So it's only been about a month, almost two months of its legal market.
14:30Under the Missouri's law, the state has to respond within a week to any request like
14:35this.
14:36So because they only had seven days to look at this, they came back and said they voted
14:39three nothing.
14:40We're not going to ban first half unders.
14:42But they did say, we'll look at it at a later date.
14:44We'll examine this.
14:45We'll take time to see what other states have done.
14:47We need to weigh all these factors, how it's going to impact tax revenue.
14:51So essentially, they aren't saying we disagree.
14:53They're just saying, well, we just legalized sports betting.
14:56It's, you know, we're rewriting the law already.
14:58But, you know, with the pace of all these scandals and the way things keep changing in this crazy
15:03world, that might just kind of be the status quo now where states just continually need
15:06to change and re-regulate.
15:08And I think that will, you know, end up with regulators having more power.
15:11Again, it's something we kind of always talk about in the industry is, you know, you don't
15:15want the sports books don't want people to police them.
15:18They don't want people to come back with laws to regulate and further ban them.
15:22The sports books should be really out in front trying to make sure this kind of stuff doesn't
15:25happen.
15:26And if it does, they're flagging it.
15:27But it could be a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation when they flag it.
15:31It's bad headlines anyway.
15:32Obviously, lawmakers want to run with that.
15:34So we'll see if more states adopt it or not.
15:37Yeah, it's a fair point by you.
15:39All right, let's end here with prediction markets.
15:42We couldn't get out of one discussion with Sam without discussion on prediction markets.
15:46So here we go.
15:47The CFTC says they're going to take a close look at prediction markets, the first time
15:53we've really ever heard this before.
15:55And so it's one step toward the unknown.
15:58I don't necessarily think that this may mean anything in the end.
16:01But once they open up Pandora's box here to investigate, and we see some of the pushback
16:06coming from a lot of states with the cease and desist.
16:09I mean, I'm not going to say that prediction markets are coming to an end here anytime
16:12soon.
16:13But who knows what the future holds?
16:15Not as clear as maybe it was a couple of months ago.
16:20Yeah, I think that's a spot on take, Craig.
16:22This is the news here is a step has been taken.
16:25But you have no idea what the heck that step is going to look like.
16:28The new chair of the CFTC, who was only confirmed in December, remember the CFTC went almost an
16:33entire year without any real leadership, without any seats filled, you know, understaffed,
16:38underfunded.
16:39You had the NBA, the MLB, NFL pleading, asking, urging for them to make rules around these
16:46crazy sports prediction markets we have, which are able to self-certify with new markets and
16:50offer things on the transfer portal, offer crazy markets that are not allowed in sports
16:55books.
16:56The CFTC chair, Michael Selig, finally came out in an op-ed this week saying we are going
17:00to create new regulations and new rules for all of the things under the CFTC's jurisdiction.
17:07You know, that's all these burgeoning financial products, not just prediction markets, but
17:10obviously that includes sports prediction markets as well.
17:13He called it a future-proof initiative that will unfold in the coming days, you know, whether
17:18or not the coming days means next week or next year.
17:22Who knows with that, but it is a step in the direction of maybe we will finally have some
17:25clarity around these rules, where, as you mentioned, Craig, tons of states are suing to stop
17:30this, tons of states have lobbied the CFTC to stop this, so the CFTC is kind of finally
17:34opening their eyes saying, okay, we're going to do something, now we'll have to wait and
17:37see what that is.
17:39Well, we'll see, Sam.
17:40Sam, have a great weekend, keep the shovel handy, we'll talk again next week.
17:44Thanks, you too, Craig.
17:45Have a great weekend.
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