The NCAA buried the news last week. In its grand announcement of a comprehensive gambling survey, it summarized there was a "disturbing" frequency of sports wagering.
No kidding. Anyway, there was "task force" this ... "proactive" that ... protect the integrity of sports ... blah, blah, blah.
The overriding assumption still is that major-college sports are on the up-and-up right now. But buried at the top of page 2 of the press release is the news that 1.1 percent of football players reported taking money for playing poorly in a game. More than double that number, 2.3 percent, had been asked to affect the outcome of a game because of a gambling debt.
Apply those percentages just to Division I-A football and they become stunning. Multiply 85 scholarships by 117 and there are approximately 10,000 I-A scholarship football players. Using the NCAA's numbers that means ...
Approximately 100 players influenced the outcome of a game at the highest levels of college football.
Approximately 230 were asked to influence the outcome of a game.
Now consider that most experts will say that only offensive players would be involved in such a scheme. Specifically, quarterbacks.
"It has to be a quarterback," said professional gambler Steve Fezzik from Las Vegas. "It doesn't pay to have a punter."
Now consider there are, at most, approximately 200 starting quarterbacks in a I-A season and the numbers become more than disturbing. And most of the gambling action, it can be assumed, is on the biggest programs. A good cutoff point would be the 63 BCS schools.
That all suggests that college football could not become professional wrestling. It might have reached that point.
"It's (extrapolation) fair when you put those numbers in that context," said Bill Saum, the NCAA's director of agent, gambling and amateurism activities. "What it says is we have a heck of a challenge ahead of us."
The 1990s gave us the biggest college gambling scandals since the 1950s when point shaving almost eliminated big time basketball in New York City. There was Arizona State basketball and Northwestern and Boston College football.
What's next?
"In the 2000s you're probably going to see two point-shaving scandals," Fezzik said. "The NCAA's goal, I would say, is one occur every 20 years. To say we're going to snuff this out completely, well, look at Enron."
While it's still easier to fix a college basketball game (fewer players), the 1.1 percent football response is double the rate of basketball players.
"I think the survey is low because I'm concerned about the thousands of kids that didn't answer the survey," said Arnie Wexler, probably the top authority on compulsive gambling. Wexler, a 66-year-old recovering gambler, has spent 33 years helping addicts while fighting his compulsion.
"I'm surprised there hasn't been more scandals," he said. "Right now there are plenty of addicted kids out there. It's easier to place a bet on any college campus than to buy a pack of cigarettes or get a can of beer."
What the NCAA didn't say in its release is that Las Vegas' sports books remain one of the best tools in fighting illegal gambling. A move of a betting line two points can suggest improper activity. A bet of $2,000-$2,500 on a single team by a single individual could raise eyebrows in a sports book, Fezzik said.
"In Division I, if you see a crazy line move, it really shows that Las Vegas helps to work as a watchdog," said Fezzik, a 40-year-old former Southern California insurance executive who gave it all up to become a pro gambler.
From his standpoint, Fezzik says that the games are mostly safe from taint. In the past five years, the worst football situation he has heard is a Division I quarterback where "strange things were going on with point spreads and his performance. But those are just rumors."
Like a lot of folks, though, Fezzik would like players to get a stipend from the NCAA. That might help abolish the temptation to gamble, but ...
"It would be extremely naive of me to say, 'Hey, it doesn't happen at all,'" he said. "But to talk about this compromising the integrity of the sport (is not true). One is too many but it doesn't compromise the sport, feeling it may be fixed like boxing."
The latest percentages were actually lower than previous studies that come out of the universities of Michigan and Cincinnati over the past decade. But those samplings were so small that the accuracy pales to that of the latest NCAA survey (21,000 respondents).
"I do believe one of the positives of this study is that if you spend time and money and effort, you can reduce the numbers," Saum said.
Or, you can just spend.
"If you ask me to get you down for $100,000 and you gave me a day, I could do it," Fezzik said. "Five hundred here, eight hundred there ..."
By Dennis Dodd
SportsLine.com Senior Writer
No kidding. Anyway, there was "task force" this ... "proactive" that ... protect the integrity of sports ... blah, blah, blah.
The overriding assumption still is that major-college sports are on the up-and-up right now. But buried at the top of page 2 of the press release is the news that 1.1 percent of football players reported taking money for playing poorly in a game. More than double that number, 2.3 percent, had been asked to affect the outcome of a game because of a gambling debt.
Apply those percentages just to Division I-A football and they become stunning. Multiply 85 scholarships by 117 and there are approximately 10,000 I-A scholarship football players. Using the NCAA's numbers that means ...
Approximately 100 players influenced the outcome of a game at the highest levels of college football.
Approximately 230 were asked to influence the outcome of a game.
Now consider that most experts will say that only offensive players would be involved in such a scheme. Specifically, quarterbacks.
"It has to be a quarterback," said professional gambler Steve Fezzik from Las Vegas. "It doesn't pay to have a punter."
Now consider there are, at most, approximately 200 starting quarterbacks in a I-A season and the numbers become more than disturbing. And most of the gambling action, it can be assumed, is on the biggest programs. A good cutoff point would be the 63 BCS schools.
That all suggests that college football could not become professional wrestling. It might have reached that point.
"It's (extrapolation) fair when you put those numbers in that context," said Bill Saum, the NCAA's director of agent, gambling and amateurism activities. "What it says is we have a heck of a challenge ahead of us."
The 1990s gave us the biggest college gambling scandals since the 1950s when point shaving almost eliminated big time basketball in New York City. There was Arizona State basketball and Northwestern and Boston College football.
What's next?
"In the 2000s you're probably going to see two point-shaving scandals," Fezzik said. "The NCAA's goal, I would say, is one occur every 20 years. To say we're going to snuff this out completely, well, look at Enron."
While it's still easier to fix a college basketball game (fewer players), the 1.1 percent football response is double the rate of basketball players.
"I think the survey is low because I'm concerned about the thousands of kids that didn't answer the survey," said Arnie Wexler, probably the top authority on compulsive gambling. Wexler, a 66-year-old recovering gambler, has spent 33 years helping addicts while fighting his compulsion.
"I'm surprised there hasn't been more scandals," he said. "Right now there are plenty of addicted kids out there. It's easier to place a bet on any college campus than to buy a pack of cigarettes or get a can of beer."
What the NCAA didn't say in its release is that Las Vegas' sports books remain one of the best tools in fighting illegal gambling. A move of a betting line two points can suggest improper activity. A bet of $2,000-$2,500 on a single team by a single individual could raise eyebrows in a sports book, Fezzik said.
"In Division I, if you see a crazy line move, it really shows that Las Vegas helps to work as a watchdog," said Fezzik, a 40-year-old former Southern California insurance executive who gave it all up to become a pro gambler.
From his standpoint, Fezzik says that the games are mostly safe from taint. In the past five years, the worst football situation he has heard is a Division I quarterback where "strange things were going on with point spreads and his performance. But those are just rumors."
Like a lot of folks, though, Fezzik would like players to get a stipend from the NCAA. That might help abolish the temptation to gamble, but ...
"It would be extremely naive of me to say, 'Hey, it doesn't happen at all,'" he said. "But to talk about this compromising the integrity of the sport (is not true). One is too many but it doesn't compromise the sport, feeling it may be fixed like boxing."
The latest percentages were actually lower than previous studies that come out of the universities of Michigan and Cincinnati over the past decade. But those samplings were so small that the accuracy pales to that of the latest NCAA survey (21,000 respondents).
"I do believe one of the positives of this study is that if you spend time and money and effort, you can reduce the numbers," Saum said.
Or, you can just spend.
"If you ask me to get you down for $100,000 and you gave me a day, I could do it," Fezzik said. "Five hundred here, eight hundred there ..."
By Dennis Dodd
SportsLine.com Senior Writer
