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Kentucky head coach John Calipari speaks during the first half of a regional semifinal NCAA college basketball game against Kansas State, Thursday, March 22, 2018, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Amis)
CHICAGO >> Kentucky coach John Calipari’s reaction to the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing individual states to allow legal gambling on sports events? A shrug.
“There is all this money out here, and the gambling is not going away,” Calipari said Friday at the NBA draft combine. “It’s there. Maybe everybody shares in it because it’s going to happen anyway.”
The prospect of legal gambling united archrivals West Virginia University and Marshall University, Calipari said he had been told. The schools have said they want a share of the money wagered on their games “because it’s going to happen anyway,” he said.
Of course, UK was involved in a betting scandal in the 1950s. The scandal ended Ralph Beard’s professional career.
Calipari, who acknowledged that he had not studied the possible ramifications of legal gambling, seemed unconcerned about it leading to point shaving as a result of the Supreme Court ruling.
“If anybody’s going to be doing anything to (threaten) the integrity of the sport, they’re going to do it whether it’s legal gambling or illegal gambling,” he said. “I don’t think that matters. That’s how I see it.”
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