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March 31, 2002
A YEAR AT SCHOOL
N.C.A.A. Goes Soft on Gambling
By ROBERT LIPSYTE
ATLANTA-- Hungry for dish and dirt before heading off last week to the Final Four, that joyous celebration of highest education, I hit an online gambling site. These guys never disappoint. Indiana just didn't belong there with Oklahoma, Kansas and Maryland, the bookies confided, but there was an upside: Duke long gone means we are spared the embarrassment of Coach K stalking the sidelines and spouting obscenities that TV has to bleep.
Who would ever tell you something like that but the righteous folks who cover college sports with the spread? Then I felt a little sleazy myself, what with the N.C.A.A. wagging its forefinger in my face and crying, What could be a greater evil than adults gambling on the innocent games of youth? Cedric Dempsey, the president of the N.C.A.A., has listed as a priority of his self-proclaimed "Ced's Big Issues" the end of gambling on college sports in Nevada, the only state where it is legal.
Ced's point was that banning legal betting on college sports would not only send a clear zero-tolerance message, it would also prevent illegal bookies from going to Las Vegas to lay off or hedge their bets. The gaming industry discounted this as a feel-good scheme to avoid dealing with the real issue, an epidemic of campus gambling. Besides, it claimed, of the estimated $380 billion bet annually on sports — a figure that defies both imagination and hard proof — only 1 percent is bet at Nevada sports books.
Whatever the numbers, I wonder how much is bet on the tournament's 64 games? How much of that is bet illegally? How much by college kids? Is it just latte money or tuition? Is there an April Fool here?
Beats me. Ced's big issue seems more about maintaining an image of "the integrity of the game" than dealing with a student problem. In any case, Ced's big contract with the N.C.A.A. was not renewed, and he never said anything about the Bracket Racket.
While March Madness ends with the month at midnight tonight, Bracket Racket continues through April 1 to the end of the N.C.A.A. championship final. Bracket Racket is the disruption/divertissement caused in American offices, college dormitories and correctional facility dayrooms by the wagering (and endless bull sessions) on the 65 teams that were selected to appear on millions of online, newspaper, Xeroxed, and handscrawled charts.
To be anti-gambling in America is to be against state lotteries, bingo, American Indian casinos, kitchen poker and all the little scratch or tear contests that help kids eat more grease and drink more sugar and sodium water. Right now, for example, if you pop the right cap off a bottle of Mountain Dew, you would win a trip to the 2003 men's or women's Final Four.
If the cap bears the name of one of 20 colleges, and that one wins this year's Final Four, you can win a $45 jersey. When I last checked, before the semifinal games, only three of the seven colleges that had survived in the men's or women's bracket were on the list — Maryland, Duke and UConn. I called Kansas to find out why it hadn't made the sweetened 20. Turns out that Kansas is a school that pours Coke.
Mountain Dew is owned by Pepsi. Does that make this game of chance rigged? Are they shaving jerseys?
Marc Isenberg thinks so. A writer and lecturer, he's in Atlanta to sell coaches and athletic directors his anti-gambling pamphlets and programs. He calls the Mountain Dew promotion a "gambling-like activity" that creates a climate of acceptance for gambling. (The promotion, by the way, is called "Play the Bracket.")
Isenberg says he is not anti-gambling and has no problem with adults in Las Vegas betting on college games. He maintains that adolescents are the most vulnerable to addictive gambling and that athletes are the most vulnerable of all — the risk-taking, the willingness to come back after losing, the need for competition, are all built into the jock personality. It was Michael Jordan's father, after all, who explained that his son's heavy wagering was not a gambling problem but a competition problem.
The larger issue may be the "Beer and Circus" syndrome as explained at length in the book of that name by Murray Sperber, the Indiana professor who became the black Knight in the era of Bobby. Sperber's contention, which is slowly bubbling up into the collective consciousness, is that big-time college basketball and football are narcotics that keep students from realizing how poor an education they are getting.
Add as side effects of that syndrome the serious campus problems of binge drinking and sports gambling.
One cautionary tale will be aired tonight on FX. The movie "Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie" is based on the story of Benny Silman, who spent 46 months in prison for his role in a point-shaving scandal at Arizona State University nine years ago. A student at A.S.U., Silman gambled, booked bets, lost money and enticed an A.S.U. star, Stevin (Hedake) Smith, to slack off on defense so that the team would not cover the spread. The sentencing judge declared that "this scandal leads to cynicism about what college sports is all about."
The latest scandal sounds worse. A University of Michigan booster, Ed Martin, was recently indicted on charges of giving $616,000, apparently from his illegal gambling profits, to such Wolverine stars as Chris Webber, now with the Sacramento Kings. Webber was the best of the so-called Fab Five. The coaches at the time made sure Martin had good seats to home games and a hotel room for the Final Four.
Could Webber and his teammates have done anything for Martin in return for such gifts? Like slack off on defense?
Isenberg thinks the sharpies in Las Vegas and on my online service would have noticed immediately if unusually large amounts of money were bet. Apparently, it was legal bookies who helped alert authorities to the Arizona State point-fixing scheme.
This is a relief to me. Chris Webber is a major player in the Mountain Dew games.
A YEAR AT SCHOOL
N.C.A.A. Goes Soft on Gambling
By ROBERT LIPSYTE
ATLANTA-- Hungry for dish and dirt before heading off last week to the Final Four, that joyous celebration of highest education, I hit an online gambling site. These guys never disappoint. Indiana just didn't belong there with Oklahoma, Kansas and Maryland, the bookies confided, but there was an upside: Duke long gone means we are spared the embarrassment of Coach K stalking the sidelines and spouting obscenities that TV has to bleep.
Who would ever tell you something like that but the righteous folks who cover college sports with the spread? Then I felt a little sleazy myself, what with the N.C.A.A. wagging its forefinger in my face and crying, What could be a greater evil than adults gambling on the innocent games of youth? Cedric Dempsey, the president of the N.C.A.A., has listed as a priority of his self-proclaimed "Ced's Big Issues" the end of gambling on college sports in Nevada, the only state where it is legal.
Ced's point was that banning legal betting on college sports would not only send a clear zero-tolerance message, it would also prevent illegal bookies from going to Las Vegas to lay off or hedge their bets. The gaming industry discounted this as a feel-good scheme to avoid dealing with the real issue, an epidemic of campus gambling. Besides, it claimed, of the estimated $380 billion bet annually on sports — a figure that defies both imagination and hard proof — only 1 percent is bet at Nevada sports books.
Whatever the numbers, I wonder how much is bet on the tournament's 64 games? How much of that is bet illegally? How much by college kids? Is it just latte money or tuition? Is there an April Fool here?
Beats me. Ced's big issue seems more about maintaining an image of "the integrity of the game" than dealing with a student problem. In any case, Ced's big contract with the N.C.A.A. was not renewed, and he never said anything about the Bracket Racket.
While March Madness ends with the month at midnight tonight, Bracket Racket continues through April 1 to the end of the N.C.A.A. championship final. Bracket Racket is the disruption/divertissement caused in American offices, college dormitories and correctional facility dayrooms by the wagering (and endless bull sessions) on the 65 teams that were selected to appear on millions of online, newspaper, Xeroxed, and handscrawled charts.
To be anti-gambling in America is to be against state lotteries, bingo, American Indian casinos, kitchen poker and all the little scratch or tear contests that help kids eat more grease and drink more sugar and sodium water. Right now, for example, if you pop the right cap off a bottle of Mountain Dew, you would win a trip to the 2003 men's or women's Final Four.
If the cap bears the name of one of 20 colleges, and that one wins this year's Final Four, you can win a $45 jersey. When I last checked, before the semifinal games, only three of the seven colleges that had survived in the men's or women's bracket were on the list — Maryland, Duke and UConn. I called Kansas to find out why it hadn't made the sweetened 20. Turns out that Kansas is a school that pours Coke.
Mountain Dew is owned by Pepsi. Does that make this game of chance rigged? Are they shaving jerseys?
Marc Isenberg thinks so. A writer and lecturer, he's in Atlanta to sell coaches and athletic directors his anti-gambling pamphlets and programs. He calls the Mountain Dew promotion a "gambling-like activity" that creates a climate of acceptance for gambling. (The promotion, by the way, is called "Play the Bracket.")
Isenberg says he is not anti-gambling and has no problem with adults in Las Vegas betting on college games. He maintains that adolescents are the most vulnerable to addictive gambling and that athletes are the most vulnerable of all — the risk-taking, the willingness to come back after losing, the need for competition, are all built into the jock personality. It was Michael Jordan's father, after all, who explained that his son's heavy wagering was not a gambling problem but a competition problem.
The larger issue may be the "Beer and Circus" syndrome as explained at length in the book of that name by Murray Sperber, the Indiana professor who became the black Knight in the era of Bobby. Sperber's contention, which is slowly bubbling up into the collective consciousness, is that big-time college basketball and football are narcotics that keep students from realizing how poor an education they are getting.
Add as side effects of that syndrome the serious campus problems of binge drinking and sports gambling.
One cautionary tale will be aired tonight on FX. The movie "Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie" is based on the story of Benny Silman, who spent 46 months in prison for his role in a point-shaving scandal at Arizona State University nine years ago. A student at A.S.U., Silman gambled, booked bets, lost money and enticed an A.S.U. star, Stevin (Hedake) Smith, to slack off on defense so that the team would not cover the spread. The sentencing judge declared that "this scandal leads to cynicism about what college sports is all about."
The latest scandal sounds worse. A University of Michigan booster, Ed Martin, was recently indicted on charges of giving $616,000, apparently from his illegal gambling profits, to such Wolverine stars as Chris Webber, now with the Sacramento Kings. Webber was the best of the so-called Fab Five. The coaches at the time made sure Martin had good seats to home games and a hotel room for the Final Four.
Could Webber and his teammates have done anything for Martin in return for such gifts? Like slack off on defense?
Isenberg thinks the sharpies in Las Vegas and on my online service would have noticed immediately if unusually large amounts of money were bet. Apparently, it was legal bookies who helped alert authorities to the Arizona State point-fixing scheme.
This is a relief to me. Chris Webber is a major player in the Mountain Dew games.
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