The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Easier gambling has sports worried about fighting the fix
OCEANPORT, N.J. » It’s early in a college basketball game and Team A, playing methodically and using up most of the 30-second shot clock, falls behind 10-6. Scattered around the bleachers, several fans staring at their smartphones celebrate silently: they have bet on Team B to be the first to reach 10 points and even promised two TeamA starters a cut of the winnings.
With dozens of states rushing to capitalize on the U.S. Supreme Court lifting a federal ban on sports gambling, will fixed scenarios like the one above become more common?
The four major pro major sports leagues and the NCAA think so, and have argued for years that expanding legal betting will lead to more game-fixing. The pro leagues have sought, unsuccessfully so far, a cut of state gambling revenues to increase monitoring.
Meanwhile, architects of NewJersey’s successful legal challenge to the sports gambling ban say those fears are overstated and that bringing sports betting out of the shadows will make it easier to detect illegal activity. They point to the Arizona State basketball point-shaving scandal in the 1990s, which was uncovered after legal bookmakers in Las Vegas noticed unusually large sums being wagered on Sun Devils games.
Yet the prospect of easy, legal access to sports gambling for athletes and others has many in sports concerned.
“They’re going to create a bigger pool for more kids and for more money to get involved,” said JamallAnderson, a running back on the 1996 Boston College football team whose players were found to have bet against their own team. “It’s really going to create a big mess, I think.”
TARGETING COLLEGE ATHLETES
College athletes are generally considered easier to convince than pros to influence games. Two reasons: they are younger and aren’t paid directly to play.
They also aren’t strangers to wagering.
A 2016 NCAA survey of more than 22,000 college athletes found nearly onefourth of male athletes had violatedNCAA rules by gambling on sports within the previous year. When the survey was done, sports betting was available only in Nevada or illegally through offshore operators.
It was another number that surprised the authors: 13 percent of the male athletes who had gambled on sports hadwagered onin-game bets, things like whether the next football playwill be a run or a pass or of a basketball player will hit the next free throw.
“We continue to have concerns that wagering enhancements such as live ingame betting could present increased opportunities to profit from‘spot fixing’ a contest as has been uncovered recently in a number of international sports leagues,” the study concluded.
NCAA rules prohibit athletes, coaches and other athletic department employees from gambling on sports.
Individual schools make sure athletes know the rules against gambling, sometimes bringing in lawenforcement officials or former players to get the message across.
Will it be enough as laws change?
Legal sports gamblingwas the No. 1 topic for every conference meeting this spring, said Bob Vecchione, head of the National Association of College Directors ofAthletics.
“Do you remember back when you were 18 to 20 years of age?” said Vecchione, the Minnesota athletic director. “When people told you something, how much did it sink in? That’s what causes some sleepless nights.”
NCAA officials have said they may consider adjusting rules to account for legal gambling but haven’t specified how. INSIDER BETS Anderson recounted his experiences in the Boston College football scandal in a 2016 book, “The Best Bet.” In a recent interview, he described a culture in which gambling was part of the daily routine.
“You went to practice and you got your spreadsheet in the locker room,” he said. “It wasnothingtosit thereonthe sidelines and say, ‘Who you got this week?’ That’s what you do. You’re playing football, watching ESPN, seeing other teams and you’re totally engaged. It was too easy.”