GAMBLING
Failure to curb school sports betting
spells trouble for youth, expert says
Mark
Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@illinois.edu
7/1/02
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — With
efforts to curb college sports gambling blocked by congressional opponents,
a generation of teenagers and young people may be entering the workforce with
gambling debts and addictions, an expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
asserts in a scholarly article.
John W. Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy who has written widely
on gambling, examined the politics that defeated a ban on college and high school
sports betting in Congress in 2000. His case study, "College and Amateur
Sports Gambling: Gambling Away Our Youth," was published in the Villanova
Sports & Entertainment Law Journal.
The High School and College Gambling Prohibition Act was designed to end legalized
gambling on high school and college sports as well as the summer and winter
Olympics. The bill’s drafters wanted to plug a loophole in a 1992 law that
prohibited college sports gambling in all states except Nevada, which was exempted
because of pre-existing laws permitting college sports gambling.
The bill came on the heels of well-publicized incidents involving college basketball
and football players who had shaved points, conspired to fix games or bet against
their team.
Law-enforcement agents reported that betting by teenagers and college students
was increasing rapidly. On some campuses, sports bookmaking rings cooperated
with organized-crime bookies, and in a few cases mobsters had established direct
links with players.
The bill banning Nevada college sports gambling was enthusiastically backed
by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and major educational
institutions, including the American Council of Education and American Association
of State Colleges and Universities.
Nevertheless, Kindt noted, the bill ran into fierce opposition from casino lobbyists
and the Nevada congressional delegation. A public relations and advertising
campaign initiated by casino interests, for example, claimed that politicians
wanted "to snatch away your rights."
In February 2001, a Nevada congressman drafted a bill that, according to Kindt,
"constituted a direct financial attack on U.S. higher education" by
penalizing colleges and universities that failed to prevent illegal sports gambling
on campus.
While the NCAA last year banned sports gambling by campus athletes, a ban on
gaming on college games by students and others failed in Congress. Nevada has
retained its sports gambling parlors.
"The cost associated with legalized gambling can be likened to the costs
associated with America’s drug-abuse problem," Kindt concluded. Total
social costs from gambling – including bankruptcy filings, divorce, criminal
activity and lost work – amount to about $80 billion a year, he wrote,
compared with $70 billion a year for drug addiction. The co-author of the paper
is Thomas Asmar, a University of Illinois law graduate.