Betting on the Bottom Dollar in Sports

I remember playing against Adam Cuomo, who is from Hamilton and was the start running back for the Burlington Braves, in the championship final game for the Ontario Football Conference way back when I was playing for the dynasty era Windsor Alpha Kai Omega Fratmen. Memory also holds that he got knocked out quick, when he got rocked into a light standard at Windsor Stadium, immediately sent for to hopsital in a big game where he could have made the difference, as it came down to a Canadian single if I do remember correctly. Being a sparingly used running back on the other side in my rookie season, I looked at Cuomo as the kind of back you wanted to be the league, like our own Craig Carter, to dominate and never stop running.

To read today on ESPN, the Toronto Sun and Hamilton Spectator, that Cuomo, then a little used University of Toledo running back who made the academic honour roll, was part of a Detroit based point shaving gambling scheme over a three year period is sad in two ways, one, Canadians never seem to get their shot in the big show no matter how talented, and two, no player who still feels worthy or a real teammate would ever take part in gambling while playing, as this is just as bad as use of performance enhancing drugs in the eyes of others.

His Detroit gambler is as good as a pimp, using Cuomo as his prostitute, but I still feel in someway, the program in Toledo let down Adam too, somehow the Rockets helped to bring him to such a point in his life, where his loyalty was no longer with the program, but with the gambling pimp. Quite evident was his remaining within the situation after his eligibility was exhausted in 2003, upwards to 2006, which obviously by then had meant much more to him than playing, thus he lost his edge and love for playing the game. Having only recently lost his job in the steel industry in Hamilton, as his cousin tells ESPN, this federal criminal investigation by the FBI will not help things, along with an issue of indictment and extradition proceedings to begin soon this summer, but hopefully a lesson can be gained by not just Cuomo, but also the Rockets program, or any other football and other sports program in other universities or colleges, that being if you are a band of brothers, then make sure your father, the coach, and your uncles, the staff, make it known by speech and action that you are indeed a family.