MITCH BLATT

James Wolfe sent me an email about his latest book How to Rig the NCAA Tournament for Fun and Profit, and I thought it might be an interesting book to review just as the college basketball season started. The premise is that a frustrated referee decides to expose the NCAA’s corruption in a scandal that will shake the sports world …and give him a big bundle of winnings. With the latest scandals to come out about Miami, Alabama, USC and Ohio State, among others, this is definitely a relevant subject.

Stanley Osborn has troubles at home, at his accounting job and at his side Big Eleven conference referee job. Basketball is his true passion, but his honest naivete is shattered when he gets into a confrontation with one of the power players of the corrupt NCAA and he becomes disillusioned. Throughout the rest of the book, he is working out how he can rig the NCAA tournament and make some money in the process. I am not an avid gambler, but the look Wolfe gave to gambling culture, inside the seedy bars of Detroit and the glamorous clubs (strip and otherwise) of Vegas, was engaging.

For gamblers, the book includes added interest. According to Allen Moody, About.com’s gambling expert:

The book is probably a bit more thought-proviking to us, as sports bettors, than it may be to somebody who isn’t actively involved in the sports gambling scene. The first thing we’ll want to know is “Is it Possible?”

Wolfe covers a good amount of the plausability aspect in the books final chapter, “Notes on What I Did, How, and Why I Did It,” mentioning several points, such as the way officials are notorious for calling the game differently down the stretch than they are in the first half, the number of different calls that are purely subjective and others.

– Allen Moody’s review

Wolfe takes you through years of his planning and action and introduces you to the characters and the places where the action takes place. I myself thought some of the action in the NCAA arena–him officiating in the Big Eleven and with angry coaches threatening his life–was based on real life people, but Wolfe said it wasn’t.

He started writing and researching the book seven years ago, before Tim Donaghy got caught for fixing NBA games, and he stopped when that happened, but he got decided to continue with the book after the recent spate of NCAA scandals.

He interviewed dozens of people for background research, including NCAA basketball and football officials, coaches, refs, student athletes, bookies and a Big Ten trustee. He wrote extensively in final section about what he thinks is wrong with the NCAA and what could be changed.

His style throughout the book is humorous with a lot of funny lines about gambling, basketball and the NCAA’s corruption. It’s a quick and enjoyable read at 188 pages. You can find it here at James Wolfe’s website along with his other books Curse? There Ain’t No Stinking Chicago Cub Curse, Little Balls Big Dreams, The Big Five-O Cafe, and two books about sex.