As “March Madness” approaches, basketball fans at LSU and throughout the country will fill their NCAA tournament brackets, not suspecting that many of the players they root for may be doing exactly the same.
Betting among friends is harmless, said English education sophomore Jarred Washington, who bets on his NCAA tournament bracket each year for entertainment.
Washington also said the same action is wrong for college players and coaches, which leads to a bigger and darker piece to a puzzle that many other fans do not know exists.
According to the NCAA Web site www.ncaa.org, the Federal Bureau of Investigation projected that $2.5 billion was illegally gambled on the 1995 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, which is second only to the NFL’s Super Bowl.
Paul Bressen, spokesperson for the FBI, said mafia-related gambling is not a yearly problem, but it does cause some concern every few years.
“They obtain money illegally all the time,” Bressen said. “This is nothing new, this is a scheme that organized crime groups have been known to use for years. There is a fair amount of gambling, and March Madness and the Super Bowl are bet on more than anything.”
A former LSU student bookie said he and his two partners could not keep a successful business up to this year’s NCAA tournament, but he did say gambling occurs on the LSU campus.
The former bookie, who asked to remain anonymous, said because every client bet on LSU football and LSU beat nearly every point spread last season, they lost a combined $2,400 and quit shortly after the basketball season began. The former bookie also said he and his two partners never worried about getting caught because they had only 15 regular clients.
Bressen said while it is true that illegal gambling is a major problem in America, he also said the statistics provided on the Web site are incorrect.
“What might have happened is the press may have quoted someone accidentally making incorrect statements,” Bressen said. “I can’t confirm it. We just don’t know. You can’t erase it from every publication, but we have no way of knowing. Unless there is some federal violation with mob money tied in, the FBI would not look into it.”
One study that caught the FBI’s attention was a 2000 study conducted by the University of Cincinnati, stating of 648 Division I intercollegiate men’s basketball and football respondents, 25.5 percent admitted gambling money on college sporting events, 3.7 percent gambled money on a game they had played in and 0.5 percent received money for not playing well in a game.
The NCAA opposes any kinds of gambling and they spell it out to make their stance as clear as possible, said LSU Associate Athletic Director of Compliance director Chris Howard.
The NCAA adopted Bylaw 10.3, prohibiting athletic department staff members and student-athletes from engaging in gambling activities related to intercollegiate or professional sporting events, which is the rule former Washington football coach Rick Neuheisel failed to follow, resulting in his termination.
The Seattle Times reported Neuheisel participated in informal NCAA basketball pools the past two years, for putting up $5,000 and winning about $20,000 the newspaper reported.
“If an athlete or coach put $1 in a pool, certainly there would not be a significant penalty,” Bill Saum, the NCAA’s director of agent, gambling and amateurism activities said to the Associated Press. “If there is a significant amount of money in the pool, there would be a significant penalty.”
Howard, who formerly worked for the NCAA enforcement staff, said no one involved with college athletics can gamble on any sport at any level.
“NCAA Bylaw 10.3 is pretty clear,” Howard said, while typing a memo to university employees clarifying gambling restrictions. “It states that no one involved with collegiate sports is prohibited to participate in gambling on college, professional or high school sports. If a student-athlete gambles on college athletics, they’re done for a year. If they gamble on their own team, they’re done period.”
Howard said the NCAA rule applies to professional and high school sports because the NCAA fears a player may find himself in unpayable debt from gambling, then feel that shaving points or fixing games with a bookie is his only way to pay debts.
Howard said the NCAA began stricter enforcement of the bylaw after the Arizona State point shaving scandal. During the 1993-94 basketball season, Stevin “Headache” Smith and teammate Issac Burton shaved points after Smith accumulated $10,000 in gambling debt.
“It began when Smith started betting on professional sports, then he became in debt,” Howard said. “A campus bookie suggested that Smith shave points to pay off his gambling debt.”
Howard said the players and campus bookie found themselves trapped when organized crime involved themselves in the scandal.
“It’s always been against the rules, but after this incident the NCAA decided to make it known that this is wrong,” Howard said.