Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Sports Grid. I'm Mike Blewett hosting Newswire in for Craig Mish as he takes a couple
00:09of days off around the holiday. I hope you're enjoying your holiday setup these next couple
00:13of days. We have lots of sports to cover as you settle in. Maybe you're running around
00:19doing some last minute errands right now preparing for the holiday or you have the day off and
00:24you're settling in to watch what we have on the docket today which is more than 70 college
00:29basketball games. We'll prep for the three NFL games tomorrow but we started off today
00:34with big baseball news and that's Blake Snell signing with the Dodgers. Mike Feinsand, the
00:40first to report it, 182 million dollars over five years. They will defer some of that money.
00:48Feinsand obviously with MLB Network and another big signing for the Dodgers. What can you
00:54say? They keep getting after it. They come fresh off a World Series victory over my New
00:59York Yankees and assign one of the hotter prospects on the market in Blake Snell. They
01:05are still firmly in the Juan Soto sweepstakes so we'll see how that plays out over the course
01:09of the next couple of weeks but the Dodgers adding another arm. If there was a weakness
01:14going into the playoffs many people said it was their rotation. Their bullpen was dominant
01:19for the most part in the playoffs. They got some good starts out of a few different players
01:22but felt like they needed to shore that up with Walker Buehler being a free agent. Blake
01:27Snell at least fills one spot there for them. Let's move over to college football where
01:32the committee's top 25 comes out last evening. Starts at the top with Oregon, Ohio State,
01:40Texas and Penn State. They are holding the buys right now but we are in a situation where
01:45if Ohio State beats Michigan they'll play Oregon in the Big Ten Championship. You wonder
01:49if Penn State starts to get edged out as these conference championship games start to happen.
01:56Are there any surprises on there for me? I don't think anything drastically. Alabama
02:01and Ole Miss and South Carolina just outside of that top 12, 13, 14 and 15, Alabama will
02:08have Auburn. South Carolina has the greatest chance to move up I think simply because they
02:14are playing a ranked opponent in Clemson who is number 12 right now in the rankings so
02:19that really the biggest game, one of the biggest games coming up this weekend, Texas, Texas
02:23and Michigan and Ohio State and then Clemson and South Carolina really a game that could
02:28have a lot of impact on the rankings. Boise State finds themselves at number 11 and as
02:33we move forward into the bracket, a projected bracket, we see that the possibilities for
02:41Boise State to finish in front of one of the power four champs is real. They would have
02:47one of the buys if everything held as it is, as it plays forward, if it held that Boise
02:53State is in front of the big 12 champ in this instance. Oregon, Miami and Texas would conceivably
03:00have buys but that's what I say every year in college football. We like to project ahead
03:06what we think is going to happen and too many people do that by saying well this team is
03:10not going to lose another game and this team is not going to lose another game. We certainly
03:13didn't think what was going to happen Saturday night in the SEC was going to happen but Alabama
03:18drops one to Oklahoma and Ole Miss drops one and Auburn beats Texas A&M in a huge upset
03:26so I think there could be more upsets to come. Speaking of upsets as we turn over to college
03:31basketball, that is two losses in a row for UConn. 15 point favorites yesterday against
03:37the Colorado Buffaloes and they drop one 75-72. Their second game in a row where they
03:44drop a game by a bucket. Dan Hurley who had a technical foul in overtime a couple of days
03:50ago sounds off on the officiating and his team's defense yet again. Yesterday the biggest
03:57play of the game was an over the back that was called against us and then today it was
04:07more egregious because the kid Baskin pulled Liam's arm down. I saw the replay of it. It's
04:17ironic but that's not why I think our defense has been just so dreadful. I like how he says
04:26that's not why but he led his entire press conference talking about officiating and then
04:30throws the defense under the bus. Back-to-back national champs, they're going to be in the
04:36mix until the end but the antics on the sidelines and really getting after the refs is at another
04:42level right now with Hurley and some of the other coaches in college basketball. I'm curious
04:46if anything is going to be done during the rest of the year. Big matchup last night between
04:52Duke and Kansas. A really good one. Duke rims out a potential game-tying three-pointer at
04:59the buzzer from Canupel but Kansas who has really not ducked anybody on their schedule
05:04gets another victory, will remain number one in the country for the foreseeable future.
05:09Here's John Shire commenting on his team's youth. Obviously Coach Selfman is one of the
05:14best. He's done a terrific job always. So a ton of respect for them and give them credit.
05:20And for us, look it's easy, it would have been an easy goal in that kind of game. And
05:26the way they came out, I thought they made some tough shots to be honest with you. I
05:29thought we missed some open ones and we just stuck with it. Just kept fighting, kept fighting.
05:34We're asking a lot. We're 17, 18, and 19 year olds. We are. And that's what they want.
05:40I thought the character and the heart of our team really showed tonight. And as much as
05:46I badly want to win, I think maybe at some point I've thought about if I'm crazy for
05:53the schedule. We've had our first six games but I did it with this group because I felt
05:58they could take it. I felt that they're wired the right way. They have toughness about them
06:04and the growth that we're going to have from this game, this whole trip, playing in Arizona
06:10and then come back and play Kansas on a neutral site. We're going to grow so much. So I'm
06:15disappointed. Wanted to win badly for our guys. I wanted to win badly. But we're going
06:21to learn so much and be better from this.
06:24Three other huge matchups last night. Number four, Auburn takes down the Tar Heels 85-72.
06:30So Auburn with another ranked win there. The top ten battle goes to Alabama as they
06:36beat Houston in overtime 85-80. They nearly won it on a three-quarter court buzzer shot
06:42in regulation but they go on to win it in overtime. And Oregon comes storming back in
06:46the second half to beat the Texas A&M Aggies. 16-0 run in the second half to get that victory.
06:53Feast week rolls on. There's over 70 games today. We're going to talk with Mike DeCoursey
06:57in about four minutes to talk more about College Hoop. The Suns hand the Lakers their
07:02first cup loss this season, winning 127-120 in Phoenix with Durant and Beal coming back
07:10off of injury. Milwaukee is a perfect 3-0 in group play. They beat the Heat 106-103.
07:16And the T-Wolves' struggles continue. They lose 17-111 in overtime at home against the
07:22Rockets. Steve Vincenzo did not play the last 25 minutes of this game. A lot of rumors
07:27swirling about whether he'll be there long-term. 28 teams in action tonight on the hardwoods.
07:32So lots of NBA in addition to college basketball. The Vikings signed Daniel Jones to their practice
07:41squad. So released by the Giants, he does find a home. He wanted to be with a contender.
07:46I'd say it's fair to say that the Vikings at nine and two are one of those contenders.
07:52He will not unseat Sam Darnold and it's just a practice squad place for now. We'll see
07:56if he works his way onto the active roster as a backup at some point. J.K. Dobbins of
08:01the Chargers suffered a knee sprain in Monday's loss to the Ravens and it will miss some time.
08:08It is to be determined how much time that will be. But it sounds like it may not be
08:12quite as serious as some feared. Still, he will be out. Tyreek Hill's traffic citation
08:17dismissed that famous incident from early in the season where he was thrown to the ground.
08:24Disagreement with police officers to say the least. So everything dismissed and he sounded
08:31off on Twitter by saying we're all the internet cops now. He moves on and they will play tomorrow
08:36night against the Green Bay Packers. We'll speak to, we'll speak about that game a little
08:41bit later today. Giants' Bryant Dable says Tommy DeVito not 100 percent to play tomorrow.
08:46So we'll find out more in the next 24 hours. Drew Locke would have to step in if Tommy
08:51DeVito is unable to go, but he's pretty banged up. And the Commanders put Austin Seibert
08:58on IR after the missed kicks versus the Cowboys. Missed two extra points, cost them the game.
09:02He took responsibility for it. He was very upset and now he lands on IR. He had previously
09:07had an injured hip, so some questioning whether or not he should have been out there.
09:12We are back on Newswire. Welcoming in Sam McQuillan from Legal Sports Report. Got some
09:17interesting news as always to discuss. And Sam, good to have you on here. Happy Thanksgiving
09:23to you and yours. I don't know that we would typically start talking about the state of
09:28Wyoming, but here we are. And Wyoming has something interesting related to athlete harassment
09:37as a potential challenge to what is happening in their sports books.
09:41Yeah, Mike, thanks for having me on and happy Thanksgiving to you and your family as well.
09:46You're right. It is kind of funny to be talking about Wyoming on a news show. It's such a
09:52small state and you really don't think about it ever with sports betting. They don't have
09:56many sports teams. Frankly, I can't name one, but it's actually been pretty, pretty important
10:02as it goes with sports betting regulation and doing things that happen in Wyoming that
10:08another bigger state adopts. We saw this last year with states that took aim at Daily
10:13Fantasy sports operators that offered basically player parlays. Wyoming was really the first
10:19one to take action against them. And now we have the latest thing to come out of Wyoming
10:23is they just passed the ability for sports books, sports betting apps to now ban anyone
10:30who is found guilty of harassing an athlete. Obviously, very significant. We've talked
10:34about this issue in sports betting pretty much since the dawn of time from the days
10:39of, you know, Jack Molinas and the CCNY scandals and college basketball in the 1950s and 60s
10:46all the way up to now where you see on social media athletes getting sent, you know, messages
10:52either threatening them or calling them out. We see it a lot with fantasy football, but
10:56really in college sports is kind of where this debate has coalesced. So now sports betting
11:01apps will be able to ban anyone who is deemed to have sent an explicit threat, a sort of
11:07suggestive threats and a photo. They really have a lot of lateral leverage or a lot of
11:14a lot of authority here to ban anyone who's deemed to have kind of harassed an athlete
11:19based on betting. We've seen this pop up in the last year with the NCAA calling for states
11:26to ban player props on college athletes, ban betting on different colleges. A number
11:32of states already had those rules kind of baked into their law. But then we saw once
11:36the NCAA called for more and more pass list. Frankly, I think this is really interesting
11:40because instead of, you know, not allowing people to bet things thinking that that's
11:44going to help prevent harassment, you actually have sort of a proactive direct approach here
11:50where if someone does something, they'll be banned and they can't bet on a legal sports
11:54book. So interesting to see sort of the first state move through on this. I'd be really
11:59interested to see if others follow in the coming years, if they're deemed to have had
12:03success with it here and especially the industry. If you're a fan to a DraftKings and you say,
12:08hey, maybe this has worked really well in Wyoming. You have those relationships with
12:11the other big states, the New York's of the world, Pennsylvania's and New Jersey's to
12:15say, hey, they had a great idea here. Maybe it'll work here. So interested to see how
12:19this works out kind of in the first iteration and then where potentially next could move
12:23to after that.
12:24Agreed. There's several layers to it, Sam. Right. You have Wyoming that started sports
12:29betting in twenty twenty one. They are not they are 13 states currently that do not allow
12:35for college prop betting. So the players being in the under the microscope for including
12:42New York where I live. So you don't have the ability to do that. Obviously, there's a lot
12:48of restrictions where University of Wyoming is the biggest game in town in Wyoming. But
12:52there are many restrictions in your state where you're betting you're not going to be
12:56able to bet on the local college team. I can't bet on Syracuse. I can't bet on Iota and Fordham.
13:00And the list goes on. So but there's layers to it. There are removing college props from
13:07being bet on. There's Charlie Baker calling for that to be restricted. And then Wyoming,
13:13to your point, taking it a step further. Yes, we can institute no college prop betting and
13:19take Charlie Baker's subjects suggestions. But to your point, specifically excluding
13:24people that are acting in that manner. Yeah, definitely. They went a step further here.
13:32And, you know, just because you can't do it in New York, I live in New York, too, but
13:36I know plenty of people who do bet on college props in New York. That's another thing. You
13:40know, when states make things illegal, they take them off the legal apps. That's great.
13:45But a lot of the times you're just kind of forcing people more into the shadows where
13:49if you really want to bet on something, you're doing it offshore. And when you're betting
13:53on something offshore, that's it's not getting tracked by these integrity monitoring services
13:58that have caught the athletes that have manipulated on gate, have manipulated games and stuff.
14:02You know, when we talk about the scandals that happened back in the day, that was all
14:05offshore. That was all illegal stuff. So when you push stuff to the shadows, unfortunately,
14:10it kind of attracts those shadowy figures if something bad is going to happen as well.
14:14We stay in Wyoming where they have forwarded a bill to the refiled online casino legislation.
14:21So Wyoming expanding the options for folks to be able to bet on sports.
14:27Yeah, another case where, hey, it's just Wyoming. How much could this really matter? But we
14:32only have seven states that have legalized online casino so far, which for the industry,
14:37they'd really like to see that number grow. It really hasn't grown much in the past couple
14:41of years. So Wyoming is actually going to be pretty interesting, in my opinion, because
14:45it's a smaller state where they're going to have to navigate the same hurdles, deal with
14:50the same stakeholders that they would in a much bigger state, whereas they eventually
14:54do want online casino. It's going to be a really good example. Once we see the bill
14:59filed in December, according to the reporting from Matthew Cradell, who works for the sister
15:05side of LSR Play USA, it's saying it's going to be a really good example of how they navigate
15:11the state interests, the industry interests and the tribal interests. This new study
15:16just came out, which said that Wyoming stands to make about forty million dollars a year
15:21in taxes once it's eventually passed. Now, if you're a tax expert or you know anything
15:27about how much states make in revenue, it's really not that much. So the big selling point
15:32again here is going to try to be making it legal and sort of creating creating a boost
15:38for the economy in Wyoming of itself. Now, you have the tribes who are going to want
15:42their piece. You have the folks that own casinos that might also own a betting app that might
15:47be worried, hey, if you give everyone a casino in their pocket, are they not going to come
15:50into our state? So it's a lot of things for the industry to navigate. It kind of makes
15:54sense that they'll kind of try to use Wyoming as their sort of their test case. If we can
15:59do it in this smaller state, maybe we can take some of that momentum and bring it to
16:02a bigger state. Now, if it doesn't work in Wyoming, they're going to have to go to the
16:05drawing board and figure that out first. But before you see it in New York, before
16:09you see it in California, Texas, wherever else, it's going to start in these smaller
16:12states. And that's what we'll watch sort of this legislative session as the lawmakers
16:17go back to the state houses.
16:19Wyoming, our least populated states of 40 million in tax revenue, may actually make
16:23a bigger impact for them. I know you're working on a story with FanDuel's co-founders launching
16:29something called BedHog. Can you explain a little? We have about two minutes. Can you
16:32explain a little bit about what BedHog might be?
16:35Yeah, sure. BedHog is the latest sort of legal sports betting alternative, the latest alternative
16:43to a legal sports book that was built by the founders of FanDuel, which is the biggest
16:47sports book in America right now. You've seen these websites pop up where this one is only
16:53taking cryptocurrency. Interestingly enough, you might ask, why would they not want real
16:58money to be bet on the platform? And the reason, quite frankly, is because if you use real
17:02money to bet on a platform, a lot of times you meet a state's definition of gambling.
17:08And these are platforms that do not want to be regulated as gambling so they can avoid
17:13the taxes, fees, regulatory scrutiny associated with legal sports betting. You know, the reason
17:18that makes it such a hard business. But we've seen these people with a lot of weight behind
17:22their name, these folks who founded FanDuel now starting this company. They've got a lot
17:27of other companies that popped up in the space, whether it's using fantasy sports, whether
17:30it's using sweepstakes models, kind of these alternatives to legal sports books that have
17:35popped up trying to capitalize on this boom of sports betting, which has followed ever
17:40since PASPA was repealed. So it's going to be an interesting kind of thing to watch here,
17:44whether states start to regulate this stuff more, go after it. But pretty significant
17:48that you have people who founded FanDuel starting this company and a lot of investors behind
17:52them as well. What they call a legitimate product. We'll see if the industry cracks
17:58down on them or if states begin to take issue with them as well. So another interesting
18:02thing for next year.
18:03All right. Great stuff from Sam McQuillan. He's a legal sports reporter. He appears every
18:08week here with us on SportsGrid, giving you the latest updates on Wyoming and all other
18:14state sports betting, casino information as well. So, Sam, happy Thanksgiving.