The National Collegiate Athletic Association, along with the professional leagues, has been a critic of betting on sports games. The NCAA is currently lobbying Congress for a national law that would ban all legal betting on college sports contests. Bills were introduced in Congress in both 2000 and 2001 to effectuate the ban. The college sports regulatory group cautions that gambling activities are now widespread on campuses throughout the country. Cedric Dempsey, who serves as the executive director of the NCAA, asserted that “every campus has student bookies. We are also seeing an increase in the involvement of organized crime on sports wagering”.
Gambling rings were exposed in recent years at many colleges, including Michigan State University, Boston College, and the universities of Maine and Rhode Island. The betting did not have to be confined to local bookies, as college students have ready access to Internet services. There are over 400 sports betting services on the web. Most are operating illegally, but some are sanctioned and licensed by foreign governments.
A University of Michigan study reported by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission indicated that 45 percent of male college athletes admitted to betting on sports events. Five percent indicated that they furnished information about team activities to others for gambling purposes and also may have gambled on games in which they participated.
During the late 1990s, a series of scandals involving student athletes’ altering their performance in games in exchange for bribes from gamblers rocked college sports. The scandals involved basketball players at high profile schools such as Northwestern University and Arizona State and football players at Boston College. All of the college scandals involved illegal gambling, but in some cases, college gambling rings used Las Vegas sports books for lay-off services when they found that their student gamblers were betting too heavily for one team against another. Las Vegas casinos helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the NCAA in exposing the sports betting scandals as they discovered unusual betting patterns that prompted investigations.
The NCAA bylaw 10.3 prohibits any student athlete from sports gambling involving any team, professional or collegiate. The organization’s literature explains:
In clear, simple language, here’s what the rule means: You may not place any bet of any sort on any college or professional sports event. You may not give information to anyone who does place bets on college or professional sports. That means … NO wagers … even those that don’t involve your college. NO sports “pools,” …NO Internet gambling on sports events… NO sports wagering using “800” numbers. NO exchange of information about your team with ANYONE who gambles. In other words, no information about injuries, new plays, team morale, discipline problems, or anything else.
The penalty for violations of the rule was put bluntly: “You are declared ineligible to compete in college sports. You are off the team”.
U.S. senator Bill Bradley, himself a former professional basketball player, commented on the need to ban legalized betting on sports. “Based upon what I know about the dangers of sports betting, I am not prepared to risk the values that sports instill in youth just to add a few more dollars to state coffers… sports gambling raises people’s suspicions about point-shaving and game fixing”.
Spokesmen of the American Gaming Association, representing Nevada casinos and sportsbooks, accept that the integrity of games is extremely important. Indeed, they realize that without honest games, the sports book function of the casino would collapse. For this reason, they point out that the Las Vegas casinos work closely with the NCAA, the professional leagues, and the FBI in any investigation of corruption of sports by gamblers or gambling. In fact, they have been the source of much information that has led to investigations. On the other hand, they can easily point out that almost all of the situations mentioned above involved gambling that was illegal. They question whether making sports gambling in Las Vegas illegal would markedly improve the integrity of games. It would take the eyes of the Las Vegas establishment – including those of the Nevada Gaming Commission – off the intricacies of play inside each game covered on the boards of the casinos. There was no Las Vegas betting on the UNLV-Baylor football game. There was no central betting place where wagers could be monitored to observe if the play on the field was just “stupid” play or if it was motivated by something else.
When the professional leagues oppose legal betting on games, questions have to be raised about possible hypocrisy, as almost every league allows gambling behaviors by owners and also works with media that spread betting information to the public. Every league also recognizes that public betting adds to the television interest and revenues that come to the team owners through television contracts.
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