Throwing The Game

(2 of 6)

None of that's surprising, given the mixed message that Congress sends to student athletes; gambling on college sports is a federal crime in 49 states, but it's legal in Nevada. "People in general, college students in particular, have the belief that betting on college athletics is O.K. because it's legal in Nevada," said Lou Holtz, the former Notre Dame football coach now at the University of South Carolina, when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee in June. "We will do a great disservice to the youth of this country if we do not take action now...It's illegal to bet on college athletics in 49 states. Why isn't it in the 50th state as well?"

Think what would happen if Congress legalized the sale and use of marijuana in one state only. That's what lawmakers have done with sports gambling.

For a little more than two decades now, the sports books, as they are called in Nevada, have been an integral part of casinos large and small. Walk into any casino and you will see an area carved out for sports gamblers. There the legal gambler may spread his sports pages and tip sheets across one of the rows of desks usually found in college libraries, each individually lighted, or sit back in one of the dozens of plush chairs and, while being served drinks by a cocktail waitress, study the giant electronic board that covers the wall in front, offering information on the sporting events of the day, from the latest odds to reports on player injuries.

You can bet not only on who wins a game but also on the total points scored by individual players, most points scored by a player, total three-point field goals by one basketball team or both teams combined, total team points and rebounds combined, total points scored in the game, the half-time score--even the free-throw shooting percentage of individual players.

The most insidious aspect of legalized betting on college teams is the point spread. It raises dark questions where there should be none. For someone betting the spread, it matters not whether your favorite team wins, but rather by how much they win or lose. Las Vegas casinos set a point spread for each game. It's published in newspapers across the U.S. and used by illegal bookmakers. Over the years, college coaches have taken the news media to task for providing this bookmaking service. Only a handful of large publications have refused to print the collegiate betting lines, among them the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and the Sporting News.

Here's how the betting lines work: say a casino's sports book favors the Duke basketball team to beat Florida State by 11 points. If you bet on Duke, but Duke wins by only 8 points, you lose. If you bet on Florida State, you win.

And that's the source of a nagging question--not just for gamblers but for fans, coaches and university administrators. If a team beats its opponents but not by the official Vegas spread, were the games fixed? Did players deliberately miss shots? Did they intentionally foul? Did they purposely fail to block shots?

Therein lies the sinister beauty of rigging a game by shaving points: It's nearly impossible to detect, as long as the players do some serious acting. In one fixed game, the gambler who engineered the point shaving complimented the players involved saying he "liked the way [they] made it appear that they were playing hard."

The perverse influence of the point spread is that it pressures teams to rack up enough points to beat the line. Says coach Holtz: "I have witnessed our football players be idolized, praised and cheered after a win. I've also witnessed them being ridiculed, demonized and ostracized after a win. The only difference was in one case we covered the point spread. In the other we didn't."

Thinking about such pressure can conceivably have a distorting influence on a coach's game strategy. Says Orlando ("Tubby") Smith, the men's basketball coach at the University of Kentucky: "What am I to do if I know that my team is favored by 17 points, and our outmanned opponent is trailing by 20 late?...Do I clear out my bench and play all my reserves or leave the regulars in a little longer? Just knowing the line as I make my decisions courtside could determine winners and losers across the country. It's a very disturbing situation...No longer is it a simple matter of winning or losing. The question begs, Did your respective team cover?"