New laws worry athletic directors
Hamrick was in a brave new betting world.
That’s where he finds himself again today as Marshall’s athletic director. West Virginia sportsbooks are expected to open by football season this fall, and the state’s Division I schools — West Virginia and Marshall — will receive a small percentage of gambling revenue.
At the heart of the financial tug of war begun between college athletics and the gaming industry is a disagreement. Administrators say legalized sports gambling will increase the likelihood of scandals on campus. Gaming entities, armed with watchdogs, believe the opposite is true.
Hamrick said while at UNLV he regularly waited at the arena after basketball games to watch who was hanging around and who players left with. If he went to a hotel or casino for dinner, he’d excuse himself and visit the sportsbook to see whether any UNLV athletes were there.
“That sounds a little paranoid on my part,” Hamrick said. “But could you imagine where my career would go if we had a major point-shaving scandal under my watch? Think about it.”
Those experiences aren’t just relics of Hamrick’s past. They’re part of his present and future.
Hamrick said he, like many athletic directors, hopes to protect the integrity of college athletics — and also protect his job. Although most pro athletes are paid enough to dissuade them from participating in match-fixing schemes, college athletes are not. This helps explain why most point-shaving scandals have occurred at the college level.
“We have student-athletes here at Marshall who come here from … tough areas,” Hamrick said. “They don’t even have a winter coat when they arrive. They struggled to get a plane ticket to get here. They’re very susceptible to whatever could put more money in their pocket.”
‘We have a history’
In all likelihood, said John Wolohan, a professor of sports law at Syracuse, if someone is inclined to cheat the sports gambling system, they’ll do it whether or not it’s legal.
“What I believe is going to happen is … by bringing it out in the open and having casinos and states regulate [sports gambling activity] it’ll be a cleaner game, and we won’t have to worry so much,” Wolohan said. “Is it a fear that somebody can slip a college athlete some money to throw a game? Sure. But that could happen today. We have a history of it happening.”
One of the most high-profile point-shaving operations was conceived in a Pittsburgh basement. In the summer of 1978, brothers Rocco and Anthony Perla met with Boston College basketball player Rick Kuhn, who had gone to Swissvale Area High School with Rocco Perla, and persuaded Kuhn to point-shave — and talk teammates into it too. The saga, briefly alluded to in the film “Goodfellas,” landed Kuhn, the Perlas and two other mobsters in jail.
In 1998, four Northwestern football players, including former Aliquippa standout Gregory Gill, were indicted on perjury charges related to betting on their own games in 1994. One member of that quartet, running back Dennis Lundy, had intentionally fumbled in a game that season.
Similar scandals, felt far and wide, have affected other teams at Tulane, Arizona State, Northwestern, San Diego and Toledo — the last three within the past 15 years.
Playing defense
Last month, Tom McMillen, CEO of Lead1 Association, which represents 131 Division I athletic directors, told USA Today that once there’s legalized sports gambling in 20 to 30 states there’s “probably a 100 percent chance of a point-shaving scandal at some school.” In a later interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, McMillen clarified that although he did say a scandal will happen, he didn’t say when.
“It’s like when Warren Buffett says there’s 100 percent chance an American city is going to be blown up by a nuclear bomb,” McMillen said. “He didn’t say 10 years, 50 years, 100 years. I’m saying this is going to happen at a college or university, and you wouldn’t want to be the AD at that university when it happens. It’s going to happen. How frequent? I don’t know.”
In an illegal betting market, most wagers are placed online, not in person. Once sportsbooks open, McMillen argued, there will be more shady characters around campus looking to contact athletes. Legalizing gambling adds the burden of risk for schools, he said, and they deserve compensation to cover extra costs for compliance and on-campus monitoring to keep rogue operators at bay.
“[Schools] take all the risk, and the gaming industry gets all the benefits,” McMillen said. “All the money is being made by the gaming industry. But if it blows up, it’s a front-page Washington Post story about the local school here. It’s catastrophic for the school.”
Although gaming experts claim a legalized, regulated gambling market is far safer than an unregulated one because of the detection systems in place, schools say that’s not enough.
“I’ve got to have people on my own campus monitoring and educating the roughly 500 student-athletes I have here,” said West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons.
“I deal with 500 18- to 22year-olds. I worry a lot,” echoed Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke. “These are kids that didn’t grow up with circular driveways — that’s how [West Virginia men’s basketball coach] Bobby Huggins used to describe it to me — and so temptation is real for those who don’t have a lot.”
Lyke said athletic departments have to be scrutinizing those around the program, checking whether outside individuals are asking around about injuries or other insider information.
In 2016, an NCAA survey of 22,388 athletes, who were granted anonymity, found 24 percent of men and 5 percent of women surveyed had violated NCAA bylaws within the previous year by wagering on sports. Eleven percent of football players and 5 percent of men’s basketball players reported betting on a college game in their sport — but not on their team. A majority of men — 54 percent — and 31 percent of women surveyed believed sports wagering to be a harmless pastime.
An NCAA spokesperson declined to be interviewed for this story.
At UNLV, Hamrick invited Michael Franzese, a former mobster from the Colombo crime family in New York, to speak to athletes about how players have been sucked into point-shaving schemes. Once they’re in it, Franzese told them, they’re in it for good — there’s no tapping out early. Hamrick said he’s planning to get Franzese to Marshall’s campus “as quick as [he] can.”
You can take only so many protective measures, Hamrick said. “You can’t educate and legislate morality. If a kid is going to take some money and maybe not lose the game but not cover the point spread or something, you just can’t stay on top of all your athletes for 24 hours a day.”
‘No room for error’
What exists as a doomsday scenario for college sports powers is decidedly less alarming to the gaming industry.
“To me, it just feels like a wash,” said Chris Grove, managing director at Eilers and Krejcik, a gaming research and consulting firm, and the editor of Legal Sports Report. “If you didn’t have these concerns prior to regulated sports betting, I don’t think you should have them now.”
Todd Fuhrman, a former oddsmaker who now hosts the “Bet the Board” podcast, said schools are using the risk of scandal as a “fear tactic” for leverage to ensure they get a slice of gambling revenue. Fuhrman said he likes to show people how the machine works. “The biggest enemy in all of this,” he said, is misinformation.
“It’s not quite an apples to apples comparison, but look at marijuana and what legalization has done,” Fuhrman said. “It hasn’t created more drug dealers. It’s probably put more of them out of business. You can follow the flow of money, and it’s a safer and cleaner environment.”
Like schools, gaming entities have a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of games. Any sign of misconduct or irregularities can damage a sportsbook’s reputation and its bottom line, as bettors won’t wager with an operator if they believe there’s a fix. Saying legal bookmakers will lead to a rise in match-fixing is “like saying banks cause bank fraud,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said.
“Anyone who thinks the casinos are going to benefit from a hint of impropriety — match-fixing or anything along those lines — is kidding themselves,” Fuhrman said.
Even without external help, sportsbooks have a history of policing themselves effectively.
Oddsmaker Jimmy Vaccaro, a Trafford native, helped uncover point-shaving operations at Tulane, in 1985, and Arizona State, in 1994. In the latter case, Vaccaro, then the sportsbook director at Mirage Resorts, noticed an Arizona StateWashington game that would normally draw about $40,000 in wagers had attracted more than $525,000 at the Mirage alone, spurred in part by a swarm of college students clad in Arizona State apparel betting on Washington.
In 2005, Las Vegas Sports Consultants chief operating officer Kenny White, following up on client complaints, analyzed game film from two football seasons and reported to the NCAA and the Nevada Gaming Commission there seemed to be point shaving occurring at Toledo. Two years later tailback Scooter McDougle was arrested for what the FBI alleged was a point-shaving scheme. The next day, an NCAA staffer called White, asking him to monitor all of its conferences.
Outside of the sportsbooks themselves are firms that provide data and monitoring services. Leagues and sporting entities that were once dismissive of line monitoring are now well aware of the value it has, creating what would have seemed like odd partnerships even 10 years ago.
“We are deep in that space and we have been for a long time,” said Jake Williams, legal director for Sportradar US, which provides corruption monitoring and live data. “We’ve helped many partners around the world combat many of the problems with match-fixing.”
Daniel Wallach, a gaming attorney, said schools are assuming some risk — because scandals are possible — but it’s not necessarily new risk. As states begin to draw new legislation, he argued, it could be a smart compromise to offer schools a royalty fee to account for some risk.
“Going 25-4 as the record for a starting pitcher gets you the Cy Young Award,” Wallach said. “Having 25 clean games and four dirty games will undermine those sports and could sound the death knell for certain schools that are involved in any kind of suspect sporting event where suspicious wagering has occurred. There’s no room for error. We’re talking zero tolerance.”
“Going 25-4 as the record for a starting pitcher gets you the Cy Young Award. Having 25 clean games and four dirty games will undermine those sports and could sound the death knell for certain schools ...” Daniel Wallach