Former Alabama baseball coach receives 15-year show cause as NCAA draws strong line in sand

The NCAA sanctioned former Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon with a 15-year show cause for violating the association’s wagering and ethical conduct rules by knowingly providing insider information to an individual he knew to be engaged in betting on an Alabama baseball game.

After Alabama fired Bohannon in the spring, the NCAA said he worsened his problems by failing to participate in the NCAA investigation.

“Abhorrent and egregious” is how the NCAA hearing panel characterized Bohannon’s conduct. But because the conduct was uncontested, it decided a lifetime ban would not have been appropriate in this case. However, the Committee on Infractions will consider lifetime bans for similar conduct in the future.

Nevertheless, the punishment is severe and underscores how seriously many college stakeholders – specifically the NCAA and its first-year president Charlie Baker – are taking sports wagering concerns in today’s ecosystem, where sports betting is more accessible than ever.

This punishment establishes a strong benchmark for similar egregious sports wagering activity.

During the show-cause order, any employing member institution shall restrict Bohannon from any athletically related position. If Bohannon becomes employed during the show-cause period, he will be suspended for 100% of the baseball regular season for the first five seasons of his employment. He also received three years’ probation and a $5,000 fine.

‘That guy was an idiot and should have been caught’

In recent months, Matt Holt, CEO and founder of the Las Vegas-based monitoring firm U.S. Integrity, which initially alerted the SEC to the abnormal betting on Alabama baseball, told On3: “When the Alabama investigation is fully done and all of those facts come over, people are going to go, ‘Wow, that guy was an idiot or whatever, and should have been caught.'”

Readers can judge for themselves. The devil is in the details.

On April 28, before Alabama’s baseball game against LSU, Bohannon sent several electronic messages via the Signal encrypted messaging application to a bettor that Bohannon knew was involved in sports wagering activities, according to the NCAA.

The messages, per the NCAA, indicated that Alabama’s scheduled starting pitcher for that night’s game against LSU would not start because of injury. Bohannon provided this information to the bettor before reporting the starting lineup to the LSU coaching staff, the NCAA said.

“HAMMER … [Student-athlete] is out for sure … Lemme know when I can tell LSU… Hurry,” one message shared by the NCAA said.

But there is more.

After receiving Bohannon’s messages, the NCAA said the bettor tried to place a $100,000 wager on LSU at the BetMGM sportsbook at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati but the sportsbook staff limited the bettor to a $15,000 wager. The bettor then attempted to place additional wagers on the game, but the sportsbook staff declined the wagers due to suspicious activity, according to the NCAA. 

What suspicious activity?

Bettor told sportsbook staff he had sure thing

The bettor’s “insistent demeanor” to place the bets and statements to sportsbook staff that the bet was “for sure going to win” and “if you guys knew what I knew,” the case’s negotiated resolution report said. 

But the bettor did not stop there.

He also reportedly showed sportsbook staff messages from Bohannon and explained that the messages were Bohannon informing him that Alabama was scratching its starting pitcher before the game and before the coach alerted LSU.

While the Alabama case is egregious, concern is rampant nationwide and issues are multilayered.

More industry leaders now realize that on May 14, 2018 – when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on state authorization of sports betting – “sports and sports betting collided and will never be pulled apart again,” Holt said. “So, they [stakeholders] can either embrace it and educate around it, but they can no longer put their head in the sand.”

A growing number of industry leaders now have an eyes-wide-open approach to sports wagering concerns on their campus – and the Alabama case only heightened scrutiny on the issue, sources say.

Nearly 40 states have legalized sports gambling. And more than $150 billion was expected to be wagered on sports in 2023 in North America. Tom McMillen, CEO of LEAD1 Association, has told On3 that sports wagering represented his No. 1 personal concern in all of college athletics because the ramifications could potentially be “catastrophic.”

This past summer alone, the NCAA was investigating 17 cases related to college sports betting, which Baker disclosed in a document obtained by the Associated Press.

Not question of if, but when next scandal unfolds

Sports betting experts have told On3 over the past year that it’s not a question of if but when sports wagering scandals erupt on college campuses. Monitoring firms acknowledge can’t catch all suspicious activity, but they do catch some particular ones.

“We catch the really dumb people,” Holt told On3. “We catch the less sophisticated people.”

In Holt’s words, here’s how he said the suspicious behavior by the bettor on the other end of Bohannon’s messages was flagged:

“So we got an alert from the sports book [in Cincinnati], stating that they had witnessed some abnormal activity and had some, in this case, actually had already acquired some physical evidence of wrongdoing at the property. 

“So, we then notified the [SEC] conference immediately and sent out an alert to the other 95 regulated sports books in North America to see if they also saw abnormal wagering activity on that particular game so that we can identify which jurisdictions were affected. Inevitably, there was another state where there was betting, similar betting activity from someone who was sort of part of this whole scheme as well. 

“Then we put together a comprehensive report of all 96 responses that we get, put together a robust report from them, aggregated all the information we have, and sent that off to the investigative agencies, in this case, the Ohio Casino Control Commission and the Indiana Gaming Commission, so that they can start their information gathering, evidence gathering and investigation, notify the conference what’s going on and really then we let everyone take it from there.”