Last week, my colleague, Eric Raskin, wrote a story about bettors complaining insufferably about bad beats that weren't actually bad beats.'
He's right. Some bettors complain every time bets go against them at the end of a game, assuming every close loss constitutes a bad beat. That cheapens the meaning of bad beat.'
But Wednesday night inside LionTree Arena in La Jolla, California, a men's college basketball game between UC Riverside and UC San Diego ended in a way so disastrous for UC San Diego backers that every sports bettor on the planet would likely agree that it was a devastatingly bad beat.'
What happened?
The game opened with a spread of UC San Diego +3.5 at multiple mobile sportsbooks, although it closed closer to a pick 'em at places like BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel.'