The Josh Innes Show - How Do We Trust Sports?

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Now that this story is out there, how can we fully believe that professional and college sports aren't rigged? Do I believe it's all fake? No. But, you have to wonder..right? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, everybody, here we are. We make the return here to the actual content portion of the podcast. Hello, it's Josh. Greetings. So this stuff is, so let's look at it from this standpoint. We talk about the likelihood that a sporting event is rigged or that gambling leads to some sort of rigging happening in sports betting. One thing this will do, and maybe it will help curtail this, is, and we've talked about how difficult it is to really successfully fix a basketball game. or a sporting event in general. Now, the fixing of it's easy, because you can go out, not play, pretend to be hurt, ooh, I rolled my ankle, I can't go, I'm out, that type of thing.

And that's very possible. But getting away with it's tough, because to make it worth anybody's while, you have to bet an obscene amount of money on something. And to bet an obscene amount of money on a random player prop is going to be a red flag, and that's going to be something that people notice. Then you do it when you're messing around with the mob and everything else, it's pretty bonkers. But let's play a couple of commercials. And we will, continue. So maybe this does bring a lot of this to an end. Now, it doesn't seem like a lot of people are throwing sporting events, right?

Like, it doesn't seem like it's a huge number of people. And again, when you start seeing it like this, these are obvious things that are going to be caught. And the FBI doing this shows that it will get caught. The reality is they're trying to bring down the mob. And this is their way to kind of get into bringing down the mob. So, you know, that is what it is. but I don't know, like, will this, I'm thinking of it from a gambling standpoint and from a standpoint of will this stop people from gambling? Do you become more concerned about sports betting?

How will this impact the draft kings and the fan duels and sites like that? Will it stop people from betting on sports? Because you have to now look at these things through the lens of someone is fixing them. And you don't know for a fact that they're not. Like it's the same feeling you got with Tim Donagy whenever you heard that the ref was out there throwing the games and the refs ran on it and allegedly the NBA was in on it. You have to view it with a lack of credibility. You have to see this as somebody really impacting the game deliberately. Look, I've wasted so much money sports betting, thousands upon thousands of dollars sports betting. I am a flawed human that's wasted

a lot of cash doing this. And look, it's regrettable. I enjoy doing it. It's fun, but I've also lost a lot of money. I've won money. I've lost money. It is what it is. Like, I'm not going to stop betting on sports because it could be, you know, a lack of credibility around there because certain dudes are involved in cheating. However, you can't not watch sports now and wonder. Then you throw on the fact that all of these leagues are in bed with these sports gambling sites. All these leagues are in bed with draft kings and fandool. It's pretty crazy when you really think about it, how absurd we are as people and how addicted to sports betting we are, that we're so willing to just sit here and be like, yeah, sounds right to me. I'll just keep

betting, even though we know that something's afoot. We know that at least in some instances, people have rigged this. And we know that at least in some instances, the mob is involved in this. And we're still sitting here like, well, what do you think about the point spread in tonight's college gamer? Hey, what do you think is going to happen with Minnesota and Cincinnati? We've got two NFLSU wide receivers. How do you think they're going to fare in the game

tonight? Like, we're not going to stop, even though we know. Like, this is dreadful for the NBA. This is dreadful for sports in general because now it's not just, you know, random baseball player for the Indians deliberately throwing balls or the guard Indians. And it's not just, you know, here's Jonte Porter doing something stupid, like on his own.

Now we know that Jonte Porter is involved in this, he's implemented in this or implicated in this, and now we know that the mobs involved, like this is serious shit. This is not just Jonte Porter or Terry Rozier having a brother or a cousin or a best friend that wants to make a quick

five grand, so he bets on Rozier taking and under. And my man goes, this is deeper and the mob's involved. And when you get the mob involved, you're involved. Like if I'm a player in the league today, if I'm some player in the NBA and I know that these dudes are tied in with the mob and that's part of what we're dealing with here, like that scares you, right? Like you're worried about what could happen to you because of Terry Rozier or because of Jonte Porter or because of Chauncey Billups, who, again, every indicator is that Chauncey is not involved in fixing the games. Obviously, He wasn't even playing, so it's a lot harder to fix the game as a coach than it is as a player.

But you can't, without a shadow of a doubt, 100% say to yourself that you don't know or you don't think that he was sports betting or involved in the sports betting part of it, right? You can't just say that with it. You can't 100% with confidence say that you believe that Chauncey Billups didn't bet on basketball or be involved in it in fixing the games. You can't because the guy is willing to throw away his entire life and his entire reputation to get in with the mob. and fix these illegal poker games. Now, again, I don't view that as big of a deal as I view guys throwing sports, because we want to believe that sports are fair and that there's integrity in sports, and there isn't.

I mean, these are examples of how there isn't. But I don't view the cheating, the people, and the poker games as big of a deal, but it's obviously a big deal to the government. It's obviously a big deal to the FBI. So, and I keep saying this, but this is crazy, man. And I sound like Joe Rogan now. Everybody tells me a story and I go, this is crazy. This is crazy.

But, man, this is just nuts what we're seeing here. And then, like, you got Malik Beasley. Malik Beasley is a guy that's not playing. He's been involved in this kind of stuff too. Like, just, like, it's hard. And then what's funny is you scroll this, right? I guess somebody puts, the NBA is very concerned about the multiple arrests today. as a result of the FBI sports gambling code.

Use the code multiple arrests for 30% profit boost on a three-leg parlay with Draft Kings, the official sports gambling partner of the NBA. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful tweet. Outstanding work Mike Bovays or Bovites, wonderful job. This is elite. I'm actually, I'm on the wrong Twitter. I'm on the station's Twitter. So, like, I'm not going to retweet that.

But, dude, but that's the thing. sports betting is so entrenched now. Legal sports betting is so part of the sports. They're breaking this shit down before the game start. The guys who are in the studio are telling you the point spreads and they're telling you the prop bets, they're telling you what parlay is to take. And there's so much money in it for the league,

and I know that they're going to be able to spin it, and they're going to be able to say that these are rogue examples, and for the most part, the league is clean. But I don't know how you can just 100% have the faith and belief of the public. Because you are so deep in bed. It's like the same concept of like, hey, how can they tell me that cigarettes are healthy? Well, they're involved with big cigarettes.

So they tell me that the cigarettes are healthy and they're lying to people. Hey, alcohol's not all that bad for you because they're in with it. Or like when you're talking about, hey, go take the fucking the vaccine. The vaccine is fine. Well, they're in with Pfizer, but they're going to tell you, they're in with Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer. And they're going to tell you how great all this is, even if they don't believe it because they're in bed. How do we trust anybody?

how do we as a people trust anybody? How do we as a people trust that these people have your best interest? They don't follow the money. So then you look at the NBA and the NBA has an official sports betting partner in Draft Kings and the NFL has an official sports betting partner. And you've got Kevin Garrette, not Kevin Garnett, but Kevin Durant, Kevin Durant, who is like on these shows with Kay Adams and stuff and those are sponsored by Draft Kings and he's talking about fantasy football and shit.

How do we not believe that shit is a foot and running a foul? How do we not? This is bizarre, man. The whole thing is, and like, yeah, here we are. John Q. Dipshit me, and I'm like, well, tonight I'm going to be betting on the football game. When there's no way to know, like on a day like today, there's no way we can sit here and go, yeah, I feel pretty confident that everything's on the up and up. Then you want to dig deeper. We just saw, and this is not a gambling-related thing, I don't believe.

leave, but we just saw that the SEC has basically permanently suspended one of the officials for egregious calls in the Auburn game a couple of weeks ago. How do we know that that isn't gambling related? We don't. Is it? Probably not. But how do we know? How do we know for a fact that what

we are seeing on television on a weekly basis, a daily basis is on the up and up? We don't. We don't know it. And it's crazy. I mean, again, this is tip of the iceberg stuff. potentially.

Because again, I talked about the SEC ref, the SEC official that they have suspended. And he's out, pretty much. Like, he's done. We hear that Ledge, Chauncey Billups, again, this is not a sports betting thing,

as far as we know, but we don't know. It's, um, how do you trust it? But the reason they can keep getting away with it is because we're stupid. Josh Ennis is going to go home tonight and bet on sports. Josh Dennis' sister is going to bet on sports. Josh Dennis' wife is going to bet on sports.

Everybody's going to be betting on sports tonight, even though we know that shit is at least by some players fixed, and we're just going to keep doing it. Because we are morons. I don't know. Maybe we're just addicts and stupid. We are stupid addicts is what we are. And I mean, I stopped listening to the press conference once I started taking questions, so I have no idea what all is going on with that. I don't know if there's anything new that was revealed or anything else. But, and we've said this forever.

Like, it's pretty wild that the NBA, NFL, NHL are all in bed with sports betting when it was such a big snafu many, many years ago. Now they've gotten in bed and they are knee-deep in this shit and it opens the door for bad shit to happen. And then bad shit happens and you're like, oh, we're shocked by the bad shit happening. And again, there's a very good possibility. It's just random rogue dudes involved in whatever they're involved. at. It's also a possibility that it happens more often than we think. The reason why I don't think the leagues are rigged, I think people have attempted to do it, and I think individuals are doing it. But the reason why I don't believe that it is as big and widespread as people might think

is that this kind of shit happens. Like, I don't think that people want to run the risk of getting involved with the mob and running the risk of getting involved with the FBI for what would be a very small gain. As we've said, if you're going to make real money rigging these things, you have to like put up real money. And if somebody puts up real money on a dude taking unders on his on prop bets for Jonte Porter, that's going to throw the red flag up almost instantly. Jonte Porter under 50 grand on that. What do they know? Because that's serious money. That's real money. So that'll throw up a red flag. To take Jontay Porter for $100 here and $100, there's that's chicken shit money. And it's not worth the risk of ending your career. For Malik Beasley,

it's not worth the risk of ending your career. For Chauncey Billups, it's not worth the risk of ending your career to do something like that for that little amount of money. So to make it serious and make it legit, you have to put up a lot of cash. A lot of cash throws up the antenna for all of these sites. So that's the latest in this thing. And we will continue.