Place your March Madness money on Vacated

You have all been told at one point in your lives that something is an absolutely sure thing, a guaranteed-to-happen event. A mortal lock.
 
Well, this is mine, and I share it with you because I am a better person than you all think I am. Not by a lot, I grant you, but by this much.
 
The winner of the 2018 NCAA national championship in men’s basketball will be Vacated. With a capital-V, the way the NCAA likes to spell it.
 
Va. Cay. Ted. Book it now. Your children’s college educations shall be assured.
 
This comes in the wake of the Yahoo story by veteran reporters and noted offal disturbers Pat Forde and Pete Thamel that at least 20 Division I schools, including traditional megapowers like Duke, North Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Michigan State, USC, Alabama, South Carolina, Wichita State, Utah and Xavier, are listed as schools of interest in a federal probe of college basketball that includes payments to players from agents and their representatives.
 
Now before you explain to me that kids are the victims here, let me just say that the kids are the victims here. That's not the issue. We all know that the morals and ethics of high-money college sports would cause Arnold Rothstein to rise from the grave, throw up, and then return to Hell.
 
This is just about what the result of this investigation, and the NCAA’s predictably sluggardly response, will be. This is about how you should bet March Madness for your own fun and profit.
 
And that is to push it all in on Vacated. Maybe as a money line futures bet, in fact.
 
You see, the title won’t be given to Vacated right away. You will see actual players doing actual basketball things, and an actual team with an actual name on the front (probably Nike, though Adidas and UnderArmour could factor as well) will celebrate the victory as a statement about the goodness of the deity and the essential rightness of life.
 
But eventually, Vacated, which last won the championship in 2013 while disguised as Louisville, will come up from behind and snatch the trophy away, so whatever else you do, DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR TICKET THINKING YOU HAVE LOST. Vacated is a bit like the Warriors, your poor adolescent choices and death – slow starters, even for years sometimes, but furious closers at the wire.
 
And that, boys, girls and undecideds, is when you cash, proud in the knowledge that you took the longer and more nuanced view – that college sports is actually like this all the time, and every now and then someone gets up the gumption to call the industry out on it.
 
This doesn’t last forever, either. Interest wanes, satchels of money are exchanged, winks and nods are traded and the business returns to being the business.
 
But this right here is an opportunity to get some of yours back. You can't clean up college basketball, and you don't have to all – but this is your chance to clean up ON college basketball.
 
So bet Vacated with the confidence that comes with knowing that mortal locks aren’t typically this mortal, or lock-ish. Your children, thoughtless money-sponge ingrates that they are most of the time, will thank you for it. Probably when you're not around to hear it.