A realistic look at Betting Sports: It's already rampant

A realistic look at Betting Sports: It's already rampant
By ISAAC SCHLECHT
DELAWARE VOICE
My roommate last semester at the University of Delaware, a Philadelphia native, has learned an awful lot about Delaware in the past few months. He's learned that we were the first state to ratify the constitution, the home of Bob Marley (for a little over a month), and that we're hurting just as much as any other state from the current economic downturn.
Delaware's historic budget shortfall is forcing our elected officials to make difficult decisions -- cutting employee salaries, raising fees and taxes and reducing the size and scope of government.
When I told him that the governor was considering the legalization of sports betting, a $55 million solution, his reaction was remarkable: "Oh, yeah, everyone does that." In fact, he was close to right. Jeff, down the hall, had $50 on Duke. His girlfriend, Katie, had just as much on Pittsburgh.
Sports betting is an everyday occurrence in the dorms of the University of Delaware. "In fact," my roommate told me, "I don't know anyone who loves the game who doesn't throw down a little money."
While its leadership shouts itself hoarse about the need to preserve the "integrity" of the game, the NCAA doesn't appear to realize that integrity would improve if sports gambling were made legal.
Players and teams don't engage in point shaving on a whim: They're caught up with illegal forces beyond their control, and resort to point shaving in order to sate bookies who very often maintain close ties to organized crime.
If sports betting were made legal, the real offenders behind the scandals that wracked Pete Rose in the late 1980's or the infamous Black Sox of 1919 would be easily caught, since players would have legal recourse to prosecute bookies who suggested illegal gaming.
States where sports betting is legal, like Nevada, maintain strict regulations and constant monitoring of the industry, eliminating the manipulation and trickery inherent in "underground" betting.
Dan Wetzel, one of the nation's foremost sports journalists, wrote this past Friday that "one of the best ways to guard against point shaving is to legalize and legitimize sports gambling," because regulation serves as a safety net, often with a fairly high proven rate of success. As Louis Brandeis famously wrote about a very different sort of crime, "sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Ironically, for an organization lead by a former Professor of Philosophy, Myles Brand, the NCAA masks a sizable core of hypocrisy beneath its external pretense of opposition to sports gambling. ESPN, the NCAA's primary network, publishes betting brackets and point spreads online and routinely discusses them on-air. Every year, NCAA teams play in the Las Vegas Bowl, and the NCAA holds a tournament slot for a team that wins a conference in Reno, Nevada.
The stark contradictions between bluster and reality in the NCAA are both logically inconsistent and morally unethical, concepts that I hope Mr. Brand would readily recognize.
Families up and down our state are hurting. Behind each dollar sign and decimal place, there are the faces and stories of real people who are counting on these $55 million for vital state services. There are students like myself, who need a world-class education to compete in the global marketplace of tomorrow. There are teachers and state employees who've dedicated their lives to public service and desperately need resources to continue their life's work. There are families of all walks of life whose need for police and fire protection hasn't dried up with the budget shortfall. The choice is clear. Our government is still shaking in the wake of the greatest economic downturn of my entire life, if not that of my parents as well. Legalizing sports betting will grant our state $55 million of revenue and drive problem gambling and point shaving out into the open, allowing for legal recourse and proper regulation.
The decisions that we make today have real dollar signs attached to them, and from here on out, the citizens of Delaware will use debate, discussion and dissent, the tools of democracy, to hammer out how we will make ends meet on a record-shattering $750 million budget shortfall. The NCAA's misplaced loyalties, shameful strong-arming and fallacy-ridden logic form no part of this democratic equation.


A realistic look at Betting Sports: It's already rampant