Remember in the movie Eight Men Out, when the kid comes up to Shoeless Joe Jackson and says the famous line “Say it ain’t so, Joe?” and then John Cusack kind of looks all constipated and we all feel bad?
Yeah, this story is also about fixing games, but it doesn’t play out like that.
This is about Brandon Johnson, the leading scorer at the University of San Diego, and his utterly confusing testimony to federal agents about his role in an alleged points shaving scandal at the WCC school. I’m not even sure I should say ‘alleged’, because Johnson basically admitted he took money and may have sort of recruited someone else to throw games, but he adamantly insists that he was out to win every game he ever played in.
Here, I’ll let the San Diego Union-Tribune explain:In the hours after his arrest a year ago on charges that he fixed college basketball games while at the University of San Diego, Brandon Johnson told federal agents he was informed of the point spreads, received money after games and solicited a former teammate to potentially participate in the scheme.
But USD’s all-time leading scorer insisted, tearfully at times, that he never actually altered a game.
“I didn’t go in no game to throw it,” Johnson told two FBI agents in an interview that lasted more than an hour. “I flat didn’t throw any game. … When that game started till that game ends, nobody is in my head — no bet, nothing.”
Nobody and nothing were in his head. That much I believe.
Not exactly sure what Johnson is trying to pull here. He’s admitting he did the dirty, but only up to a point. It’s really makes you wonder if federal custody might not be the safest place for him from here on out, because if he took money from big-time gamblers and didn’t throw the games?
That can be really hazardous to a fella’s health.