The ESPN headline reads, “NCAA, NFL seek to stop N.J. betting.” Good luck with that. When you read further you begin to understand the immensity of the looming courtroom drama. Why are all the professional sports leagues, and the NCAA, so opposed to legal gambling on their sports? New Jersey has become ground zero for a legal war that has been developing for a century.
On October 17, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed legislation that partially repeals the state’s sports betting prohibitions and clears the way for casinos and racetracks to begin taking bets. Four days later, attorneys for the sports leagues filed a complaint in federal court attempting to head off the beginning of sports betting in New Jersey, which is one of 46 states covered until now by a federal sports betting ban. An injunction was delivered, and stands until a November 20th court date.
According to CNBC it is estimated that $80-100 billion is illegally wagered on the NFL alone per year. NCAA football accounts for another $60-70 billion. Those numbers are obviously staggering. So, what gives? Why wouldn’t the NFL or the NCAA want any part of it – for themselves or for the relief of the taxpaying public? And where do all the proceeds go?
In 2009 Roger Goodell told Newsday, “The issue is that legal or illegal sports gambling on the outcome or our games does impact us and the integrity of our game and we want people to understand that it’s something we remain opposed to.”
In May, NCAA President Mark Emmert issued a statement on the possibility of legal gambling in New Jersey:
“The spread of betting on intercollegiate athletics, including the introduction of sports betting as proposed by the state of New Jersey, threatens to damage irreparably the integrity of, and public confidence in, NCAA athletic competition. An increase in state-promoted sports betting would wrongly and unfairly engender suspicion and cynicism toward every NCAA event that affects the betting line. When gambling is freely permitted on sporting events, normal incidents of any athletic competition inevitably will fuel speculation, distrust, and accusations of point-shaving or game-fixing.”
What a load of crap. NFL and NCAA football were built by illegal gambling. The only thing that legal gambling would provide is an easier, and safer way to place bets. Two of the NFL’s first families were the offspring of gambling. A 2008 feature titled “Gambling is a football tradition, on the books or off” in The New York Times describes the Rooney and Mara origins of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants:
“In 1936, Rooney, whose family still owns the Pittsburgh Steelers, famously turned two prescient days at the racetrack into $300,000. In 1925, Mara, a bookmaker in the days when that profession was not only legal but honorable, paid $500 for the New York Giants.”
In 2013, author Albert Fignone discussed the history of NCAA football and illegal gambling in an interview about his book, Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers, and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball:
“During football’s early history in the late 19th century, the lack of organized supervision allowed college athletes to play on professional teams for money. Gamblers and bookies made money on these leagues as gambling and rigging final scores were prevalent. Undoubtedly, player and gambler connections from these leagues carried over to college competition. Opposing college players gambled on the games’ outcomes, among themselves and bookies, and gamblers attended practices and games to proposition players, and obtain inside information. Virtually every meeting of college authorities in the first 40 years of college football included a discussion on how to rid the parasite of gambling from the sport.”
Despite attempts to rid the “parasite,” sports’ gambling has grown exponentially with the internet. The lines between legal and illegal are blurred. The question is: Who are the NFL and the NCAA protecting? Are they truly worried about the “integrity” of their sports and gullible gamblers? History has proven that prohibition is the contagion for mega-corruption. And it is a given that gambling has driven interest in football and TV revenue – especially since the Pete Rozelle revolution. The NFL generates about $5 billion in annual TV revenue. In the NCAA, on average, the five power conferences collect a combined $1.1 billion annually from their network partners. The College Football Playoff will increase that number considerably.
Clearly, illegal gambling has not been an impediment to financial progress for the NFL and the NCAA. Why would legal gambling prevent the same progress? Goodell and Emmert want fans to believe that they have an overriding concern for the “integrity” of their games. There is no chance that those concerns eclipse their salaried attention to their respective institutions’ bottom lines.
The NFL and the NCAA have spent an increasing amount of their hard earned dollars on Washington lobbyists. The reality is that, no matter what a court decides, the potential tax revenue that legal sports gambling could generate will begin to outweigh all legal jurisdictions. When that happens the fight will go to Congress, and there is a potential brawl developing between Harry Reids’s Las Vegas and Chris Christie’s New Jersey.
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