At the bottom of every official NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship bracket, in font small enough that a magnifying glass is required for anyone over 50, are these 20 words:
“The NCAA opposes all sports betting. This tranche must not be used for sweepstakes, office pools or other gaming activities.”
Now pretend you’re Captain Louis Renault of ““Casablanca”, and you’re shocked, shocked that an estimate 3 billion dollars enters March Madness bracket pools. This figure does not include the additional hundreds of millions wagered legally in Las Vegas and illegally with black market/offshore bookmakers.
For decades, when it comes to sports betting, the NCAA has been like someone on a beach trying to sweep away the rising tide. The organization now finds itself underwater.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal law prohibiting states from allowing sports betting. For three months, little clarity has emerged. Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware and Mississippi offer sports betting. West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island allow it but do not have active sites accepting betting.
“Our highest priorities in any conversation about sports betting are maintaining the integrity of competition and the well-being of student-athletes,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a statement. statement issued after the decision. “Sports betting can negatively impact student-athletes and harm the games they play. We are committed to ensuring that laws and regulations promote a safe and fair environment for the nearly half a million students who participate in college athletics.”
The integrity of the competition will be an ongoing concern for the NCAA. The three major American professional sports have each experienced isolated incidents of game-fixing and gambling: 1919 Black Sox And Pete Rose at baseball; stars Paul Hornung and Alex Karras bet on NFL games (without involving their teams); and referee Tim Donaghy in the NBA.
(beauty_quote quote=””Sports betting can negatively impact student-athletes and harm the games they play. We are committed to ensuring that laws and regulations promote a safe and fair environment for nearly half of million students who participate in college athletics.” – Mark Emmert, NCAA President “)
College sports are considered more vulnerable because athletes who could influence outcomes are often cash poor. Additionally, college campuses, unlike most insular professional teams, can be hot spots for gossip about injuries or other game-influencing situations.
Additionally, college sports has had at least one gambling or point-splitting scandal in eight consecutive decades. The most recent was San Diego basketball point-splitting scandal in 2010.
The City College of New York (CCNY), the only team to win the NCAA and the NIT in the same season (1950), saw its program decimated by a Mafia based point shaving plot. In 1951, seven teams and 32 college players were involved when the project was dismantled. One of those schools was Kentucky, which was banned from competition by the NCAA for the 1952-53 season.
The men’s basketball tournament – March Madness – is the most lucrative tournament in the NCAA. The nightmare scenario is a game toss and point reduction system that calls into question the integrity of the tournament.
Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey is among those sounding the alarm about the integrity of the competition.
“While it may be best not to expand gaming activity, what is needed now is for our state and federal legislative leaders to enact policies that properly support the integrity of our games and provide the necessary protections for our students and student-athletes.” Sankey said.
Sports Handle editor Brett Smiley probably has more knowledge about the gaming industry than college administrators. He doesn’t believe the sky is going to fall on his head because he doesn’t believe the SCOTUS decision can change things.
“Any adult can go online and create a sports betting account,” Smiley said. “From an overall consumer perspective, legalizing gambling will help migrate some of the money from the black market to the legal market, where I submit — as did NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. — this can be better monitored and contribute to integrity.
When pushed by outside forces to make significant changes, the NCAA has a history of fumbling through the transfer. Take for example its recent edits regarding college basketball in reaction to the FBI investigation last September.
Now, thanks to SCOTUS, the NCAA will confront a problem it has been ignoring. With so much uncertainty surrounding the new world of gaming, one of the biggest questions concerns the possible benefits to schools and/or conferences.
“Americans already illegally bet between $150 billion and $400 billion each year on offshore websites, local bookmakers and others,” Smiley said. “It will take some time to migrate this to legal markets, a task that will be more difficult if states impose high income taxes.”
Money wagered on college sports could provide another source of revenue for schools competing in Power Five conferences that sets revenue records every year distribution. And there isn’t an athletic director or commissioner worthy of his title who won’t try to exploit a revenue stream.
(beauty_quote quote=””Americans already illegally bet between $150 billion and $400 billion each year on offshore websites, local bookmakers and others.” – Brett Smiley, Sports Handle Editor “)
As The Notorious BIG rapped, “Mo Money Mo Problems.” The NCAA has a half-dozen lawsuits in which it fights the concept that student-athletes receive a small piece of the revenue pie. Even if the NCAA’s “amateur model” will not be replaced by a professional “play-for-pay” model, the adoption of a version of the Olympic model has traction. In particular, the NCAA is reluctantly pushed to allow student-athletes to profit in some way from their names, images and likenesses.
If there is a way to divert some of the game’s revenue to schools/conferences, it could — or should — give a boost to any NIL legislation.
“We’re solving a lot of complex problems and I imagine some of the bigger schools, depending on what the states decide, I think if there’s money to be made through gaming, that money should go to the schools,” David said. Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University and a veteran observer of the NCAA and college sports. “I would prefer that these additional benefits go to the student-athletes rather than the coaches or administrators.”
The Klieg lights that illuminate college sports, such as football and men’s basketball, are expected to get brighter with growing public interest in legal gambling. This interest will be accompanied by a thirst for information as punters search for the best bets.
Casey Schwab, vice president of business and legal affairs for the NFL Players Association, said union members are concerned about such oversight.
“The consequences are serious, especially for athletes,” he said. “Information — what our athletes are doing, where they are going — there’s a price tag on it,” » said Schwab. “And as more money is invested in sports betting, that price goes up.”
The NCAA will consider requiring coaches to release some type of report on player injuries or availability. And at the college level, there will be a desire to discover much more than sprained ankles.
“When we think about information, it’s not just about injuries,” said Naima Stevenson Starks, deputy general counsel for the NCAA. explained at the NACDA convention. “Who just broke up with their girlfriend?” This could prevent them from having their best game. This kind of information that students will have easy access to… is now going to have value associated with it, which is just scary.
The NCAA may consider a long-term attempt at a legislative solution. Emmert suggested in December, at a college sports forum in New York, that there could be an “exclusion to remove college athletics from sports betting, similar to what we’ve done with fantasy sports daily”. Athletic directors at 130 schools could push for legislation through Lead1, their lobbying group.
“80% of our athletic directors indicated they oppose college sports betting” said former U.S. Rep. Tom McMillen, who is the president of Lead1. “Our athletic directors are concerned not only about the vulnerability of young student-athletes to point-shaving incentives, but also about the increasing compliance costs of keeping their programs clean. … “It worries me deeply because I believe (a gambling scandal) could detonate college sports.”
Ridpath doubts that Congress will attempt to respond to the SCOTUS decision legislatively. Similar to Smiley, he wonders what it is.
“I may be in the minority, but I don’t see the change in gaming having a huge impact,” Ridpath said. “The game has been around for years. This is a huge benefit for the company. If (the NCAA) and college sports were so opposed to gambling, they would have done what was discussed about twenty years ago and called for federal legislation to ban the publication of betting lines on college sports .
“Of course, the fact is that there is a lot of interest in the game. I’m a fan of bringing things out of the shadows. People are going to play, so make it legal. Gambling, bookmaking, and black market profiteering have been around since the beginning of college sports.
That’s what’s about to happen as gambling legislation moves through state legislatures. The NCAA will have to deal with — or maybe play — with the consequences.
Wendell Barnhouse began his career as a sports journalist at age 18 and spent the next four decades writing and editing newspapers. From 2008 to 2015, he served as a correspondent for the Big 12 Conference website, producing written and video content. He has spent the last three years freelancing, most recently covering college basketball for The Athletic.
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