Kayshon Boutte arrested for illegal sports gambling

[SumnerH]

The only thing that matters is whether he threw games at LSU. Everything else is silly nonsense.

No. Betting on games you're involved in is horrible and undermines the integrity of the sport, even if you only bet for yourself and never threw games. There are a multitude of pretty obvious reasons for that that are well-trodden, and were gone over in particular detail during the Pete Rose era but date back to eternity.

Betting on other sports is fine, and there's a lot of silly nonsense and moral panic for sure. But betting on your games (even in your favor) has a lot of issues, and even betting on other games in your league is iffy.

 

[DJnVa]

He bet on himself.

Boutte allegedly placed a wager on a Sept. 4, 2022, game between LSU and Florida State, betting he would score at least one touchdown in the game and placed another bet that he would have over 82.5 receiving yards. Both wagers were part of an eight-leg parley wager, the affidavit said.

Boutte only recorded 20 receiving yards and no touchdowns in Florida State’s 24-23 win that day.

He also bets like I do--stupid, 8-leg parlays.

 

[DennyDoyle'sBoil]

If he has a sufficient edge to generate $500K in profits.... He might have a more lucrative career as a pro gambler than football player

I think the reporting is a little misleading. When I look at my Sportsbook annual reports, the win total looks misleadingly large.

Imagine you sit down at a blackjack table for a few hours with $500 and bet $10 per hand. You play 200 hands. You win 95 and lose 105. (Ignore doubling down, splits and blackjack.)

You would walk away from the session with $400 in chips thinking you had lost $100. In reality what happened is you lost $1,050 and won $950. The $500k number is the total wins on winning tickets, but it does not reflect profits. It is the $950 in my example. You actually do not need near $500,000 to end up generating $500k in winning tickets — just a fraction of that.

 

[InstaFace]

Moral panic is a strong cultural hallmark of America and has been lit on fire in this digital age. It is how we test boundaries of newly implemented rules, norms, or laws. Those who get caught early running afoul of new parameters often pay the steepest price. I hope Boutte is able to get off with next to nothing and have another go at the nfl.

I wholly endorse DDB's post about the hypocrisy, but I'm not sure this arrest stings of American-brand moral panic in particular. If he'd done this in England as a soccer player, he'd have been arrested just the same, for betting on his own team. Many countries around the world set gambling ages at 21, or sometimes even higher.

And I have to say, in terms of my sympathy levels for how we mislead and abuse young adults, this doesn't ping very highly as an issue for me. Compare it to statutory-rape prosecutions of teenage lovers whose state just doesn't happen to have a romeo-and-juliet law, and wouldn't-ya-know they just happen to prosecute a black boy dating a white girl. Compare it to the abuses of college sports in general, where universities - theoretically a public trust run for the public good, hence nonprofit - spent decades and millions of dollars to try and prevent athletes who were severely injured playing for (and earning for) their school from collecting workers comp, because that would brand them "workers" and open pandora's box. Compare it to, well, just about anything mentioned here that fits, like the headline article.

I'll hazard a guess that if Boutte had bet on sports, but just not his own team, we wouldn't have the FBI going about interviewing people and having charges filed, it would at most be an NCAA matter. And if so, then the but-for cause of his arrest and prosecution is his one act that nobody on here is going to defend, not you me DDB or anyone. The bright line that everyone who's played sports knows about, doubly so anyone involved with professional sports or even hoping to be. If they'd arrested him for betting on the horsies, my outrage-o-meter would be pinging much higher, but I think in this case I'll save it and just go with, "that was stupid, I hope they give him a fine and some community service".

 

[wilked]

I think the reporting is a little misleading. When I look at my Sportsbook annual reports, the win total looks misleadingly large.

Imagine you sit down at a blackjack table for a few hours with $500 and bet $10 per hand. You play 200 hands. You win 95 and lose 105. (Ignore doubling down, splits and blackjack.)

You would walk away from the session with $400 in chips thinking you had lost $100. In reality what happened is you lost $1,050 and won $950. The $500k number is the total wins on winning tickets, but it does not reflect profits. It is the $950 in my example. You actually do not need near $500,000 to end up generating $500k in winning tickets — just a fraction of that.

UNderstood

This whole things stinks of something... At first I thought he won 'big', so therefore the company is incentivized to prosecute him (and claw back the $500K). That doesn't appear to be the case

As noted above, trying to ruin a young man's career over 300 days of life (ie 20 instead of 21 years old) seems mis-applied at best and at worst there is something more going on. The cynical side of me could picture something as trite as a Jets/Steelers/Other Super-fan seeing it as a way to 'stick it to the Pats'.

We'll see how it all plays out.

 

[Old Fart Tree]

The cynical side of me could picture something as trite as a Jets/Steelers/Other Super-fan seeing it as a way to 'stick it to the Pats'.

LOL yeah that is not what's going on here, good grief.

 

[Kenny F'ing Powers]

I only read your first two sentences and I’m sure you got some pushback in the replies but thank you. What are we doing here? This is nuts that we advertise to young easily influenced adults so we can what.. bust them. I had to take my 11 year old and show him the report and tell him you will go to jail if you bet under 21.

edit: I see you got no pushback. Good to see and preserves my faith in SoSH and humanity.

I'd guess if this happened even, like, 10 years ago, there would be more pushback given. But over the last handful of years people have become more skeptical of authority and less accepting of double standards. While it leads to some negative outliers (like flatearthers), the benefits of this ongoing transformation has been largely positive.

 

[lexrageorge]

We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss his potentially betting on his own team. That is a serious charge if true, as it should be.

 

[Ferm Sheller]

We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss his potentially betting on his own team. That is a serious charge if true, as it should be.

At the very least, it will keep him out of the Hall of Fame.

 

[Marciano490]

What’s the issue with betting on your own team to win? That you’re going to try harder in a way that might affect the outcome?

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

What’s the issue with betting on your own team to win? That you’re going to try harder in a way that might affect the outcome?

It is a little different in football then in baseball but the reasons in baseball were well established back in the Pete Rose days.

 

[Petagine in a Bottle]

What’s the issue with betting on your own team to win? That you’re going to try harder in a way that might affect the outcome?

because of what signals it sends when you don’t?

 

[DJnVa]

What’s the issue with betting on your own team to win? That you’re going to try harder in a way that might affect the outcome?

It is a little different in football then in baseball but the reasons in baseball were well established back in the Pete Rose days.

Yepl, in the case of Pete Rose, the thoughts were he may have used pitchers or bench players in a way that wouldn't be optimal in a longer term sense in order to win the bet for the game you bet on.

 

[SirPsychoSquints]

Yepl, in the case of Pete Rose, the thoughts were he may have used pitchers or bench players in a way that wouldn't be optimal in a longer term sense in order to win the bet for the game you bet on.

A small scenario - Boutte has bet on himself to score a touchdown. There may be a time in the game where he has to choose a risk to try to score or to play it safe and not risk possession - with the money hanging over his head, he might sell out for the Touchdown when it's not the best choice for the team.

 

[luckiestman]

The cynical side of me could picture something as trite as a Jets/Steelers/Other Super-fan seeing it as a way to 'stick it to the Pats'.

This made my day

 

[DennyDoyle'sBoil]

A small scenario - Boutte has bet on himself to score a touchdown. There may be a time in the game where he has to choose a risk to try to score or to play it safe and not risk possession - with the money hanging over his head, he might sell out for the Touchdown when it's not the best choice for the team.

I find these scenarios to be compelling, in the end. But I'm also kind of skeptical about all of it. Players want to score. The really bad scenarios are game fixing. The rest I don't get outraged about, but do recognize it's bad. It's a matter of degree.

If you found out that two players had bet a steak dinner on which would score the most touchdowns after the year, you probably wouldn't care. There's a spectrum. Hard to know where Boutte falls without knowing the bets -- so far, the one that was reported as legs in an 8-leg parlay doesn't really bother me. I mean, it bothers me as a structural matter. A rule that says don't bet on the sport you're involved in is a good one. But from an actual results-of-the-game or integrity of the sport perspective, I find it hard to care too much, given how institutionalized gambling is and how many threats there are to integrity of the game at this point.

Not trying to be a crusader for laissez faire, all bets are off kind of thinking or to shrug off serious shit. The whole gambling alliance with sports is the much bigger problem than that Boutte put an over 82.5 yards in a parlay when he was 20 and playing in college.

 

[DJnVa]

To me, it's not really the betting, it's 100% that he knew it was against the rules.