Canzano: Gambling, wild news, and bad timing
Investigation at Fresno State.
The last thing Fresno State needed was a gambling investigation involving the men’s basketball program. But that’s exactly what the school got this week.
A handful of Bulldogs players are in the spotlight after an internal investigation into alleged betting activity. Guards Jalen Weaver and Zaon Collins didn’t suit up on Saturday in a game against Air Force, and guard Mykell Robinson has already been removed from the roster.
It’s not the first gambling probe in the school’s history. I was around for the tail end of the first one. It involved point-shaving allegations, bookmakers, and shady characters who rubbed shoulders with star players from Jerry Tarkanian’s program.
Those were different times. NCAA rules didn’t allow athletes to be compensated via NIL, but that didn’t stop boosters and friends of Tark’s basketball program from throwing parties for signees and slipping them ‘walking-around’ money via $100 handshakes.
A sharp-shooting guard named Dominick Young missed three of four free throws late in a regular-season victory over Wyoming in 1997. One of Young’s free-throw misfires was an airball that raised eyebrows. The Bulldogs blew a 19-point lead in the final three minutes that night and won by eight. They failed to cover the game’s 10-point betting spread. The Fresno Bee dug into the story and did some great reporting.
The FBI and a federal grand jury investigated, taking an interest in a local pawn shop owner named Dan Jelladian, who reportedly placed five-figure wagers. Investigators also asked questions about the relationship between basketball players and a notorious local businessman named Kirk Vartanian.
A decade after the point-shaving investigation, Vartanian appeared in a Las Vegas courtroom after allegedly passing bad checks at a couple of casinos. He agreed to pay Wynn and Venetian $250,000 to settle that debt.
He also owned and operated a high-end car dealership. Vartanian was convicted of grand theft related to that business in 2011. He was given five months probation. As part of that case, it was revealed that Fresno State women’s basketball coach, Stacy Johnson-Klein, gave Vartanian $100,000 for a Bentley that he never delivered.
Fresno is a wild news town. It’s located in the heart of California’s Central Valley, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. People pulling off Highway 99 at the time saw hundreds of acres of agriculture, rows of new affordable housing tracks, plenty of opportunity, and a city unafraid to dream big.
Fresno is equal parts big and small. Big enough for corruption, greed, and some old-fashioned wrongdoing. Small enough for you and your neighbors to be familiar with the characters accused of doing it.
The editor of The Bee during that era was a guy named Charlie Waters. He was a former Los Angeles Times Magazine editor. Waters liked to stand on the back loading dock of the newspaper smoking a cigarette and talking about the crazy news story of the day.
“Only in Fresno…” Waters liked to say.
Young filed a libel lawsuit against The Bee in 1997, claiming he’d been defamed. He and Chris Herren, another star player, also filed lawsuits against the Los Angeles Times. Both newspapers stood by their reporting. As far as I know, nothing ever came of the legal claims. There were no criminal charges filed on the point-shaving front, either.
Young insists he did not shave points in those games. He does admit there was a lot of gambling going on at that time. The point-shaving episode underscored what was a complicated and murky era in Fresno State athletics history.
Adrian Wojnarowski preceded me as the lead sports columnist at The Bee. Woj did some terrific work on the point-shaving story. Andy Katz, who later left for ESPN, was the basketball beat writer. Those guys are sportswriting greats. I was hired in 1998, and when I arrived, the Fresno community was deeply divided.
The sports editor, a terrific leader named John Rich, gave me a Cliff Notes tutorial on my first day of work. Later, Katz pulled me aside and said: “Just so you know what you’re walking into…” They were helpful colleagues. So was Woj, who had to put his family in hiding at a local hotel at one point because of death threats.
Eventually, I met Young for myself. The team’s former point guard was out of eligibility but called me and said: “If you want to hear the truth, I’ll talk with you.”
The real truth?
All of it?
I agreed to meet him at a neutral site not far from campus. He gave me an address and asked that I come alone. When I arrived, Young laid out a series of photographs and news clippings on a kitchen table. He mostly talked in riddles, hinting about wrongdoing, repeatedly saying “It’s all right there” and gesturing toward the table without ever really finishing the thought.
It was a dead end.
Fresno State is joining the Pac-12 on July 1, 2026. The Bulldogs are part of the “Mountain West Five” that defected to the 109-year-old conference. There’s growing optimism, hope, and promise on campus in recent months. Several important logistical matters need attention in the coming weeks. The Pac-12 is negotiating a media rights deal and needs to add at least one more member.
The school’s new athletic director, Garrett Klassy, now has a gambling investigation on his hands. It’s not ideal. But Fresno State fans are rabid, passionate, and engaged. They’ll fight through this.
It’s a disappointing development, but the school appears to be taking the investigation seriously. Klassy has to know that his college program isn’t the first — and won’t be the last — to encounter possible gambling issues.
Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a first-term lawmaker from Spokane, told me on Friday that he is introducing a bill this week on Capitol Hill that will ban prop bets on NCAA athletics.
The men’s basketball program is 5-23 this season. Coach Vance Walberg, a popular local figure, is struggling. It’s his program. This gambling probe doesn’t reflect favorably on him, either. I wonder if he’ll survive. Particularly, because it’s not the first time Walberg has found himself in a messy situation.
In 2000, I was sent by The Bee to the Dominican Republic to find one of Walberg’s high school players. A 6-foot-7 foreign exchange student named Charlie Rodriguez had been denied a visa after a visit home. Rodriquez, a star Kansas recruit and high school junior, was the most dynamic player on a high school team that won the California state championship. Now, he’d gone missing.
I located Rodriquez. He had a story to tell, too. Turns out, he’d gone into hiding after Dominican officials questioned his age and denied his visa. They believed his birth record was forged. Rodriguez was afraid of being imprisoned for it.
I spoke with Charlie, his mother, and uncle. I talked with his elementary school classmates and neighbors. I traveled to the national birth registry and obtained an official copy of his birth certificate. There, I learned that Rodriguez was, in fact, not a 17-year-old kid.
He was a 22-year-old man.
I filed a story and flew 3,000 miles home.
Rodriguez began playing professionally in the Dominican Republic. Kansas coach Roy Williams pulled the scholarship offer. Clovis West was stripped of the state championship. And Walberg denied any knowledge.
Life went on.
“Only in Fresno…” as my old editor liked to say.
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OMG. JC is on a heater. Yet more unbelievably insightful topical reporting.
He has yet to fully profile Fresno as he has Boise. But they share that “big fish/small pond” thing. If it’s possible to care TOO much about athletic success … you can see how an intrepid journalist could face personal threats for exposing the seedy underbelly of the local program.
For historical context, Fresno St. basketball was big time well before the Tark Show arrived in the ‘90’s. (Google “Boyd Grant” — you’ll get a better sense of it.)
But briefly: under Grant, Fresno St. basketball was big time. They routinely sold out 10,000 seat Selland Arena; they made multiple NCAA tournament trips when precious few at-large bids were awarded.
And, perhaps most saliently, Bulldog fans had a discernible collective chip on their shoulders — partly from the perception that they were viewed as a “cow town” by media elites in NorCal and SoCal.
This is a mess. It’ll be incumbent on the university administration to scrub the walls and disinfect everything. Not merely paint over the mold. But inside those walls is a strong frame and sturdy foundation to build on.
Had a chance to coach baseball at Clovis West and later teach at Buchanan HS but something about Fresno/Clovis did not feel right in terms of raising a family there compared to Eugene. The Octopus looms large through that region as well. However, we played in the Fresno Best of the West early season baseball tournament there every year I was at OSU. It was great baseball (Texas A&M, Fresno, ASU, Texas, Santa Barbara, Notre Dame...etc) and the atmosphere and facility were electric. I'm sure the old ballpark there needs a facelift, but it felt pretty big time playing in that facility.