Michigan State is a good team and has one of the best coaches ever in Tom Izzo but not many people expected them to reach very far in the NCAA tournament. Now they’ve made it all the way to the Final Four where they will face off against Duke. If they manage to make it past Duke then they’ll play the winner of the Kentucky-Wisconsin matchup which will be tough no matter which team wins. But if MSU manages to pull all that off, this man will win BIG TIME!
On Dec. 5, Derek Stevens walked in and told sportsbook director Tony Miller that he wanted to make a bet on Michigan State to win it all and to make sure that if he did win, he’d win $1 million.
Despite Stevens’ being a regular customer, Miller’s sportsbook doesn’t accept bets that could cause such a colossal loss, so he called up his boss, Tilman Fertitta, who owns the Golden Nugget, to approve the bet.
It was a relatively smooth conversation. The Spartans were at 50-1 to win it all at the time, having just lost their third game of the young, eight-game season to Notre Dame.
So Miller accepted Stevens’ $20,000 bet, never thinking he’d be sweating the possibility that the Spartans could pull it off.
“In my nine years at this sportsbook, I never accepted a bet that could result in us paying $1 million,” Miller said. “The most I’ve ever seen won here was a $100,000 parlay.”
Stevens, who owns The D and Golden Gate hotels in downtown Las Vegas, said he didn’t see anything particularly special; he is just a fan and felt like getting aggressive.
“If I win, I’ll give some bonus money to my employees,” Stevens said. “I also want to give some money to the [Jerry] Tarkanian Basketball Academy, and the rest I will reinvest in my properties.”
