Story byAnd now for some bad arguments. Thomas StephensonFri, January 16, 2026 at 5:24 AM UTC·5 min readHello, a new college basketball point-shaving scandal just dropped. This might be the stupidest scheme I have ever heard of, and remember what I do for a living. So basically: some gamblers decided that they’d go fix some college basketball games, bribed players at the low end of Division I (and DePaul, apparently) to go shave some points, and then bet huge amounts of money on (among other things) first-half spreads on games where betting huge amounts of money is an obvious indication that not everything is on the up and up. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementNo, really, what about dropping $400k on the first half of a MAC basketball game would raise any red flags?I mean, seriously, what could go wrong here? Well, it turns out… this is harder than it sounds. Now, Southern Miss did end up beating Alabama State in a game Alabama State was trying to lose, but the Alabama State players were evidently concerned that Southern Miss was bad enough that they might still lose to a team that was trying to throw the game. I mean, that’s the beauty of trying to fix low-level college basketball games.