How to Rig the NCAA Basketball Championship For Fun and Profit by James Wolfe

There is a definite lack of fiction books that deal with the world of sports betting. For an activity that so many people partake in on a regular basis, authors tend to stay away from the subject, which is too bad, as the potential is there for some excellent stories.

Fortuntely, Wolfe doesn't shy away from the subject and instead takes on the taboo subject of fixing games.

How to Rig the NCAA Basketball Championship For Fun and Profit is told from the perspective of Stanley Osborn, the occasionally quirky accountant who also happens to be a college basketball referee. Osborn's life is far from perfect, beginning with his money-hungary wife Jill, who is always wanting more, to him consistently being bypassed as a partner with the accounting firm.

Osborn takes his job as a referee seriously, so when he is unfairly suspended he plots out a course of action, knowing that it will take some time before it can come to fruition.

The title of the book gives you a pretty good indication where his plan is leading, although the path is definitely not an easy one, and Osborn runs into some rather intersting characters along the way.

The book is probably a bit more thought-proviking to us, as sports bettors, than it may be to somebody who isn't actively involved in the sports gambling scene. The first thing we'll want to know is "Is it Possible?"

Wolfe covers a good amount of the plausability aspect in the books final chapter, "Notes on What I Did, How, and Why I Did It," mentioning several points, such as the way officials are notorious for calling the game differently down the stretch than they are in the first half, the number of different calls that are purely subjective and others.

Wolfe also looks at several of the problems in college athletics, such as the amount of money the schools are making, while the players are making none, except through some illegal payments, which probably takes place more often than realized.

While most people didn't think of a referee as being a conspirator in point shaving until the Tim Donaghy scandal broke, it's something that likely has taken place for a number of years. See Was Tim Donaghy the First Official to Fix Games? for more.

Some of the most definitive work on the possibility of shaving points was done by Justin Wolfers, a professor of business and public policy at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Wolfers looked at the possibility of fixing games both at the professional level and the collegiate level and concluded that is was likely there was something going on in games that had bigger point spreads, which would be among the easiest to fix, as you're not changing the outcome, merely the margin of victory.

But often overlooked in Wolfers' work is this one statement: ""Additionally, a major point, untouched in this examination, is that point shaving is consistently attributed to players, while coaches and referees are no less principal characters in basketball games and could be equally culpable. Further research could study substitution patterns and infractions called to test if, instead, coaches or referees are willfully affecting the final margins of games."

Review of How to Rig the NCAA Basketball Championship For Fun and Profit is an entertaining book that anyone who wagers on basketball will enjoy reading. At $12.95 the book is a solid bargain and is available at bookstores, through Amazon or through Wolfe's website (www.jameswolfebooks.com).

The book is an excellent way to spend some time and will no doubt get you thinking the next time a call goes against your team in a game where the point spread cover is in doubt.