C.M. Newton, who chairs the NIT Selection Committee, has an impressive history in intercollegiate athletics, having coached at Alabama and Vanderbilt and having been the athletics director at Kentucky and Transylvania. As campuses begin preparing for another exciting season of college basketball, Newton spoke with The NCAA News for a three-part series about the state of the men’s game, from the new three-point line to how sports betting threatens the game. In Part 3, Newton addresses the state of the game, and what he sees as its biggest threat – sports wagering. For Part 2 (expectations for coaches), click here. For Part 1 of the series (the new three-point line), click here.

Q  What’s the status of the NIT now (both the tip-off and the postseason events)? Are you happy with the progress being made there?

Newton:  I am pleased with the leadership and with the committee. We have a bunch of retired coaches on the committee who have no dog in any hunt, and they just want to restore the NIT into a quality basketball event. I think we’ve put the prestige back into the postseason tournament in particular. Now that we have it at 32 teams and can seed the teams 1-32 – everybody knows who they will play and when the games will be played – and we have all the games on TV. Committing to take conference champions that were not selected for the NCAA tournament also was a critical decision. That rewards the team that has a great regular season but is upset in its conference tournament.

The NIT Season Tip-Off is a different animal. With more deregulation now in the regular season, we have to figure a way to give our tournament the same prestige and make it as special as the postseason event. It’s the only tournament owned by the membership. Overall, though, I am thrilled with the direction of the NIT.

Q  Do you sometimes wish you were back on the sidelines? What do you miss most?

Newton:  I loved to coach – it was the most fun thing I ever did. I would’ve paid them to let me coach basketball. Being the AD wasn’t as much fun. You kind of coached the coaches – that’s how I viewed my job as an AD – give them what they needed to do their job. But as a coach, you just zero in on those young people you are working with. There were so many rewards: winning in and of itself – or doing something people didn’t think you could do – having an impact on young people’s lives, seeing what they do and the positive impact they have after they graduate.

I was able to graduate players because I had one simple rule: You had to be on track to graduate to be able to play. That solved that. I don’t know if I would enjoy it as much with the fish-bowl atmosphere these coaches live in today. Not that you weren’t transparent before, but you could deal with issues internally before as opposed to today with the Internet, blogs and the 24-7 news environment. A lot of that today is misinformation.

Q  What’s the biggest threat these days to the game overall?

Newton:  Sports betting. I was a student-athlete at Kentucky when the first betting scandal broke, and it was a shock to all of us. I knew those guys – they were like brothers to me. It wasn’t just at Kentucky, either. That first one certainly was a major scandal, but we’ve had a betting scandal in just about every decade since. Despite all the education and so on, there’s still so much money bet on college basketball, most of it illegally, that sports betting still is the single priority. It gets at the integrity of the game. If your fans ever get to the point where they don’t think the game is an honest one, then you have real problems.

Q  What should the NCAA be doing about sports betting?

Newton:  I’m not sure the NCAA can do much more than the good educational work it already is doing, but certainly the coaches have to monitor players’ lifestyles. I also believe universities ought to take a look at sports betting on their own campuses. Betting scandals typically start with students. It isn’t some guy from the outside coming in and getting your athlete hooked; it’s a fellow student. The amount of money bet on college football and basketball right on the campus would astound you.

Q  Are there other concerns?

Newton:  I worry about the proliferation of televised games. I’ve always said there are four things you must have to have a basketball game: good players, competent coaches, qualified officials and people in the stands. If any of those is missing, then your chances of having a great game are lessened. If you have great players, coaches and officials but only a half-full arena, you don’t have as good a game. I worry about TV’s impact on that.

What we are creating is a group of college students who are not going to college games because they can sit in their dorm room or the fraternity or sorority house and watch TV. Those are our future fans and future donors. If we create a couple of generations that are not accustomed to going to college games, then we’ve done our whole sport a disservice.

I also worry about guys using college for the NBA. I don’t have any issue with guys leaving early – if he’s good enough to go pro, then fine – but so many of these guys who use college to get to the pros in college don’t want to be in college or shouldn’t be there in the first place. College has never been for everyone – guys ought to be prepared to do the academic work and play basketball at the same time – that’s what college basketball is all about.

Q  What’s the one thing you would change if you were the czar of basketball?

Newton:  If I were the czar of basketball, I would make it a one-semester sport, which would eliminate all the recruiting and academic problems – because before a guy ever played, he’d have to show he could do college work.