Pat Forde
Appearances
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Thank you.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Yeah. Hey, happy to be with you. And yeah, this is an interesting one that could get significantly more interesting. I agree. Why aren't people paying as much attention? Well, for one thing, you know, John T. Porter, first of all, is a bit player in the NBA who's been banned. So he's past tense.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Terry Rozier has kept playing to the surprise of some, but there's an investigation underway there into one game in particular when he was at Charlotte. The college stuff is generally speaking with lower level
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
schools that are under investigation and I think it's easy for people to tune out what may be happening at Eastern Michigan or North Carolina A&T or Mississippi Valley State or even Temple and some others so you know I think it's one of those we're gonna the more this kind of succeeds upon itself and and builds upon itself the more people are going to be forced to pay attention
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
We're coming up to March, Dan, when people really start to lock in on college basketball. And I think there's going to be reason to worry and wonder how many schools have gambling problems.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Yeah, not exactly choir boys involved in this as you would not be surprised to find out. The two characters that we honed in on the story, one is named Shane Hennon, a gambler who was arrested at the Las Vegas airport last month as he was attempting to go to Colombia on a one-way ticket. He has been linked to the Porter gambling ring.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
And then another guy named Marvis Fairley from Mississippi, his name has not come out publicly, but he has been described by Shane Hennin himself as my partner. And both these guys have gambling tout services. They also have lengthy criminal records. Shane Hennin has described been involved with cocaine trafficking, an assault, violations of parole, and then again was just arrested last month.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Marvis Fairley was up on a murder rap, which he ended up did not get convicted or due time for, but has had several brushes with the law himself. And as you alluded to, the schools that we're talking about here, first of all, Yeah, there's not a lot of players that are flush with NIL money. There's not a lot of guys that have NBA futures that they need to protect.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
So could they be more vulnerable to being compromised? Yes, they could. The other thing, these are largely bad teams at lower levels. The University of New Orleans came out today from Jeff Goodman that Four of their top five scorers have not played since January during a gambling investigation.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Does anybody notice if New Orleans has a gambling problem, if their players are sitting out, if Eastern Michigan does, if Mississippi Valley does? These are the worst programs, generally speaking, in Division I, and there's just not a lot of attention being paid to what's happening there.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Yeah, it's a good question, Jessica. And really, it comes back to the gambling watchdogs that we have in place now to monitor legal wagering are much more attuned to who's doing the betting, where and how. And so this goes back, you know, the Porter stuff, that was discovered in and of itself.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
But the Temple thing in particular, there was a game March 7th last year against UAB where the first half line shot
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
out of the stratosphere and so all of a sudden it's like what's going on there and people notice and they may be able to track who is betting and where and i think some of this stuff originates with offshore wagering and offshore books that are kind of saying wait a minute something's not right here and they will alert integrity monitors and then those people will start watching and when you had the the temple uab game last year all of a sudden
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
they're putting out an alert nationwide to regulators saying, take the game off of your books. And so then you start there and it's just kind of peeling back layers of an onion. One thing leads to another, needs to another.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Well, I would say the most unusual, not bets that have actually been tied to game fixing, but Shane Hennon bet a first half line on a Big South Conference quarterfinal between Longwood and Campbell. Why would you do that unless you thought you had a pretty good amount of insight on that? He bet $300,000 on an ACC tournament game. That's a lot of money. Now, it's a high-profile game, but $300,000?
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
I talked to some bookmakers who said we wouldn't even take a bet that big.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Yeah, it starts with greed or recklessness or whatever. I mean, we are dealing with, and I've talked to people when we were going through the reporting of this, it's like, what kind of people are doing this? So like gambling addicts, adrenaline addicts, people who can't keep quiet, people who can't get a big score and then keep it to themselves, they got to brag about it.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
And so that just breeds a recklessness that I think maybe got emboldened. And especially if you were having success doing this offshore, And maybe your conduit offshore was cut off and you had to then go to North American bookmakers. Well, there's a little more regulation there, a little more oversight. You may just overstep your bounds.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
So we're not talking about people who are necessarily the most disciplined bookmakers.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Good question there. You know, that's been alleged by people in the poker world that Shane Hennon was a card cheat. He and some of the other guys, actually, who have been arrested in the Porter gambling ring. You know, I did have somebody say to me that Shane Hennon's fairly fortunate to kind of still be in one piece if what has been alleged about him is true.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
If you've been a cocaine dealer and you've been a card cheat and you may be trying to work the margins on... Game fixing. You're gambling or you're dabbling in a lot of risky behaviors, I guess you would say. But the poker world, which there is a poker world, I'm not familiar with it, but there is a poker world out there and they're all like, oh, yeah, that guy. I'm not surprised he's involved.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Same with this guy, Bruce Pham, who was in the the John T. Porter case.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
You keep asking and you'll get to a good one.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
That is an excellent question. Oh, come on, Pat. Just give it out.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
I think that there potentially is more at the NBA level. I think that's being looked at. I am sure there is more at the college level that's being looked at. How big does this get? I can't tell you. Are we going to have 50 schools under investigation? Probably not. One thing that's interesting here, I mean, I've heard names of a half dozen other schools, most of them on the lower levels.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
There's a lot of eligibility cases where if it's just players who are gambling, The NCAA doesn't even release eligibility rulings. So there might have been guys that sat out six games, 12 games, a whole season that nobody knows why for sure. So it's kind of going to be hard, I think, to quantify this. But I also talked with a gambling expert just before the show here who said,
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
It's inevitable that this gets to the Kansas-Kentucky stage. Now, I'm not saying specifically Kansas, Kentucky, but the big-name programs could eventually get exposed for having gambling issues.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
I don't know. I'm not sure what the retroactive situation could be, but I think the NBA, has gotten a little bit of a black eye over this between Porter and at least the Rozier investigation, even if that has not yet yielded anything, that I think they'd be pretty hypersensitive to having players that in any way fixed a game or threw their own personal props or anything like that.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
It's not the kind of thing you want to have associated with your league, that's for sure.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Well, I mean, you know, that is probably fair, and that's probably been the decision they've reached of just that, you know, unless we have something tangible to go on, we're not going to sit him down. I guess the one thing I would like to hear from him and or his attorney is, hell no, I didn't do it. I really haven't heard that from them.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
They are, absolutely. And so the original report, this was a game in March 23rd, 2023, and the NBA says it looked into it and found no wrongdoing. Now, that clearly was not good enough for the feds, Eastern District of New York.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
is investigating uh and has told the nba that so you know is there something there that the nba was able to in good conscience say no we don't think so and then the heat and terry rosier and everybody else involved could say look we've got a good explanation for this i need to keep be able to keep playing uh but clearly that needs to be explained to the federal investigators as well
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Yeah. No, look, I mean, I can't tell you that this is going to be Watergate. And I think your skepticism of both the NCAA and the feds when it comes to college basketball is well warranted because it became an absolute farce. The, uh, the investigation back in 2017, 18, whatever it was, you know, is this going to yield a lot? I don't know.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
There's been some speculation and I can't tell you whether it's completely accurate or not, but that If the Feds have a choice of expending their efforts on NBA players or a guy at North Carolina A&T, they're not going to care that much about the college end of this. And maybe this fizzles out. But I do know the NCAA is certainly actively looking into things. And again...
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
We're seeing players in a lot of different places who are suddenly not playing. Fresno State just benched two guys over the weekend and had a third who hadn't played since January. Again, the New Orleans thing I mentioned. North Carolina A&T's had two players that have stopped playing. So it's affecting a lot of places right now. Is it going to lead to a mushroom cloud, as you said? I don't know.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Maybe at least just a good smoke cloud.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
I would go with ruby.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
My shirt kind of almost matches. No, it does not.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
Did you do that on purpose?
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
Hour 2: Chris Cote's Michael Jackson Leg Kick (feat. Pat Forde)
I wake up every day planning how I'm going to look on the Dan Levitard show. There it is. Red wine. Cabernet. Cabernet is good. Burgundy. Burgundy, right? Clearly not burgundy.