Student Athlete Protection Act

Mr. Speaker, this is the final week of the NCAA basketball tournament. This is an exciting time, and it is also a time when large amounts of money are gambled. In 1998, $2.5 billion was gambled on the NCAA tournament. Today, that would probably be almost double that amount.

Gambling on NCAA sports has become a major problem. In 1951, CCNY had a point-shaving scandal, and Kentucky in the 1940s. In 1994, a Northwestern running back intentionally fumbled to fix a game. In 1996, 13 Boston College football players bet on NCAA games, and several bet against their own team. In 1998, a Northwestern basketball player was indicted for point shaving. In 1999, two Arizona State basketball players shaved points. This was done to pay off gambling debts. The fix was traced to organized crime in Chicago.

Last month, Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson was charged with illegal gambling, and of course he owed a bookie thousands of dollars. A University of Michigan study recently found that 5 percent of NCAA athletes that play football and basketball provided inside information to gamblers.

So over 36 years of coaching, gambling was a major concern to me. I was always worried about our players getting involved because of gambling debts; but more importantly, as a coach you had to win twice. You had to win once on the scoreboard, and then you had to win again in beating the point spread.

Someone up in the stands who had bet $10,000 on the outcome of a game that he could not afford to lose was not a casual observer. Most of the nasty memories that I have from coaching, and I do not have very many, had to do with hate mail, obscene phone calls at night, a mailbox that was blown up. In general, most all the time these were caused by situations where somebody had lost a bet.

Gambling on NCAA sports is illegal in 49 States, yet it is legal in one State, which is the State of Nevada. So we might ask, why not have a uniform standard? It is like having 49 States that have to pay Federal income tax and then one State is given a pass.

I have four major concerns with the Nevada loophole. First, this allows bets to be laid off. If there is a big game and the action is getting pretty heavy, a local bookie can have a runner or himself go to Las Vegas, up the ante, and have his bets covered. I had a young man from Nebraska who traveled to Las Vegas weekly to do this over a period of time.

Kevin Pendergast, who orchestrated the Northwestern gambling scandal, said this: ``Without the option of betting in Nevada, the Northwestern basketball point shaving scandal would never have occurred.''

Secondly, the loophole provides money-laundering opportunities. The former chairman of the Nebraska Gaming Control Board said, ``We have no way of knowing how much is laundered through legal sports books, but based on wiretaps, it is millions of dollars.''

Thirdly, this results in ties to organized crime. FBI agent Mike Welch said this: ``Most student bookies, even if they don't know it, are working for organized crime.''

Fourthly, giving one State a pass on amateur gambling sends a message that this is not really a serious problem. It is like legalizing drugs in one State and having them be illegal in 49 others.

The argument is often advanced that legal gambling on amateur sports in Nevada tips off a fix. In other words, as the points change and there is a big shift in gambling money, this will alert people that the fix is on. Yet in 2001 testimony on Capitol Hill, NCAA officials pointed out that legal sports betting in Nevada has never prevented a point-shaving scandal from happening. Sometimes after the fact you might go back and look at it and say, well, maybe something was going on here, but it has not really prevented anything.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission said in its 1999 report, it recommended that current legal gambling on college athletics be banned altogether, and of course this would apply to the Nevada loophole.

So I urge support for H.R. 1451 which will do exactly that. This will not eliminate all gambling, I realize that, on NCAA sports; but it certainly would be a step in the right direction and I urge support of