NFL Decries Lottery; Oregon Cites Double Standard

The year is 1977. The then-Oakland Raiders are playing the then-Baltimore Colts in an American Football Conference playoff game for the right to advance to the conference championship. The score is tied after regulation play, 31-31, and still tied after a full overtime period. In the second overtime, the Raiders drive toward the Colt end zone at the open end of Memorial Stadium. It comes down to second-and-goal at the Baltimore eight. It comes down to Coach John Madden. Go for the field goal in the tricky winds at this end of the field, or go for the touchdown? Madden opts for a safe pass with the idea of kicking , if necessary , on third down. It never comes to that. Ken Stabler’s pass is not only safe but sure, landing in the hands of tight end Dave Casper for the winning touchdown. The Raiders celebrate their 37-31 victory all the way to the airport. But there, the scene turns ugly. An angry fan steps out of the shadows and goes after Madden with every four-letter word in his vocabulary. Arms waving, lungs pumping, he berates the Raider coach for his game-deciding decision. Colt fanatic? No, gambling fanatic. The man had bet on Baltimore and taken 3 1/2 points. A field goal would have made him a winner. A dozen years later, that story is still repeated in NFL circles. Especially this week. In fearful tones. To the NFL, it’s a dangerous gamble.

To the University of Oregon and Oregon State, it’s a sure bet.

To the people of Oregon, it could become an odds-on favorite.

It’s the NFL lottery. Approved by the Oregon Lottery Commission last week, that state’s newest game is predicated on beating the point spread rather than the odds.

Sweat a lot when you scratch those lottery cards with a coin? Agonize when you have to decide between your birthdate and that of your mother-in-law for Lotto 6/49? Get nervous when a fellow worker offers you an illegal betting card?

No such problems in Oregon starting in September. All you do is plop down a dollar and pick the winners of between four and all 14 of the week’s NFL games, based on point spreads set by Nevada oddsmakers. A perfect four for four will pay about $8. Fourteen for 14 could be good for $8,000.

In a year when the Pete Rose gambling scandal has cast a shadow, deserved or not, on baseball’s integrity, and Gamblers Anonymous has gained as much visibility as Alcoholics Anonymous, the NFL suddenly finds itself faced with the institutionalizing of that activity.

“We believe, judging by phone calls we have received, that this is not an isolated incident,” said Pete Abitante, information director for the American Football Conference.

“Every state in the country is looking at this type of lottery and several, beginning with Iowa, are said to be very interested in starting one.

“Legalized gambling of any sort goes to the fabric of our game, to our integrity. Instead of the fans asking of their teams, ‘Did they win?’ they’ll be asking, ‘Did they cover the point spread?’ The focus should be on the game and the players, not whether they cover the spread.”

League officials are considering legal action to block the venture.

While individual team officials will not comment, one club executive asked, off the record: “What’s next? Pari-mutuel windows at the stadium?”

NFL attorney Jim Noel urged Oregon Lottery Commission members to “send a message that the state of Oregon will not be the place that triggers the insidious specter of nationwide legalized gambling that could, among its negative effects, fundamentally alter and injure professional sports in America.”

The message that was delivered, however, is that Oregon is sick and tired of producing inferior athletic programs. So the state legislature has paved what it thinks will be a road to glory with gold.

Lottery gold.

“The state of Oregon is finally going to take action in funding its college athletics,” said David Dix, majority leader of the Oregon House of Representatives. “Our schools won’t be facing any more David-vs.-Goliath matches against teams from better-funded states.”

Eighty-eight percent of the net proceeds from the NFL lottery, to a maximum of $8 million per year, will go to the sports programs at Oregon’s seven state-supported colleges and universities, with the remaining percentage ticketed for scholarships.

“We would like to see the schools get their money through some way other than gambling,” said Duane Lindberg, assistant commissioner of the Pacific 10 Conference, “but if the state is not going to provide it any other way, so be it. States throughout the country help out their schools, so it is not that unusual to be getting funding. Obviously, the aspect of the gambling is a new twist.

“A lot is still unknown at this time. We don’t know how much the Oregon schools will get. But we know that both programs (Oregon and Oregon State) are hurting and the figures we’ve seen will only help them get closer to the level of other programs in the conference.”

And it’s about time, said Dave Williford, a spokesman for the University of Oregon.

“We were obviously pleased with the news that the state legislature has agreed to give us money,” Williford said. “That’s the first time we’ve been given state support. Of all the state schools, we (Oregon and Oregon State) are among the few in the country who don’t receive any support. We have been trying to get some for a long time, so this is something of a breakthrough.

“What seems two-faced to us about the NFL is their contention that the lottery is bad when they turn their backs on Nevada. We’re talking small scale here, maybe a dollar a ticket, compared to who knows what in Nevada.”

NFL headquarters is not the only place warning flags are flying. Oregon lottery officials have said that if their new game works, National Basketball Assn. games could be next.

That prompted this statement from Russ Granik, an NBA executive vice-president: “The NBA is adamantly opposed to gambling on professional team sports. Gambling on NBA games is contrary to the entertainment package that we seek to provide to the public, and we feel it is inappropriate for any state agency to consider interfering with our business in this way.”

Neither the NFL nor the NBA seem to have anything to worry about as far as California is concerned.

“Our research has not shown games based on the outcome of sporting results is of great interest,” said Joanne McNabb, spokesperson for the California Lottery. “We are looking to maximize revenues for education and meet our players’ desires. And this idea (the NFL lottery) just hasn’t loomed large as yet.”

It didn’t loom too large in Delaware, either, when an NFL lottery became reality back in 1976. The NFL sued to stop it, but that proved unnecessary when Delaware officials dropped the game after one season. Projected revenues of $6 million to $8 million fell far short, at $700,000.

The experiment in Delaware doesn’t alarm the Oregon people, however.

“We took a look at what is successful in Europe, what is successful in Nevada,” said Steve Caputo, deputy director of the Oregon Lottery. “We did market research and this one (the NFL game) had greatest potential for new money for state programs.

“We feel they made two mistakes in Delaware. That’s why it was a massive failure. First, they used a fixed payout. We use a pari-mutuel payout. For every person who hit 14 for 14, they had to pay out $8,000, which means it could cost them $8 million. We have only so much money in the prize pool. The winners just share it. That limits the risk of the state, but over time, the payouts are about the same.

“The second mistake in Delaware is that they thought they were smart enough and knew the game well enough to set their own point spreads. They were incorrect. We are going to use a professional oddsmaker out of Vegas who supplies the odds to the sports books.”

What about the NFL position that the whole idea is a mistake?

“We are really mystified by that,” Caputo said. “Here is a person going down and spending maybe $2 on four teams while, in Nevada, thousands are wagered. The NFL turns their backs on that, but they are concerned about our lottery. I don’t see how a housewife in Oregon is going to affect the integrity of the NFL.”

Neither does Mike Tenay, a supervisor at the race and sports book of the Gold Coast Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

“There is definitely a double standard by the NFL,” Tenay said. “I know they don’t go out of their way to promote gambling on NFL games in Vegas, but they’d be crazy not to admit that gambling has helped the sport to prosper as much as anything. I think the combination of gambling and TV has made the NFL what it is today.”

Tenay and others in Nevada are watching the Oregon experiment with interest, but not much trepidation.

“There’s not that big a worry at this time,” Tenay said. “If other states follow, we might worry. But really, their payoffs are nowhere near what we pay off.”

That’s true. Figuring you get about $8 back in Oregon for picking four of four on a $1 wager, that’s 7-1 odds. At someplace like the Gold Coast, a successful four-team parlay pays back at 10-1, a five-team parlay at 25-1.

As for the 14-for-14 winners, don’t hold your breath. Tenay estimates that at the Gold Coast and Las Vegas’ Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino combined, there have been perhaps three winners on the 15-team parlay in the last seven years. And those winners got to choose their 15 games from a selection of pro and college games. In Oregon, you have to go with the week’s pro slate.

“In the overall scheme, I don’t think it could really hurt Vegas sports betting,” Tenay said. “We have people who bet $2,000 to $5,000 a game .

“If anything, it might educate people to sports betting. We’ve got so many squares who walk in for the Super Bowl and are not familiar with point spreads. A guy walks in on a Saturday and sees 75 college games and point spreads, he doesn’t know where to start. This might be an educational tool.”

It is expected to be an educational tool of a different sort in Oregon. According to Caputo, the NFL lottery cards, costing a minimum of $1 and a maximum of $20, should generate anywhere between $10 million and $30 million for the season. From that, the state’s seven state colleges and universities will receive between $4 million and $9 million, with Oregon and Oregon State getting perhaps as much as $3 million each. That money must be divided between men’s and women’s programs (at least 50% for the women), and between revenue and nonrevenue-producing sports (70% for the nonrevenue), according to a formula devised by the state legislature.

“I’ve got mixed feelings about it,” conceded Jack Davis, associate athletic director at Oregon State. “We have made many efforts to get funding. It always has seemed that attempts by the legislature failed. Last year, there was a public referendum for a tax on cigarettes and beer to get us funding, but that failed. We went the last mile. The lottery money was a last-ditch effort.

“But I don’t see where the type of payoff we have would affect the integrity of the game. The stakes in the NFL are too big for the amount of money involved, $8,000 maximum. That’s small compared to what’s going on in Nevada. This is really a game of chance. People are going to play it more for fun, like an office pool.”

But, Davis acknowledged, there is a drawback. “A lot of us in athletics don’t like to tie gambling to intercollegiate athletics,” he said. “We wish it could have been done some other way. Maybe, in time, we’ll find other ways to finance our programs. Personally, I don’t like that type of gambling. I voted against the lottery. I think it impacts the wrong type of people. I don’t like the message it sends. But if it is tied to our ability to compete in the Pac-10, we’ll take the money.”