At some point after he served 15 months in prison for criminal charges related to providing inside information on NBA games to a Mafia-linked gambling syndicate, Tim Donaghy began selling picks to sports bettors, touting the same edge he had while actively officiating professional basketball.
“With his insider knowledge of officiating games and understanding of what can impact the score, Tim has a unique advantage over other handicappers,” reads Donaghy's bio on Vegas Scores And Odds, which made a pair of fresh “TD” subscription packages – one selling for $500 – available on the day he headlined an online Drake Group panel titled “The College Athlete: Match Fixer, Gambling Addict, Or Victim?”
During Thursday's panel discussion, Donaghy reiterated his claim that he never fixed any games that he refereed, telling moderator Declan Hill, “The FBI wanted me to say I fixed games, but after reviewing the tapes, they realized I didn't.” (If someone were keen to judge for themselves if Donaghy's claims ring true, they could do far worse than to watch the Netflix documentary Operation Flagrant Foul.)
When asked about the Rudy Gobert's recent insinuation that Donaghy's old friend and colleague, Scott Foster, was fixing games, Donaghy responded, “I think the NBA continues to have a problem in that the rules aren’t officiated the way they are in the rulebook but based on the names on the backs of jerseys. The NBA is an entertainment company and they can put that entertainment on any way they want.”
In contrasting college referees with his former NBA peers, Donaghy went on to say, “I see the rules being officiated based on how they’re written in the rulebook [in college]. It’s totally different from the NBA. The NBA is kind of a show where they want high scoring and big dunks and for people to sit there and love the fact that their star players are scoring a lot of points.”
'America's most famous gambling addict'
In introducing Donaghy, Hill referred to him as “perhaps America's most famous gambling addict,” and the ex-ref took that as a cue to share the story of his descent into worrisome betting.
He said it started when he joined a golf club and started betting on the course, which led to high-stakes card games and frequent trips to casinos. This behavior damaged his home life, as addiction often does.
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“I had four daughters. I was gone 28 days a month, and when I was home, I was gambling at the golf course and casinos. I was never around,” he said. “The highs and lows of winning and losing, it was not good to be around a family atmosphere. I ended up losing my job and going from the best of everything to figuring out how to support my children.”
Another panelist, Harry Levant, landed in a lower place, surviving a suicide attempt before he went into recovery. A since-disbarred lawyer, Levant stole close to $2 million from clients to feed his addiction before being sentenced to 23 months of parole and eight years of probation on 13 counts of theft.
Having vowed to devote his life to preventing addictions such as his, Levant is now the primary therapist at Ethos Treatment and has a serious problem with the term “responsible gambling.” This phrase, he told panel attendees, “places the onus and blame on the individual” – a notion he feels is misguided.
“If we are dealing with a known, addictive product, the onus should be on regulating the distribution of a product in such a way to make it as safe as possible,” Levant said. “And that public health model has not taken hold in the United States.”
Levant went on to lament the relationships of conferences like the Big Ten with gambling data providers and lambasted in-game betting, which he sees as enabling the “chasing of additional action,” something he views as “the number one sign of addiction.”
A refreshing Stromile Swift comparison
The panel's freshest breath of air came in the form of Ed Feng. En route to earning a doctorate in chemical engineering from Stanford, Feng had a come-to-Jesus moment and told one of his mentors that “his research sucked.”
“That was basically the end of my academic career,” Feng said. “I didn't want to play the publish or perish game.”
In academia, Feng compared himself to a lottery pick who went bust – Stromile Swift, specifically (and hilariously). However, Feng was left with some serious math skills and decided to “develop an algorithm to rank teams and the outcomes of games.”
Moving from football into basketball, he did quite well from the onset, something he said “shows the power of predictive analytics – what can happen when you apply math [to sports betting].”
Feng started selling betting content through a website he started called The Power Rank, but said he didn't start wagering much himself until after PASPA was repealed in 2018. When a good friend told Feng he was using his tips and formulas to make lots of loot through legalized sportsbooks, Feng threw in with his pal in a big way, focusing largely on player props.
“The thing about betting for a significant part of your income is the environment shifts every year,” said Feng, author of the book How To Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool. “This might seem annoying, but it’s become the aspect of my job that I like the most. After legalization, there are so many more markets. Now you can get enough money down to make significant money on markets that aren’t those primary markets.”
Like many a sharp, Feng lamented how low his limits were on legal U.S. betting apps. While acknowledging that the “vast majority” of professional gamblers bet with offshore sportsbooks on account of such restrictions, Feng maintained that he eschews gray operators, instead turning to trusted beards to “get more accounts” to funnel money through.
“Sports betting is always changing,” he said. “You’d better change with it, or you’re gonna get crushed. School and academia do not prepare you for these real-world situations. You really have to adapt, and I think that’s really what the sports world teaches you. You need to be flexible.”