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NCAA working with Las Vegas toprotect integrity of college hoops■ “Fixed games would damage both college basketball and legal sportsbooksKANSAS CITY, Mo, (AP) Between the staid NCAA and the glamorous, anything-goes LasVegas Strip, a curious tie took root Normally, these two are worlds apart. I he NCAA campaignsagainst gambling at every turn andhas adopted bylaws that will prohibit I .as Vegas from ever hostingits annual convention.Yet, both sides share a mutual interest in the integrity of collegesports If games were “fixed” by players or officials shaving points to insure gamblers winning bets. Nevada’s legal sportsbooks could lose a fortune.Die N( AA, whose lifeblood is CBS television money and other revenue trom its super-successful basketball tournament, could lose even more.“We try to maintain contacts with individuals in Las Vegas,” said Rich Hilliard, a director of enforcement for the NCAA who helps keep a watchful eye on gamblers and gambling. “It’s in their best interests when they think something is amiss to alert us.They will take a game right off if there's a big fluctuation in the point spread. These are people who are legitimate employees of the gambling industry in Nevada.”For a variety of reasons, many officials believe the climate is ripe for a new scandal engulfing college basketball because gambling on sports events is growing among college students in general.“1 have no knowledge or information that something's about to happen,” said Dave Cawood, the NCAA's assistant executive director for broadcast services. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not going tohappen today.Ut,'It s prominent for fraternities and other student groups to sell parlay cards,” Cawood said. “People don't even think about it anymore, it’s so common.”Hilliard said there have been “more cases in the past three yearsinvolving student-athletes and gambling than there had been the previous five years.“Not point shaving,” he added. I’m talking about students and student-athletes involved with par-lay cards anti commonplace gambling, and also gambling on college events.”For the NCAA, the value of the games’ credibility was never greater. On Tuesday, the NCAA agreed to a $1,725 billion contract that keeps the Final Four on CBS through 2002. It is the highest total pricetag of any TV sports rights deal ever made.The most recent point-shaving scandal to rock college basketball came in 1985. Another such scandal during this time of heightened public skepticism might undermine the Final Four itself. And a point-shaving scandal that damages the Final Four might also spur congressional intervention in college athletics, the biggest fear ofmost administrators.But officials also fear that innocent players could get trapped unwittingly.‘‘An athlete could be just acting like any other student in a dorm and play one of those parlay cards for a dollar, not understanding the ramifications,” Cawood said “And suddenly his whole career and the university and his teammates and his coach could be tarnished by the revelation that,‘Here's a student athlete betting onsports.’“A guy might not give it a sec ond thought if everybody else in the dorm was doing it.”The NCAA briefly considered, then abandoned the idea of withholding tournament credentials from newspapers publishing point spreads.People believe one factor making college players more susceptible than ever to gamblers' offers is the spread of legal casinos around the country.“It used to be that you had to go to Las Vegas to gamble legally,”said Jim Haney executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. “Now there are riverboat operations up and down the Mississippi, gambling on Indian reservations Things that raised our eyebrows 15 years ago are now acceptable. It’s something coaches are verv worried about.”Others believe the biggest danger comes from drugs. Lem Banker, a prominent Las Vegas gambler and author of sports betting books, said he would be “more suspicious of the officials than of the star players.”“Right now I think the game is pretty honest,” Banker said. “Every star player thinks he’s going to get a big NBA or NFL contract, so they’re going to be very hesitant to risk all that for a $5,000 payoff. But a guy can get hooked on something, and then he could be blackmailed.”
Newspaper Details
Greensburg Daily News
Greensburg, Indiana, US
Wed, Dec 07, 1994
Page 15
Full Page
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WV, USA 03 May 2020
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