Adults bet thousands on youth football
By Paula Lavigne
ESPN.com
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Pee wee players take the field in the morning, with parents and young siblings scattered through the stands. But as day turns to night, and the boys on the field get bigger and older, the crowd grows and the atmosphere begins to shift.
Groups of men in their 20s and 30s fill the stands and sidelines, to the point that passers-by must jostle for space as they walk along fences separating the bleachers from the field. And then something else becomes obvious: Wads of bills start switching hands; cheers and fist pumps are followed by exchanges of money; and men debate how much to put down next time. Marijuana smoke is often in the air, and adults walk around with cups of alcohol seemingly without concern.
An "Outside the Lines" investigation found such scenes several times this past fall in the South Florida Youth Football League, which is made up of 30,000 children ages 5 to 15 from Palm Beach to Miami. In the packed crowds, OTL producers saw men holding stacks of bills -- often in large denominations -- as they watched the games. Using hidden cameras, OTL recorded the men openly exchanging money with one another, even as they were just a few feet from a uniformed police officer in one instance. But the exchange of money in the stands was the small stuff, OTL found -- sometimes the games had tens of thousands of dollars bet on them, and players were often paid for making big plays.
Former players and coaches say the gambling and paying of players and their parents has gone on for years, yet some league and law enforcement officials told ESPN they were not aware of the extent of the problems until "Outside the Lines" conducted interviews and showed the officials its undercover video. One man seen on video exchanging money in a group at the league's super bowl is a longtime coach in the league and city recreation leader.
"At some of the games, the money is being dealt so wide open a blind man could see the gambling taking place," said the Rev. Wesley Smith, a local pastor who had his son switch leagues a couple of years ago because he was worried that an argument over high-stakes gambling debts would lead to violence at one of the parks.
Ron Thurston, 34, who has been a head coach in the league since 2005 and is a Broward County sheriff's deputy, estimates that about a fourth of the crowd at games is criminals.
"And that's a lot to be around kids," he said. He recalled an incident when an off-duty detective alerted him to a guy who was threatening to shoot a coach. When Thurston got to him, "sure enough, he has a loaded gun on him, a 9-millimeter, one in the chamber."
Al Harris, an NFL cornerback who played for the Green Bay Packers until last year, when he was signed by the Miami Dolphins, grew up in the South Florida Youth Football League and watched his son play there until he began high school a few years ago.
"Just to be straightforward, these guys, they're drug dealers who are doing this gambling," he said. "They're the only guys that have this type of money to bet on little kids."
Harris recounted a game in which he butted into a group of guys and asked them what they were up to.
"They pretty much let me know, 'OK, we're betting this much on this and this much on this play and the point spread.' They had a point spread. They got a point spread for little league football," he said.
The take for the winner that day was $20,000 on a regular-season game, he said. For a recent league super bowl matchup, he said, the pot was $75,000.
Thurston said the bigger bets often take place before the games. "The ones that are out there at the games, they're just out there freelancing," he said. "They're just trying to get a bet. But the behind the scenes, those are the ones that are scary."
Players, parents get paid
Thurston and Harris, who are friends, said it wasn't always like this. When they played in the league in the 1980s, they said, a more family-friendly crowd of moms, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles attended games. Now, the games draw high school coaches looking for recruits and guys from the neighborhood looking to make a quick buck.
Teams in the league often draw from the region's rougher, low-income neighborhoods, where football fields are next to housing projects and drive-by shootings can break out just blocks away. In the past two years, records show that police responded to more than 5,000 incidents within about a quarter-mile radius of Fort Lauderdale's two city football fields, hundreds of which were violent crimes.
"You'll see guys who you know really have no interest in football," Harris said. "You have a lot of foul language now that you didn't hear back then. … You've got smoking and drinking, and it's all kinds of stuff that goes on now."
Thurston said he tries to keep his players isolated from negative forces, including the gambling. He said he pushes homework, demands to see report cards and won't let kids play if they don't make grades.
"A lot of the kids look to the coaches as the mentor, as the father. They don't have fathers at home," he said, noting that he has arrested several of the players' dads for other offenses. "I try to keep them all on the good path."
But sometimes, the gamblers win. And the children get hurt.
Before some gamblers bet on a team, they'll invest in it, said Smith, the local pastor. Gamblers study kids, and they find the good players whose dads are in prison and whose moms are barely making ends meet to put food on the table for their children, he said.
They offer a mom $2,000 to have her son play for a certain team, and, throughout the season, they give her son clothes, shoes and money to give him an incentive to play well, Smith said.
According to Smith, the gambler's point of view is, "I'm recruiting these kids to play for this team because this is the team I'm going to be betting on all year." He added that many coaches are also in on the deal.
The way Smith describes it, the return on investment is more certain than the stock market: Give the boy and his mom $5,000 to $10,000 throughout the season. Make as much as $20,000 to $30,000 per game for eight to 10 games.
Thurston said he lost one potential player when another team offered the boy's mother $3,500.
"A lot of parents, they wait on football season because it's payday to a lot of them," he said. "A lot of them [are] single[-parent] homes. … Because the dad, a real dad, is not going to let this guy in and talk to Mom about taking their son somewhere to play."
Although the parents should know better, Harris said it's hard to blame the players, who often receive cash for making big plays.
Coaches, former players, league officials and police react to the "Outside the Lines" investigation revealing gambling in youth football.
"You never know if that kid's mom's not working, or if the father's there, or the father's not working. These kids may use that money to help Mom pay the rent," he said. "It would be hard for a 10-, 11-, 12-, 13-year-old to say, 'Well, no, I'm not going to take the 150 bucks from whoever it is to play a game that I'm going to play anyway for free.'"
Rob Glover was one of those boys. In the late 1990s, Glover was a 9-year-old star running back with the Pompano Beach Cowboys who attracted a lot of attention -- and money.
"Back then, I was a kid. I didn't know what was going on," said Glover, who is now 23. "But at the time -- playing the game, scoring a lot of touchdowns -- people who know me, people who didn't know me just wanted to give me all kinds of cash and stuff. It was good at the time, but now I know it's a bad thing to do."
One of his former coaches, Osbert Small, said Glover had "college-level potential."
"We have some football players that didn't have his ability that made it on to professional football right now," Small said. "They made the right turns in life. They got an education. They stayed within school."
By Paula Lavigne
ESPN.com
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Pee wee players take the field in the morning, with parents and young siblings scattered through the stands. But as day turns to night, and the boys on the field get bigger and older, the crowd grows and the atmosphere begins to shift.
Groups of men in their 20s and 30s fill the stands and sidelines, to the point that passers-by must jostle for space as they walk along fences separating the bleachers from the field. And then something else becomes obvious: Wads of bills start switching hands; cheers and fist pumps are followed by exchanges of money; and men debate how much to put down next time. Marijuana smoke is often in the air, and adults walk around with cups of alcohol seemingly without concern.
An "Outside the Lines" investigation found such scenes several times this past fall in the South Florida Youth Football League, which is made up of 30,000 children ages 5 to 15 from Palm Beach to Miami. In the packed crowds, OTL producers saw men holding stacks of bills -- often in large denominations -- as they watched the games. Using hidden cameras, OTL recorded the men openly exchanging money with one another, even as they were just a few feet from a uniformed police officer in one instance. But the exchange of money in the stands was the small stuff, OTL found -- sometimes the games had tens of thousands of dollars bet on them, and players were often paid for making big plays.
Former players and coaches say the gambling and paying of players and their parents has gone on for years, yet some league and law enforcement officials told ESPN they were not aware of the extent of the problems until "Outside the Lines" conducted interviews and showed the officials its undercover video. One man seen on video exchanging money in a group at the league's super bowl is a longtime coach in the league and city recreation leader.
"At some of the games, the money is being dealt so wide open a blind man could see the gambling taking place," said the Rev. Wesley Smith, a local pastor who had his son switch leagues a couple of years ago because he was worried that an argument over high-stakes gambling debts would lead to violence at one of the parks.
Ron Thurston, 34, who has been a head coach in the league since 2005 and is a Broward County sheriff's deputy, estimates that about a fourth of the crowd at games is criminals.
"And that's a lot to be around kids," he said. He recalled an incident when an off-duty detective alerted him to a guy who was threatening to shoot a coach. When Thurston got to him, "sure enough, he has a loaded gun on him, a 9-millimeter, one in the chamber."
Al Harris, an NFL cornerback who played for the Green Bay Packers until last year, when he was signed by the Miami Dolphins, grew up in the South Florida Youth Football League and watched his son play there until he began high school a few years ago.
"Just to be straightforward, these guys, they're drug dealers who are doing this gambling," he said. "They're the only guys that have this type of money to bet on little kids."
Harris recounted a game in which he butted into a group of guys and asked them what they were up to.
"They pretty much let me know, 'OK, we're betting this much on this and this much on this play and the point spread.' They had a point spread. They got a point spread for little league football," he said.
The take for the winner that day was $20,000 on a regular-season game, he said. For a recent league super bowl matchup, he said, the pot was $75,000.
Thurston said the bigger bets often take place before the games. "The ones that are out there at the games, they're just out there freelancing," he said. "They're just trying to get a bet. But the behind the scenes, those are the ones that are scary."
Players, parents get paid
Thurston and Harris, who are friends, said it wasn't always like this. When they played in the league in the 1980s, they said, a more family-friendly crowd of moms, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles attended games. Now, the games draw high school coaches looking for recruits and guys from the neighborhood looking to make a quick buck.
Teams in the league often draw from the region's rougher, low-income neighborhoods, where football fields are next to housing projects and drive-by shootings can break out just blocks away. In the past two years, records show that police responded to more than 5,000 incidents within about a quarter-mile radius of Fort Lauderdale's two city football fields, hundreds of which were violent crimes.
"You'll see guys who you know really have no interest in football," Harris said. "You have a lot of foul language now that you didn't hear back then. … You've got smoking and drinking, and it's all kinds of stuff that goes on now."
Thurston said he tries to keep his players isolated from negative forces, including the gambling. He said he pushes homework, demands to see report cards and won't let kids play if they don't make grades.
"A lot of the kids look to the coaches as the mentor, as the father. They don't have fathers at home," he said, noting that he has arrested several of the players' dads for other offenses. "I try to keep them all on the good path."
But sometimes, the gamblers win. And the children get hurt.
Before some gamblers bet on a team, they'll invest in it, said Smith, the local pastor. Gamblers study kids, and they find the good players whose dads are in prison and whose moms are barely making ends meet to put food on the table for their children, he said.
They offer a mom $2,000 to have her son play for a certain team, and, throughout the season, they give her son clothes, shoes and money to give him an incentive to play well, Smith said.
According to Smith, the gambler's point of view is, "I'm recruiting these kids to play for this team because this is the team I'm going to be betting on all year." He added that many coaches are also in on the deal.
The way Smith describes it, the return on investment is more certain than the stock market: Give the boy and his mom $5,000 to $10,000 throughout the season. Make as much as $20,000 to $30,000 per game for eight to 10 games.
Thurston said he lost one potential player when another team offered the boy's mother $3,500.
"A lot of parents, they wait on football season because it's payday to a lot of them," he said. "A lot of them [are] single[-parent] homes. … Because the dad, a real dad, is not going to let this guy in and talk to Mom about taking their son somewhere to play."
Although the parents should know better, Harris said it's hard to blame the players, who often receive cash for making big plays.
Coaches, former players, league officials and police react to the "Outside the Lines" investigation revealing gambling in youth football.
"You never know if that kid's mom's not working, or if the father's there, or the father's not working. These kids may use that money to help Mom pay the rent," he said. "It would be hard for a 10-, 11-, 12-, 13-year-old to say, 'Well, no, I'm not going to take the 150 bucks from whoever it is to play a game that I'm going to play anyway for free.'"
Rob Glover was one of those boys. In the late 1990s, Glover was a 9-year-old star running back with the Pompano Beach Cowboys who attracted a lot of attention -- and money.
"Back then, I was a kid. I didn't know what was going on," said Glover, who is now 23. "But at the time -- playing the game, scoring a lot of touchdowns -- people who know me, people who didn't know me just wanted to give me all kinds of cash and stuff. It was good at the time, but now I know it's a bad thing to do."
One of his former coaches, Osbert Small, said Glover had "college-level potential."
"We have some football players that didn't have his ability that made it on to professional football right now," Small said. "They made the right turns in life. They got an education. They stayed within school."
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