“For a guy who probably doesn’t know much about college basketball, I don’t know why he’s placing $10,000 on a game,” Monroe said. “It was kind of a weird thing to take in after a game because we were obviously so disappointed. We had that game more than secured as a win… [it was] funny but very depressing, because that would’ve been a very important win for us. [The betting] is funny and amusing to me, but it’s also a lot of people who just use it as a way to get angry.”

The wager, in many ways, only marked the beginning of sports bettors’ obsession with Yale basketball this season. Two-and-a-half weeks later, the Bulldogs ranked as the most “profitable” team of the 353 programs in NCAA Division I men’s basketball — Yale had covered the spread, the sports books’ projected outcome for the result, in nine of their 10 games. Although oddsmakers have adjusted their spreads during Ivy League play, Yale remains in the top decile of “profitable” college basketball squads. Their 17–9 record “against the spread” nearly matches its 20–6 overall mark in DI contests. The betting has given the Elis an unusual source of national attention as they seek another Ancient Eight title.

Regulations around sports betting and its legality have shifted rapidly in recent years, and Yale players accustomed to an average of 1,500 home supporters each game are caught in the middle of the betting flux. Gaming publications preview money lines and predictions about the team online, angry strangers comment critically on players’ social media accounts, and the Eli program as a whole — the often profit-generating product for an increasingly national betting audience — still feels underestimated.

A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Across the country, the approach of the NCAA Tournament coincides with an influx of sports betting. According to a 2019 report from the American Gaming Association (AGA), fans were expected to wager around $8.5 billion dollars on March Madness last year. 47 million Americans intended to bet on the event, with an increasing portion, 4.1 million, anticipating the use of regulated, legal apps or casino sportsbooks. According to AGA President Bill Miller, fans expected to bet 40 percent more on the 2019 NCAA Tournament than they did on the Super Bowl that year, and for the first time in decades, many could do it legally.

A May 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) on the basis of the 10th Amendment. Mark Hichar ’81, a Boston-based shareholder of the Greenberg Traurig law firm and an adjunct professor in gaming law at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law, said concerns about game fixing and point-shaving scandals inspired PASPA. The law essentially outlawed sports betting nationwide except for in Nevada, but Hichar said an illegal sports betting market with annual betting handles between $50 and $300 billion persisted.

PASPA was also known as the Bradley Act, named after former Princeton basketball star and then-U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley.

“[PASPA] put the onus on the states, it commanded them not to pass these laws, and it was on that basis that it was struck down by the Supreme Court,” Hichar said. “[After the ruling, Delaware was] the first state to allow sports betting within their boundaries. New Jersey followed soon after. As we speak, somewhere around 20 states, including the District of Columbia, have authorized sports betting.”

Hichar said that of those 20, about seven have yet to put their laws into effect, since they have yet to pass the regulations necessary for implementation.

Jones pointed to trends in Ivy League preseason polling to illustrate his point as well. In 10 of the past 14 seasons, Yale has outpaced projections in the Ivy League Preseason Media Poll. Picked to finish third at the start of this season, the Elis will improve that statistic at the end of the weekend. Yale is guaranteed to finish either first or second in the conference no matter the outcome of its final regular-season contests at Dartmouth and Harvard. At the same time, Jones said he would not want it to be the other way — better Yale beat the spread than be the worst team against it, failing to fulfill expectations every time.

Players have encountered the same chasm between perception and reality. Once, guard Mike Feinberg ’22 started chatting with two kids in New Haven about basketball.

“I told them I played at Yale, and they didn’t understand,” Feinberg said. “They didn’t even know we had a team. One was a freshman in high school, which is pretty old to not know that, and the other was his younger brother in seventh grade… It’s kind of crazy how the average basketball fan doesn’t know that Yale basketball is a prominent Division I basketball team and that we’re good, that we can hold our own against the best teams.”

Feinberg said he thinks it’s “wild” how adults bet thousands of dollars on the performance of college athletes. He said the betting makes him a little uncomfortable, but he understands its place in sports, an extra draw for the average fan.

The Bulldogs have beaten the spread in every contest they have played with a Power Five opponent this year. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, Yale fell by seven, beating a spread that projected they would lose by 13. At Penn State, to Portnoy’s distress, the Elis lost by two, but anyone who picked them to cover the spread, set at 15 points, made a profit. A few days before Christmas, the Bulldogs’ nine-point win at Clemson saw them beat the spread again. And in its next game, Yale lost to North Carolina by three, improving its record against the spread to 11–2.

Frank Krugel, an usher who works every men’s basketball game at John J. Lee Amphitheater, said some of his friends started betting on Yale after its narrow loss in Chapel Hill two days before New Year’s. Sports fans first, his friends come to watch games live.

“They kind of realized what a good team Yale is,” Krugel said. “North Carolina is kind of having a bad year, but still, to be in the same ballpark as them says a lot of things.”

Many in the sports betting world already had their attention piqued. Shane Messer, who runs a Twitter-based business on the account Puckline Papi in which customers pay him for sports betting recommendations, said he began betting on the Elis after their performance at the November Penn State game.

By now, he said Yale has essentially become an “auto-bet” for him, a team he automatically chooses to bet on each game they play. Messer estimates he has sold recommendations to bet on Yale to at least 600 people since Portnoy’s big wager on the Penn State game.

“I like to think I got on the Yale-against-the-spread trend pretty early this season,” Messer said. “Seven times out of 10, they’re winning [me money]… You know how it works with Barstool and Dave Portnoy. When they tweet about something, it’s got a million views and interactions. That alone could help Yale basketball betting on its own.”

The Bulldogs followed their performance against Penn State with five straight wins against the spread, driving up to Massachusetts as the most “profitable” team in the nation by mid-December. An 83–80 overtime win helped the Elis improve their actual record, but UMass guard Carl Pierre hit a three-pointer in the final seconds to shrink Yale’s ultimate advantage to three. Monroe and forward Paul Atkinson ’21 both defended Pierre on the play, contesting the shot without risking a foul. With a six-point lead, Monroe said he simply wanted to avoid giving Pierre a chance to convert a four-point play.

The conversion helped the Minutemen cover the spread, and what felt like a meaningless, late-game three-pointer to Yale players (that was irrelevant to the outcome of the game) incurred the wrath of bettors on Twitter. “Paul Atkinson is a hoe for not stepping up to contest but why tf was Eric Monroe backing up the entire time?” one user commented on Twitter. “Not only was he back pedaling [sic] the entire way but he kept looking back for the screen and fell for it.”

“These Twitter accounts that follow who beats the spread consistently like Barstool accounts and stuff, we’re popping up on tweets [that say] Yale’s very good against the spread, like ‘Bet on them, bet on them,’” Monroe said. “So people do it and people get mad when we don’t, which isn’t very often I guess… [After UMass] some guy just went on a rant on Twitter, like what the hell is Monroe thinking and Atkinson’s head is not even in the game. It’s like, dude, do you even understand basketball? We’re just trying to win the game.”

Even after failing to cover the spread at UMass, by winter break, the Yale basketball betting craze had spread from coast to coast.

Back at home in California, Colman Seery ’22 was buying jeans at a Levi’s in the mall when a retail worker there revealed his Yale basketball betting habit.

“Somehow one time, he saw me on my phone on Yale, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I bet on Yale basketball,’” Seery, who has never watched a Yale basketball game, said.

But despite beating the spread in its Ivy-opening games at Brown, the Bulldogs’ success against the spread has taken a dip in 2020 and during conference play. Yale went 11–2 against the spread this fall, but has regressed to 6–7 in the new decade. Oddsmakers have corrected spread lines, making it more difficult to beat teams by significant margins.

Sports books projected the Elis to win by 20 at Howard, ranked one of the worst teams in DI basketball, but Yale could only manage a 14-point victory. A similar scenario played out when the Elis hosted Cornell, defeating the Big Red by 15 but unable to cover a 17-point spread. Yale has failed to cover in other February games against Harvard, Penn at The Palestra, Cornell in Ithaca, and Penn and Princeton at home. Feinberg said Swain, who scored a career-high 33 points in the Harvard loss but missed a free throw that would have sent the game into overtime, received hateful comments afterwards from some who had bet on the nationally televised game on his Instagram.

Messer said that games with national audiences typically draw greater betting activity, adding that a gradual adjustment of the spread is a common occurrence in sports betting. As more people put money on the Bulldogs, winning a profit becomes more difficult.

“[Betting on Yale] is definitely something that I would say a lot of bettors are missing out on, but I can guarantee you the guys making the lines are not missing out on that,” Messer said. “They’re definitely aware of how dominant Yale has been against the spread this year… It’s big money that moves the betting line. If somebody comes in and hammers the Yale spread for $250,000, they’re going to move the betting line the other way just to entice some people to bet on the other side.”