Bill to Ban College Bets Faces Long Odds

Although they failed last year, members of Congress who want to ban legal betting on college sports are planning another try.

But representatives of the casino industry in Nevada, the only state where legal bets can be placed on college games, say they’re optimistic that this threat to their state’s economy can be defeated again.

The NCAA is vigorously lobbying on behalf of the proposed legislation as part of its anti-gambling efforts, which are intensified during high-profile events such as the NCAA basketball tournament.

House and Senate bills to eliminate college sports betting in the one state where it’s legal both failed to come up for a vote last year. Frank Fahrenkopf, executive director of the American Gaming Assn., the casino industry’s lobbying arm in Washington, says the move was misguided and that he persuaded congressional leaders it would only drive gambling on college games further underground.

Fahrenkopf, who served as Republican National Chairman during the Reagan administration, has many friends on Capitol Hill.

“We believe we convinced the leadership of both parties last year that this bill was not going to accomplish its purpose,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

But Public Citizen, the self-styled citizens lobby, has a different take on the issue. In a report last week, the organization founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader accused the casino industry of buying influence in Congress by raising $3.9 million in soft-money political contributions for Republican and Democratic candidates, including leaders of the Senate and House.

Public Citizen said casino interests gave $2.3 million to Republicans and $1.6 million to Democrats, figures that Fahrenkopf does not challenge.

“The casino industry’s success in keeping college gambling legal is some of the most transparent and shameless influence-buying that we have ever seen,” said Joan Claybrook, Public Citizen’s president.

Fahrenkopf, however, insists these donations “absolutely did not” have a crucial impact, considering that more than $1 billion was collected in the election year by both parties.

Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chief sponsor of anti-gambling legislation in the House, said he is reintroducing his bill this term because “clearly the problem is getting worse and student athletes need to be protected now more than ever before.”

He said his bill “seeks to preserve the integrity of student and amateur athletics.”

Graham said shutting down legal sports books “would send a message to young people, who are disproportionately involved in gambling as compared to the rest of the population, that amateur sports betting is illegal.” A Gallup Poll in June 1999 found that 18% of teenagers surveyed acknowledged gambling on college sports over the last 12 months.

The NCAA is working on behalf of Graham’s bill, as well as a similar bill being reintroduced in the Senate by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). NCAA officials believe that eliminating college games from Nevada’s sports books will help rid campuses across the nation of illegal student bookmakers.

“Point-shaving schemes and other activities to ‘fix’ the outcome of games is the direct result of the abundance of legal and illegal betting on college sports,” Brownback said.

“Gambling on the outcome of college sporting events tarnishes the integrity of sport and diminishes the esteem in which we and the rest of the world hold U.S. post-secondary institutions.”

Several gambling scandals have shaken college basketball in the last 50 years, the first starting with an investigation of City College of New York and spreading nationwide until 35 active and ex-college players had been accused of fixing 86 games between 1947 and 1951. Twenty players and 14 gamblers who bribed them were indicted and convicted.

More recent scandals occurred at Arizona State and Northwestern.

Bill Saum, the NCAA’s director of Agent and Gambling Activities, said more elements are in place for another such scandal than ever before.

“All of the elements that produced the 1951 problems are in place, plus there are new elements that cause us concern,” he said.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), on a recent NCAA video distributed to college athletic departments, said, “I’m told that on some campuses today there’s a bookie on every floor of every dorm.”

Education, Saum said, is the reason for the NCAA’s considerable investment in time and energy for its gambling awareness programs, including public service announcements airing during the NCAA tournament.

” . . . We’re confident the games we play are square,” he said. “But the possibility exists that they could be rigged. The bottom line is that when you have young people wagering, there are always risks.”

Said Fahrenkopf: “We wholeheartedly agree that underage gambling is a serious problem in need of effective counter-measures. But the primary responsibility for this issue clearly falls on the shoulders of the NCAA and its members since the illegal activity is taking place on their college campuses.”

To head off legislation inimical to the casino industry, Fahrenkopf’s lobbying group has introduced its own bill with 40 House members as co-sponsors and support in the Senate from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the influential chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Known as the National Collegiate and Amateur Athletic Protection Act of 2001, this bill would require all colleges that receive federal funding to have programs to reduce illegal campus gambling on sports.

It would also require the attorney general to establish a permanent task force to coordinate enforcement of existing federal laws that prohibit gambling related to amateur sports events.

In addition, it would increase penalties against persons convicted of federal sports-gambling offenses, in line with the recommendations two years ago of a blue-ribbon slate known as the National Gambling Impact Study Commission.

Fahrenkopf noted that legal gambling in Nevada requires persons placing bets on college as well as professional sports to be 21 years old and physically present in the state. No bets are accepted by phone or over the Internet.

“The Nevada system is well-regulated and policed and gambling proceeds are taxed,” he said. Last year an estimated $2.3 billion was wagered legally in Nevada on all sports, with about one-third of that total being placed on college athletics, the industry said.

In all, legal betting represents less than 1% of an estimated $350 billion bet around the nation on sports, authorities say.

In fact, when Congress outlawed sports betting in 1992 under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, Nevada was specifically exempted because it had long maintained legal sports books. The Graham and Brownback bills would eliminate this exemption.

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Staff writer Earl Gustkey contributed to this story.

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