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Official: Betting ruining integrity of college sports
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Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. – A top NCAA official told Nevada lawmakers on Friday that legal and illegal betting is threatening the integrity of every college game.
William Saum, the NCAA's director of Agent and Gambling Activities, also told Nevada legislators, regulators and gambling industry figures that point-shaving is the best example of how college sports betting ruins games.
"I have witnessed students, their families and institutions publicly humiliated," Saum said. "I have seen students expelled from college, lose athletics scholarships worth thousands of dollars, and jeopardize any hope of a professional career in athletics."
The NCAA has been lobbying Congress to pass a law banning all betting on college and amateur sports.
Members of the state's Assembly Judiciary Committee reacted by promptly passing a resolution urging Congress not to outlaw Nevada's legal sports betting industry. The state's Senate is expected to do the same when they receive the Assembly resolution.
Sen. Dina Titus, a professor at UNLV, said she has never heard that student gambling was a problem. If it is, she said the NCAA should focus on getting universities to do something instead of trying to place regulations on Nevada, the only state to allow such betting.
Lawmakers also said Nevada's strict regulation of legal sports gambling prevents point-shaving from happening more often.
State Gaming Commission chairman Brian Sandoval said the NCAA's efforts to ban sports betting would "eliminate Nevada's watchdog role in this whole process."
Bill Bible, head of the Nevada Resort Association, which represents major hotel-casinos, said Saum and the NCAA "are using Nevada as a scapegoat for their inadequacies."
"To say the least, we are insulted and disappointed by the NCAA's bewildering position," Bible said.
Legislators estimated that legal sports betting represents less than 1 percent, or $2.5 billion, of an estimated $380 billion bet around the nation every year on sports. One-fourth of the Nevada betting involves college games.
Saum estimated that 25 percent of student basketball and football athletes bet on their games, and the NCAA has been urging universities to do more to stop sports betting.
"This isn't about the NCAA against the state of Nevada," Saum said. "We have never said that if Nevada makes sports gambling illegal that the problem will go away -- but that a piece of the problem will go away."
U.S. Senators Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and John McCain, R-Ariz., first introduced legislation in Congress a year ago targeting legal betting in Nevada. The NCAA-backed bill stalled in committee, but they plan to reintroduce it this year.
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Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. – A top NCAA official told Nevada lawmakers on Friday that legal and illegal betting is threatening the integrity of every college game.
William Saum, the NCAA's director of Agent and Gambling Activities, also told Nevada legislators, regulators and gambling industry figures that point-shaving is the best example of how college sports betting ruins games.
"I have witnessed students, their families and institutions publicly humiliated," Saum said. "I have seen students expelled from college, lose athletics scholarships worth thousands of dollars, and jeopardize any hope of a professional career in athletics."
The NCAA has been lobbying Congress to pass a law banning all betting on college and amateur sports.
Members of the state's Assembly Judiciary Committee reacted by promptly passing a resolution urging Congress not to outlaw Nevada's legal sports betting industry. The state's Senate is expected to do the same when they receive the Assembly resolution.
Sen. Dina Titus, a professor at UNLV, said she has never heard that student gambling was a problem. If it is, she said the NCAA should focus on getting universities to do something instead of trying to place regulations on Nevada, the only state to allow such betting.
Lawmakers also said Nevada's strict regulation of legal sports gambling prevents point-shaving from happening more often.
State Gaming Commission chairman Brian Sandoval said the NCAA's efforts to ban sports betting would "eliminate Nevada's watchdog role in this whole process."
Bill Bible, head of the Nevada Resort Association, which represents major hotel-casinos, said Saum and the NCAA "are using Nevada as a scapegoat for their inadequacies."
"To say the least, we are insulted and disappointed by the NCAA's bewildering position," Bible said.
Legislators estimated that legal sports betting represents less than 1 percent, or $2.5 billion, of an estimated $380 billion bet around the nation every year on sports. One-fourth of the Nevada betting involves college games.
Saum estimated that 25 percent of student basketball and football athletes bet on their games, and the NCAA has been urging universities to do more to stop sports betting.
"This isn't about the NCAA against the state of Nevada," Saum said. "We have never said that if Nevada makes sports gambling illegal that the problem will go away -- but that a piece of the problem will go away."
U.S. Senators Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and John McCain, R-Ariz., first introduced legislation in Congress a year ago targeting legal betting in Nevada. The NCAA-backed bill stalled in committee, but they plan to reintroduce it this year.