Stakes reach P300M in varsity hoops

A man wearing a red shirt and slippers sneaked behind Marnel "Mac" Baracael outside the Far Eastern University campus on Morayta Street and fired two shots to his back.
The assailant calmly unscrewed the silencer from the barrel of his gun, put the weapon in his backpack and melted in the evening rush hour at Manila's University Belt.
Baracael, a rising star in the FEU basketball team, fell bloodied.

As much as P300 million changed hands in recent years in each season of the Universities Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), officials say.
All of a sudden, the vibrant world of varsity basketball, which used to be decked with bright school colors and lively chants, has become a bleak, mute arena of paranoia.
Players, who used to be surrounded by cheerleaders and team mascots, were shielded by a phalanx of bodyguards from swooning admirers.
At least three schools are known to have tightened their watch on their players: FEU, University of the East and Ateneo de Manila University.
"There was heightened security [after the Baracael attack]," said Brenn Perez, the UE representative to the UAAP board. "We had to monitor [our athletes] because the incident just happened in our area. We did not want [what happened to Baracael] to happen to our players."
All about gambling
And even before the shock over the brazen attack on Baracael had worn off, the college basketball world was stunned by what appeared to be the motive behind the shooting. The ugly spawn of gambling has reared its head in varsity basketball.
"Of course, it was about game fixing," said Ateneo athletic director Ricky Palou. "What else could it be?"
And suddenly, people were asking: Had gambling and game fixing -- the art of influencing the outcome of a game through underhanded means -- indeed infiltrated the amateur ranks? If so, to what extent?
The Inquirer sought to dig into the accusations to find out just how deep gambling had penetrated varsity hoops and what is being done to counter its ill effects. The answers to these questions were both startling and disturbing.
"The last two to three years, people were saying that P200 to P300 million in bets were going around," Palou said.
"There's at least P60 to 80 thousand reserved for players. More for referees. Put it this way, what's P100,000 if millions are at stake?"
Even officials are fearful
Speaking to school officials and sources who refused to be identified because they either feared for their safety or were not cleared by their superiors to discuss the matter, the Inquirer learned that: Game fixing, which includes such machinations as point shaving, has caught up in the UAAP and the NCAA; the money involved reaches hundreds of millions; and both collegiate athletic organizations are helpless in their bid to stop the illegal activities.
The Baracael incident, however, may force the organizations, who are duty-bound to protect their student athletes, to start a collective move to solve the problem.
If there's one thing the incident did, it was to bring the problem of game fixing and gambling out of hushed conversations and into the open.
"The initial reaction [at De La Salle University] was how violent already [gambling] is," said Bro. Bernie Oca, vice chancellor for La Sallian mission and external relations. "These people (gamblers) are not afraid to use violence to make a statement."
Can of worms
The first time game fixing was linked to the attack on Baracael was in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, when four sources separately told the Inquirer that a gambling deal gone wrong was the motive.
"Baracael squealed on the players involved in the scam," said a team official days after the attack last year. "The people behind the scam got even with him. [The attack] was meant to silence him."
A current national pool member, Baracael, in a television interview, refused to say game fixing had anything to do with the attack. But he did not dispel it completely: "It's possible, I cannot say," he told investigators then. "I don't have any enemies."
Baracael, 24, has since remained mum on the shooting, choosing to move on with his basketball career. But the can of worms has been opened.
FEU has attempted to distance the shooting from game fixing.
Coach Glenn Capacio has maintained that no motive had been established by the police yet. And the police could not authoritatively say that game fixing indeed was the motive.
'It's sad'
FEU had initially begged off from taking part in the Inquirer probe as it was preparing to host this year's UAAP season, but FEU's Anton Montinola, the UAAP's current president, admitted last week in a sports forum that game fixing was a real problem in amateur hoops.
"It's sad," Montinola said. "This is just college basketball and I don't see why these people (gamblers) should meddle in our affairs."
But as a collegial body, the UAAP has taken no specific action to deal with the problem in spite of the Baracael shooting, leaving it to member schools to address.
"The different schools have to do their part in educating and talking to their players and coaches," Montinola said.
"We (UAAP board) never tackled this issue comprehensively," admitted La Salle's Brother Oca.
"Our meetings are so long, it's all about business, so these big things are not tackled. Except for that particular special meeting after the shooting. Now that it's OK again, it's back to business and preparation for the new season.
"But yes, we should already talk about it," he added.
Wrong approach
Palou is a staunch advocate of the UAAP board collectively acting on the problem.
According to him, leaving it to the schools to work on the problem independently has proven to be the wrong approach in the past.
When a powerhouse school had actually caught one of its players in a deal with fixers to influence the outcome of a match three years ago, nothing definitive ever came out of it apart from the player getting expelled from the team.
"That's why I was so mad, because someone was already caught," Palou said.
"But they didn't do anything about it. There was money involved and somebody squealed, but they didn't do anything about it. The school just took the player out of the team not knowing that there were still other players involved who were still in the team."
The expelled player is now even seeing action in a commercial league.
A former college player, who admitted to introducing a gambling contact to the expelled player, confirmed that there, indeed was another player involved in the deal.
"A contact [of the fixers] approached two players. At first, they said no. Then the contact came back after some time. Soon, the two players agreed. But they were caught [by school officials] because of text messages that were uncovered in one of their cell phones," the player-source said.
The other player? He was spared any punishment.

Francis Ochoa, Jasmine W. Payo, Cedelf P. Tupas,
Inquirer Sports Staff
- INQUIRER.net