Removing Gambling From Curriculum?

Gamblers are betting unprecedented amounts on college sports, so much that the total wagered on the NCAA men’s basketball tournament this year in Nevada might for the first time exceed money bet on the Super Bowl.

But the excitement of mounting revenue in the state’s sports books has not been met with equal enthusiasm by some on Capitol Hill, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Tom Osborne (R-Neb.), who, along with NCAA leaders, are pushing for legislation that would ban gambling on college sports in the United States.

The implications of the impending battle are significant. On one side, Nevada accepts an average of more than $1 million a game in wagers on the 64 NCAA men’s tournament games. On the other, fears of a repeated point-shaving scandal have raised concerns about the vulnerability of college sports to unsavory elements.

Legal betting on college sporting events takes place only in the state of Nevada, but prohibition in other states has done virtually nothing to discourage wagering on the NCAA tournament. From law offices to muffler shops, from hospitals to newsrooms, the familiar bracket sheets can be found taped on walls. Everyone from basketball computer geeks to those who wouldn’t know a Georgetown Hoya from Oscar De La Hoya plops down $5 and fills out the brackets.

An estimated $380 billion a year is bet illegally on sports in this country, according to the federally funded National Gambling Impact Study. In Nevada, another $1.936 billion was wagered legally through sports books last year.

Experts estimate about 35% of the dollars are bet on college sports. They predict the final tally after Monday night’s championship game will place betting on the NCAA men’s tournament at more than the $70 million wagered on Super Bowl XXXVII.

All this money changing hands on the outcome of college games makes NCAA officials nervous, especially in light of periodic point-shaving scandals that have rocked college basketball.

For the last three years, they have sought legislative relief in both houses of Congress. McCain’s Amateur Sports Integrity Act would make wagering on collegiate, high school and Olympic sports illegal anywhere in this country. In effect, it is pointed squarely at Nevada.

The bill, which stalled on the floor of Congress when introduced three years ago, will be reintroduced later this year in the Commerce Committee chaired by McCain. Meanwhile, Osborne, the former Nebraska football coach, introduced bipartisan House legislation last week with former Harvard quarterback Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.) that would end gambling on amateur athletics.

The Student Athlete Protection Act “works to close the Nevada loophole that takes billions of dollars in gambling profits from families, athletes and people across the nation,” Osborne said in a statement.

NCAA President Myles Brand said he is “fully supportive of the legislation.”

Such attempts to curtail gambling elicit a laugh from Billy Baxter, a professional gambler who lives in Las Vegas and bets up to $1 million a weekend on football -- half a million Saturday on the colleges and half a million Sunday on the pros.

“It sounds good,” Baxter said. “ ‘Oh, we are going to stop kids from gambling.’ Anybody who wants to bet is going to bet and you are not going to stop them. Not in this lifetime, or the next.”

It’s no laughing matter to Bill Saum, the NCAA’s first director of agent/gambling/amateurism activities.

“We’re never going to end gambling,” Saum said in an interview in his office at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. “If we said that, people would say we have our head in the sand. But I do believe we can move things on this issue.

“We’re realists here. There are thousands of dollars and plenty of bad guys out there who want to influence our athletes. All we can do every morning is wake up and fight the good fight. It’s about integrity.”

The fight for a legislative ban on collegiate gambling began at a news conference held in the glare of another Final Four three years ago in Indianapolis.

The gambling legislation was sponsored in the House of Representatives by Congressman Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), who was on hand for the news conference, as was Senate sponsor Sam Brownback (R-Kan). Also there were then-NCAA president Cedric Dempsey, Purdue Coach Gene Keady, then the incoming president of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, and Kansas Coach Roy Williams.

They came armed with evidence for their cause -- men’s basketball point-shaving incidents with Arizona State in 1994 and Northwestern in ’95.

Subsequent surveys have given them more ammunition.

According to a 1999 survey by the University of Michigan, 72% of 758 basketball and football players questioned admitted gambling in college, with 5.2% of the male athletes saying they either fixed or bet on a game they played in, or provided inside information for gambling purposes.

A 1996 survey by the University of Cincinnati of 648 Division I men’s basketball and football players revealed that 25.5% gambled on sporting events, with 3.7% admitting they bet on a game in which they played. Three athletes admitted they received money from a gambler for doing less than their best in a game.

“It’s naive to believe it’s still not happening,” said Saum, who addressed all men’s Final Four teams about the dangers of gambling Friday in New Orleans.

A recent reminder, he said, is the case of former Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson, who has been charged with one misdemeanor count of gambling, including on games in which he played.

McPherson, who started four games for Florida State last season, placed bets over the Internet on college and pro games during the 2002 football season, the school said. He bet on every Seminole game last season, always wagering they would win, according to Florida State Police Chief Carey Drayton. Sources told investigators McPherson bet large amounts and owed a Tallahassee man, identified as Dereck Delach, $8,000, police said. Delach and Florida State football team equipment manager Jeffrey Inderhees were charged.

“That speaks to everything we’re talking about: a team leader, who can control plays, using the Internet to gamble on his team,” Saum said. “That’s what scares us to death.”

The Michigan study also revealed that, of 1,462 Division I referees in men’s and women’s basketball and football surveyed, 84.4% admitted they had gambled -- casino wagering and lotteries being their favorite games of chance.

But Nevada interests are quick to offer their own numbers.

“I think the NCAA should address the problems it has and not the problems it imagines,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “Less than 2% of sports wagering is conducted in Nevada. Why not stop the 98% who are betting illegally? Why do they want to stop something legal? This is a sop for the NCAA to avoid the problems they really have. The first thing they should do is to leave Nevada alone. This state is not hurting anything. It’s so foolish. People come from all over the world to bet legally.

“I can’t imagine why they don’t focus on real problems. The NCAA receives $6 billion from television. Why don’t they spend that on advertising on why people shouldn’t gamble? If they are so concerned about what’s going on on campus, they should do that. They do it with the problem of alcoholism on campus. They help pay for the advertisements on binge drinking.”

Proponents of the legislation have welcomed the attention of McCain, one of the most visible members of the Senate.

“We did not go to John McCain about this,” Saum said. “He’s always had an affinity for amateur athletics and he enjoys sticking his neck out there. His involvement has given us a combative, popular legislator willing to take a risk by taking a stand on a controversial issue. He’s obviously a leader and this is an issue that needs those characteristics of leadership.”

But by sticking his neck out, McCain has offered a prime target to opponents of the legislation.

“I think as part of his run for the presidency,” said Alan Feldman, a vice president at MGM-Mirage, “John McCain became completely enamored of the sound bite. One of the most powerful drugs is positive press coverage. His bill created a sense of adulation even when it made no sense in terms of policy. Senators get very nervous when they vote against something depicted as a student-athlete protection act. McCain has done a masterful job of promoting it.

“McCain comes from very conservative stock, but his hypocrisy is almost overwhelming. He says we shouldn’t be placing bets on the backs of student-athletes. But he has no problem with the selling of cars, the selling of potato chips and all the other television advertising done on the backs on students

“McCain would do better spending the time looking out for students by providing them with some sort of income, with health care, with giving something back to kids who generate hundreds of millions of dollars for schools.”

Saum said it’s naive to blame the NCAA by arguing that if athletes were less strapped financially, they would be less prone to consider point shaving.

Boxing promoter Bob Arum, who lives and primarily promotes in Las Vegas, said he believes McCain’s involvement in the issue is part of a grand battle against Arizona’s neighboring state. McCain has also promoted legislation to regulate professional boxing.

“McCain is at war with the state of Nevada,” Arum said. “We are a very attractive target. There is not a lot of sentiment for Nevada. The rest of the country all knows that Nevada is equated with sin. We have legalized brothels. So there is no compunction on the part of somebody like McCain in taking on Nevada. We are an easy target for people who want to make headlines.”

Reid has also taken a strong stand against McCain’s involvement in the gambling bill.

“The most important point,” McCain said, “is not whether Senator Reid and I disagree. Literally every college coach in the country, every coach from Dean Smith to Roy Williams, wants this legislation passed. They feel gambling is a terrible temptation for the kids. They came to me, these college coaches, the most respected men and women in America. This is not my view. They want it stopped. They are aware of the temptations these kids face.”

Said Arum: “If there was no collegiate gambling this week, a guy would stay home and go to the local Arizona casinos.”

And Arum insists this is only the first step in a plan by McCain to eventually outlaw all sports wagering in Nevada.

“I don’t know what he has been smoking, but it must have been a fairly strong substance,” McCain said. “Nobody has ever contemplated outlawing wagering in general.

“I enjoy gambling. I go to Las Vegas, see a show and make my contribution.”

Both sides have used the Arizona State scandal, in which 61 bets totaling $900,000 on four 1994 games were placed through the Las Vegas sports books, to bolster their argument. Those favoring the legislation say the Arizona State incident illustrates the evil that can result from collegiate gambling. Opponents point out that the scandal was unearthed by Nevada bookmakers.

“Las Vegas at least has professional people who can smell a rat when the line goes crazy,” Arum said.

“Las Vegas has the best enforcement for gambling,” Baxter said. “It has driven illegal gambling offshore. Everybody picked up on Arizona State because Vegas caught them. All you are going to do now is put it underground. What you ought to do is to let the state of Nevada take calls from bettors all over the country. Then there wouldn’t be any need for those little old bookies in Georgia and South Carolina and everywhere else. They should have a boiler room here with 300 operators working 24 hours a day. This is a legitimate place for gambling.”

Saum disagreed.

“If it wasn’t possible to lay that million dollars down in Las Vegas,” he said, “the ASU point-shaving case wouldn’t have occurred. You cannot dump that kind of money through illegal bookies, and I don’t know too many people who have a $1-million limit on their credit card to bet on the Internet sites.

“Yes, Las Vegas is vigilant in the punishment and prosecution of those doing the shaving, but, by the time they noticed anything abnormal, the shaving had already occurred, the line had already moved and the game had already been played.”

Yet, Ross Rice, a special agent in the FBI’s Chicago office that investigated the Northwestern point-shaving episode, said the theory that eliminating Nevada gambling on college sports will stop point shaving is flawed.

“Making college gambling illegal in Nevada would have no effect on what is happening in Illinois, where organized crime has control of the bookmakers,” Rice said. “The gambling that is being done here, and the wagering that took place in the Northwestern case, is going primarily through illegal bookmakers right here. And in most cases those bookmakers are controlled by organized crime. There’s no way to establish that stopping betting in Nevada would stop the guys here from operating.”

McCain conceded that legislation won’t solve all the problems.

“Does that mean that if a murder has been committed in one part of the city, we really ought to concentrate on that only and not on murders committed in other parts of the city?” he said.

Countered MGM-Mirage’s Feldman: “This is a solution in search of a problem.”

Pugmire reported from Indianapolis, Springer from Las Vegas.