The NCAA News - Comment

December 2, 1996

• Guest editorial -- Administrators lacking in gambling awareness ...By Arnie Wexler
• Letters to the Editor -- Reader: Not all media coverage unequal
• Opinions -- Public receives mixed messages on issues like gambling

Guest editorial -- Illicit financial aid casts shadow on Division II

BY ARNIE WEXLER

I wish I didn't have to say "I told you so!" but I have been warning about the epidemic of gambling on the college campus for years. Unfortunately, I believe that recent developments reveal only the tip of the iceberg.

Let's not point a finger at Boston College or any college, for that matter. After all, it is hard to spot a person with a gambling problem. Unlike drugs or alcohol, you can't see or smell gambling. But you can be sure that gambling is going on at every campus, not only by students, but by student-athletes.

Believe me, I know.

I've been speaking at high schools for more than 25 years, and gambling is a real problem at that level. It's not going to change when the student gets to college. We know that 96 percent of those who have a gambling addiction started to gamble before age 14.

For many years, I've gotten calls from students and student-athletes on college campuses. I've listened to their stories and spoken to many of them in person. Some were in such bad shape that they would do anything to place their next bet.

In 1993, I wrote my first column for The NCAA News about gambling on college campuses. I wrote again in 1994 and 1995. I have never received so much as a call asking for information about gambling problems from anyone in administration in any college. However, every time I have written a column, I have received many calls from the students themselves, asking how and where they can get help.

The shame is that there are only a handful of colleges that I know of that have taken a proactive role about gambling education and prevention. Texas Tech University is the only institution that I am aware of that has a Gamblers Anonymous meeting on campus. I believe that is a step in the right direction.

When I spoke recently at the University of Kentucky, athletics director C. M. Newton opened the lecture to media and the public, as well as the students. Mr. Newton understands this problem and what can happen, since he played on a team in the 1950s that was involved in a point-shaving scandal. Although he wasn't involved, he knows what a devastating effect this had on his teammates.

Look at the research the NCAA recently funded. A total of 648 male Division I basketball and football players responded to this survey. Of that group, 25.5 percent said they gambled on sporting events, four percent said they bet on events in which they played, and three players said they received money from a gambler for not playing well in a game.

I wonder about the 1,352 student-athletes who did not respond to this survey and why they did not.

It wouldn't take much more than to read the Tim Layden report called "The Campus Gambling Epidemic," which appeared in the April 3, 10 and 17, 1995, issues of Sports Illustrated, to understand the magnitude of the gambling problems on college campuses.

The recent HBO report "Real Sports" (aired November 12) or a recent ABC Nightline show (aired November 18) also point to the seriousness of this problem.

On the other side of the coin, I find it interesting that some members of the media minimize the gambling problem on campuses and think nothing of writing or verbalizing information about point spreads and/or giving advice on which team to bet.

Students should not be fooled by people who run 800 or 900 hot lines that sell information about gambling. I remember last year that Danny Sheridan in USA Today said that Northwestern University was a million to one to win the Big Ten football championship. Well, we know what happened there!

Another example that comes to mind involves The Dallas Morning News, which several years ago had a gorilla from the local zoo picking games. He was doing better than most of the sportswriters!

At an NCAA symposium held March 28 in New York City, I said, "The next thing that's going to happen is going to be a point-shaving scandal. It is just around the corner." Horace Balmer, vice-president of security for the National Basketball Association, said that two Virginia high schools were being investigated by the FBI and state police for point shaving. An FBI statistic was quoted at the symposium: $2.5 billion would be bet on the Final Four.

"Gambling truly threatens the integrity of college basketball," Newton said at the symposium. "We have a whole generation of student-athletes who have not been exposed to a scandal. They don't know the ruination it can have on their lives."

The losers on the college campuses are the administrators who ignore the issue of gambling, but the real victims will be the students who may become addicted compulsive gamblers because they had no education or understanding of what compulsive gambling can do to their lives, careers and families.

Maybe college administrators should know what students already know: It's easier to place a bet on a college campus than to buy a pack of cigarettes or a can of beer. You can do it from the phone in your room or you can do it by going down the hall to another student's room. This may be the room of a student who has a gambling problem and is bookmaking on campus in order to support his or her habit.

Let's hope that your college will not be the next one to make headlines. Don't allow any more time to go by without offering education and information to your students.

Arnie Wexler and his wife Sheila present workshops and seminars on compulsive gambling issues. They may be reached at 908/774-0019.

Letters to the Editor -- Reader: Not all media coverage unequal

The Baltimore Sun, our only newspaper, covers women's college and high-school sports absolutely equally.

The Lacrosse Hall of Fame, headquartered here, nominates and inducts annually the same number of men and women to the highest honor the game awards. Lacrosse Magazine gives heavy coverage to the women's game.

Please note then that Baltimore's media covers both genders' sports equally.

Donald T. Fritz
Historian/Archivist
The Lacrosse Foundation

Coaches not well-paid

I am writing in reply to an article by Richard Lapchick ("Changing times demand coaches' input") that appeared in the November 11 issue of The NCAA News.

While I agree with the bulk of the article, I think it is misleading. To say that coaches are paid well implies that all coaches are. In fact, only a small minority of college coaches are paid well.

Most are underpaid and are required to meet all the new standards laid out by schools. The days of "just coaching" are over, and I agree with that -- in fact, that is a good thing. But please do not say that all coaches are paid very well.

Finally, I think that we are still dealing with a hypocritical situation in athletics. Recently in the Big Ten Conference, several football coaches have been let go because they were not winning. Yet in at least two cases, the coaches did an excellent job of improving team behavior, team grade-point average and team graduation rates.

The reason for the firings? They were not winning. What kind of message are we sending?

James Fritz
Head Lacrosse Coach
Pfeiffer College

Editor's note: It may not have been clear that Lapchick's article, which was reprinted from an American Football Coaches Association publication, was directed primarily toward Division I-A football coaches.

Opinions -- Public receives mixed messages on issues like gambling

"It does seem that we create these gray areas. We radiate these heavy messages into people, the way all of the media plays to the gambling game, and then when people respond to these messages, we declare it to be unethical. It's similar to having this heavy sex-saturated culture, and then we wonder why there are so many pregnant teenagers."

James E. Delany, commissioner
Big Ten Conference
Indianapolis Star

"The bedrock of athletics is that it's live theater. You don't know the outcome and (the betting lines) are attempts to predict the outcome. As soon as the American public believes the outcome is open to manipulation, then not only does the educational value go out of intercollegiate athletics, but so does the integrity."

Dick Meister, columnist
The Buffalo News

"It can't be a coincidence that as the money-grubbing has increased and the stress on nonmonetary values decreased, the incidence of serious misconduct by athletes on and off the field has escalated. Quite naturally, much of the off-the-field trouble involves athletes trying to get more money for themselves.

"What else can we expect of a system in which football and basketball coaches at major schools can make annual salaries in the high six figures and get almost as much in addition by endorsing products, outfitting their players in particular brands of footwear and engaging in other less-than-ethical commercial ventures denied their supposedly amateur players?

"What else can we expect of a system in which the schools get millions of dollars for TV rights from broadcasters who use the schools' athletes in what is primarily an attempt to peddle fast food, beer, sneakers and anything else they think might bring a profit?

"The athletes are not really amateurs, of course. They are paid to play -- tuition, room, board, travel expenses and extras, out-in-the-open and under-the-table.

"But whatever the players get, it's chicken feed, only a fraction of the huge sums their play generates for the colleges and universities that recruit them to help the schools win games and thus increase their athletics department revenues. (Many) don't even get college degrees for their efforts. They're fortunate if they even attend many classes, given their heavy practice and game schedules."

Editorial
Omaha World-Herald

"It seems incredible that a college athlete could get mixed up in gambling -- and even more incredible that in Boston, one of the bets was for $1,000 and another for $800. Whatever became of the idea that athletes are so strapped for cash by the NCAA's tight rules against gifts that they can barely afford a plane ticket home for the holidays?

"The unwritten social consensus seems to be that sports gambling is officially illegal, but as long as the athletes playing the games are not involved, anyone else should be able to bet on the games. It's all part of a gambling mentality that has spread in the 1990s, with governments sponsoring casino gambling and urging people to play the lottery -- the sanitized version of the old numbers game -- as a ticket to financial success.

"Communities tolerate slot machines and dice games, calling them 'economic development.' Charities sponsor 'Vegas nights.' Society even winks at illegal bookmaking. In such a climate, is it any wonder that 19-year-old football players might be pulled into betting on other games, then betting on their own games and then, in logical progression, missing a tackle or dropping a pass to make sure that their game ends with the desired point spread?"

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