Uh oh, a grassy knoll thing in college football:
Gaming board looking into UNLV power snafu
By Luke Winn, CNNSI.com
The Nevada Gaming Control Board plans to investigate the power outage that brought a premature end -- and triggered a wave of conspiracy theories -- to Wisconsin's 27-7 win over UNLV Aug. 31 in Las Vegas, says a board official.
"It's prudent for us to investigate at this point. [The Gaming Control Board] will look to see if there is any inappropriate action related to gambling," Gary Orton, the deputy chairman of the board's enforcement division, told CNNSI.com on Tuesday.
Orton said the board had received an unusually large number of complaints in the days following the game, mostly from bettors angry that Las Vegas sports books refused to honor what appeared to be successful wagers on Wisconsin.
However, the power outage occurred -- and the game ended -- with 7:41 left on the clock, two minutes and 41 seconds shy of the 55:00 minute mark that Las Vegas sports books require to make wagers on the game official. Game-week betting on Wisconsin had shifted the spread up from 3 to 7 points in the Badgers' favor, and the score was already 27-7 when the game was called. The over-under on the game ranged from 52 to 58.
"I've been here 22 years," Orton said, "and I can't recall a situation like this.
"Originally, I thought it was only a dispute about bettors not getting paid, but since then, I've heard some complaints that are suggesting conspiracy. However, at this point, it doesn't make sense to me that anything like that occurred."
CNNSI.com learned Monday that the outage was caused by an equipment failure at a power riser at approximately 9 p.m., 1 1/2 miles southeast of Sam Boyd Stadium, according to stadium director Daren Libonati and official reports from Nevada Power.
The Sunday edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the outage was the result of a car crashing into a transformer near the stadium. Conflicting reports from the paper, UNLV police and Metro police led to speculation about the real cause of the outage -- including foul play -- on Saturday and Sunday.
"There was never a car accident," Libonati told CNNSI.com on Monday. He said stadium staff members were in contact with Nevada Power within eight minutes of the outage, and had received confirmation of the equipment failure minutes before coaches John Robinson and Barry Alvarez agreed to officially end the game.
Nevada Power representative Edgar Patino dismissed any speculation about a betting-related conspiracy being behind the outage. "The equipment failure was not caused by humans or human intervention or sabotage. It was a bad splice within a cable at the riser. A plain, old equipment failure," he said.
These facts, combined with a misleading report from UNLV police Saturday night that cited a car accident as the reason for the outage, led to speculation about a potential conspiracy.
"It's just nonsense. You're dealing with a bunch of overexcited fans, who maybe made their first bet on the game, and they're just bitter," Libonati said. "But we [at UNLV] are bitter, too. We had an operation to run, and we wanted to finish the game."
UNLV associate sports information director Mark Wallington laughed at reports of a conspiracy. "The coaches didn't have to agree to end the game," he said. "The officials on the field actually wanted to continue, but [Robinson and Alvarez] made the final decision for the safety of the people there and the players."
"If I could have given them the security of going live again within five minutes. I think the game would have gone on," Libonati said.
Two car accidents reportedly did occur in the area Saturday night, and Metro police in Henderson, Nev., had initially claimed one of the cars hit some power equipment, Patino said. UNLV police received this report and passed it on to media covering the game, which led to the erroneous Sunday newspaper report.
"I can assure you any accidents that did happen were not in any way related to the outage," Patino said.
Nevada Power repairmen arrived at the riser at 9:07 p.m. and were able to restore power to the stadium at 4:02 a.m.
Tom Vander Hof, who sets college football lines for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, dismissed any suggestion of foul play. "There isn't really much precedent for ending a game early, like they did, but I think if it hadn't happened [in Las Vegas], it wouldn't be such a big deal," he said.
Vander Hof explained the shift in the point spread -- toward Wisconsin -- in the days before the game as merely a result of a contingent of nearly 20,000 Badger fans making the trip to Las Vegas.
Art Manteris, the sports book director for Station Casinos in Las Vegas, told the Review-Journal Saturday that a game had never ended "so close to the 55-minute cut-off." "It's a bizarre situation, one of the most bizarre in my years of bookmaking," he said.
On Feb. 7, 2001, the Nevada Gaming Commission lifted a decades-old ban on betting on Nevada sports teams, including UNLV and Nevada-Reno. |
