The future has become far bleaker for a young man named Simeon Cottle. The Kennesaw State star basketball player and Tri-Cities High grad faces allegations that he participated in a point-shaving scheme. It is sad and maybe even heartbreaking.
Certainly so for those who know him well.
“There are a lot of sharks in the world, but he is not one of them,” Omari Forts, Cottle’s coach at Tri-Cities, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He represents the best of our community.”
Speaking outside of his team’s locker room after a game at Decatur High this past Friday, Forts limited his comments about Cottle to those two sentences.
While brief, they carry weight. Beyond leading the Bulldogs to three state championships, including last year’s Class 5A title, Forts is a respected and decorated coach, a leader in the Tri-Cities community.
Forts could have said something much safer, such as “We love Simeon and hope for the best for him” or simply declined comment. But he stuck out his neck and attached his good name to a person who could be going to prison for a federal crime.
It said something about Cottle, regardless of his guilt or innocence in this matter.
“That’s the most loving guy in the world,” a former KSU teammate said of Cottle, speaking on the condition he not be identified. “If that was your son, you would love him. It’s just hard not to love a guy like Simeon.”
It makes it even more bewildering to read the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Jan. 15 indictment, which alleges that he was one of 26 individuals involved in a bribery and point-shaving scheme to fix college basketball and Chinese Basketball Association games.
According to the indictment, Cottle and two Owls teammates — former Owl Demond Robinson and a third unnamed Owls player — intentionally underperformed in the first half of a March 1, 2024, game against Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, in exchange for about $40,000 from a fixer.
Their underperformance enabled conspirators to win bets on Queens to cover the first-half point spread. Cottle, the team’s second-leading scorer for that season, took only one shot and was scoreless in the first half before scoring 13 points in the second.
If Cottle did what is alleged, he surely knew that it was wrong and presumably understood the potential repercussions. The same goes for his teammates.
But, at least from this vantage point, it’s not hard to view him and others as pawns caught up in a criminal scheme. If the allegations are true, the fixers knew what they were doing in recruiting Cottle and others to shave points. They targeted athletes in lower-tier conferences who probably weren’t making much money from the name, image and likeness payments that have become legal in the NCAA.
The sort of bribes that fixers were offering — generally between $10,000 and $30,000, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office release — wouldn’t be enough to tempt a star in the SEC or ACC, where men’s basketball players can make six figures annually in NIL deals. But it evidently would be tempting for lesser-paid athletes who were willing to risk years of jail time and the end of their careers for it.
The person described by Forts and the former teammate doesn’t sound like someone who was driven by personal gain and would have had his hand out. Not a shark, as Forts said.
“Great guy,” the former teammate said. “He’d do anything for you. Shirt off (his) back.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has attempted to contact Cottle through numerous avenues. These attempts have been unsuccessful.
Perhaps it was a situation similar to that of former University of New Orleans guard Dae Dae Hunter, who also was named in the indictment. Hunter told “Good Morning America” that he took the bribe to cover the costs of his newborn child.
With the billions at stake in sports gambling and the vulnerability of lower-income athletes, it would be no surprise if more schemes like this have been executed, whether they’re ever brought to the light of day.
Time has made Cottle’s alleged decision only more costly. Last year, he developed into an all-conference selection in Conference USA. A senior this year, he was named the conference preseason player of the year and, while suspended indefinitely, continues to lead the league in scoring. He most likely would have had opportunities to play professionally in Europe.
If Cottle and the others are found guilty, there will be a heavy price to pay.
But especially for a young man who is said to represent the best of his community, you sure wish he could have the chance to take it back.
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