Another ESPN commentary—and influence—on contemporary college sports fans occurs when, during games, it focuses its cameras on students displaying various body parts painted in their school colors (other networks also spotlight the painted fans, but ESPN features them more frequently during telecasts and in clips on news shows, particularly SportsCenter). ESPN The Magazine also glorified these fans in a feature titled “War Paint.” Next to a full-page photo of a male student wearing gold paint and little else, and another photo of a male student similarly dressed in garnet (deep red) paint, the text explained:
Some fans wear their hearts on their sleeves. But when Florida State meets Florida, who needs sleeves? Or sanity? Two FSU scholars—magna cum gaudy—dipped themselves in team colors to spur the Seminoles on to … victory. Their parents now know they’re getting their tuition money’s worth.
Unfortunately, not only might the parents of these two FSU students question the “money’s worth” of their tuition payments, but many other Americans, while watching TV shots of similar student antics during college games, might wonder whether undergraduate life is merely fun and games, and whether they should support higher education with their tax dollars and charitable donations. Indeed, public and private aid to America’s colleges and universities has dropped significantly in the last few decades; probably the constant stream of images of bizarre student behavior at college sports events has contributed to this erosion of support.
ESPN constantly promotes the beer-and-circus aspect of higher education. Every Saturday during the football season, it places its GameDay announcing crew on location at a Big-time U and in close proximity to drunken undergraduates. As a result, every shot of its announcers’ discussing the featured game as well as other games around the country includes, in the background, obviously drunk students acting rowdy or goofy. Because the ESPN GameDay broadcasts go on for over nine hours each week—and drunken students always clog the background in the hopes of being on TV—almost every American who subscribes to cable-TV sees them during the fall. Then, in the winter and spring, the network’s basketball broadcasts also place the announcers in front of frenetic, often painted students. ESPN imprints this image of undergraduate life upon the public, and also “normalizes” this behavior for students already on campus, as well as for those planning to enroll at Big-time U’s.
Most students who attended games [in the 1950s] dressed much differently than do those at today’s games. Almost all guys wore collared shirts, some with ties and jackets. Girls wore blouses and skirts down below their knees … . This is a far cry from the obscene T-shirts and torn jeans which some students wear to games today.
These observations came in an essay comparing college sports fans in the 1950s versus those in the 1990s. The writer included photocopies from school newspapers and yearbooks to illustrate the then-and-nows, the more formal 1950s attire contrasting to contemporary T-shirts exhibiting such statements as “Muck Fichigan,” and “Penn State Sucks, Purdue Swallows.” In addition, although 1950s rooters wanted their school teams to win and they had little patience with losing coaches and players, they did not taunt the opposing team with obscene signs and chants, nor try to distract them during play, particularly when kicking field goals and point-after touchdowns, and shooting free throws.
In another then-and-now contrast, the essayist remarked that, according to the press, fights between fans of opposing schools rarely occurred in the 1950s. This is accurate, but historically, college sports rivalries often prompted brawls among spectators, and their general absence in the 1950s was exceptional, mainly due to that era’s “buttoned-down” ethos. In subsequent decades, primitivism returned to most football stadiums and basketball arenas, partly fueled by increasing undergraduate consumption of alcohol before and during games. By the end of the century, at some beer-and-circus schools, fan devolution had reached a Neanderthal stage, USA Today describing it in a feature article that began:
ADD A THIRD CERTAINTY TO DEATH AND TAXES.
FANS BEHAVING BADLY.
When Florida beat Tennessee in September, 141 fans were ejected. Florida State visits the Swamp [the nickname of the University of Florida’s home field] this Saturday. Trouble waits.
[The University of] Florida will increase its usual police contingent from about 150 to 190 officers. The combustible mix of rivalry, alcohol, and hype will make their job a difficult one. It is much the same across the land.
The causes of students “behaving badly” at college sports events differ markedly from current fan misbehavior at pro games. At the latter, fans often resent the gargantuan salaries of professional athletes and consider the players fair game for verbal and even physical attacks. However, because of NCAA rules, the salaries of college athletes are not an issue for fans. The student conduct described by USA Today results from other causes, mainly the collegiate subculture that, with alcohol erasing inhibitions, allows members to act out their aggressions.
Binge drinking and brawling are dangerous ventures, but risk-taking is central to the collegiate subculture, not only in these activities but also in a more subtle but often just as hazardous preoccupation with gambling. One expert believes that betting, mainly on intercollegiate athletic events, “is probably a worse problem … . on college campuses [today] than alcohol or drug abuse.” Unfortunately, unlike the drinking and drug problems, very few studies on student gambling exist, and the actual extent of the problem is difficult to measure.
Nonetheless, a large body of anecdotal evidence and some research indicate that a substantial number of undergraduates gamble regularly, and that more join them every day. In addition, of all students at American colleges and universities, males belonging to the collegiate subculture at beer-and-circus schools appear to be the most frequent gamblers. Any study of beer-and-circus must consider this topic.
Meet the Juice generation. For them, finance isn’t a major, it’s knowing how to spread $1,000 in wagers over 10 Saturday college football games … . Class participation is sitting in the back of a lecture hall with Vegas-style “spreadsheets” laid out, plotting a week’s worth of plays on games.
—Tim Layden, Sports Illustrated reporter
Five years ago, SI published an excellent series on sports gambling on college campuses, terming the young, predominantly male bettors, the Juice generation, after the bookmakers’ term juice—the 10 percent surcharge on losing bets (also called the vigorish). SI reporters visited numerous campuses and found that, particularly at beer-and-circus schools, gambling was “rampant and thriving,” involving many students, notably from the collegiate subculture: “Put simply, lots of college sports bettors are clever frat-boy jocks who like to watch games with a crowd and get pumped up by betting on them.” A former bookmaker, with ties to organized crime, explained: “College kids bet everything. They pick the phone up and they call, especially after a couple of drinks … . They make a bigger bet and a bigger bet. They can do it seven nights a week.” But by betting so often, and frequently on “sucker parleys,” they tend to lose, anywhere from a few dollars to many thousands, hence their regular payments of “juice.”
One of the few research studies of undergraduate gambling asserted that “23 percent of students gambled at least once a week.” The study was done in 1990, and experts believe that a decade later the percentage of student gamblers has increased considerably. In the questionnaire for this book, a respondent at Michigan State wrote in a P.S.: “I have noticed a betting problem on this campus … . I believe that five out of ten [male] students gamble at least once in awhile,” and many of them do it more often. An undergraduate at Indiana University wrote about the “serious betting scene at this school … . The real joke of it is that most of these people are betting their parents’ money away.” Like the parents of the Florida State painted fans, undoubtedly the parents of student gamblers are not amused.
An undergraduate at the University of Maryland discussed another element of student gambling:
Betting on games undermines school spirit here. Many students go to games or watch them on TV, and all they care about are their bets. I’ve been to games here where we’ve won and lots of fans sat on their hands at the end because the team “didn’t cover the spread.” Can you believe that some idiots even booed our players because of that?
Sports Illustrated used Duke University, like Maryland an ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) member, as an example of the point-spread phenomenon: “Some small corner of Cameron Indoor Stadium,” the Duke basketball arena, “is crazy because a few of the Crazies took Duke, minus 4 for $25,” and won their bets (Duke fans call themselves “Cameron Crazies”). There is yet another side to point-spread mania: on occasion, home fans cheer when their team loses but beats the spread, and they win their bets. (The point spread is the bookmaker’s attempt to make betting more interesting by equalizing the differences between teams. Bookies assign the supposedly superior squad a handicap of various points, and they “give” points to the underdog. The assigned point totals are the spread. Bookies pay off bets on the favorite when it wins by more points than the spread, and on the underdog when it “beats” the spread—loses by less points than the spread or wins the game. For example, if Duke is a four-point underdog to Virginia, and it loses by a single point, the Cameron Crazies with Duke “minus four” win their bets. But the Virginia bettors, needing their team to win by five or more points, lose.)
An ACC athletic department official admitted:
It’s impossible to build a solid fan base on such people [as student gamblers]. It’s easy enough to predict low student turnouts when the team is losing, but who knows when and if bettors will come. Personally, I think that most stay home and watch as many games on TV as they can, all at the same time … . I wonder what will happen when these people become alumni? They’ll keep betting and we won’t see any of their money.
When student bettors view games on TV, frequently they have one eye on the “crawl” at the bottom of the ESPN2 screen or, on occasion, CNN Headline News. The constant stream of the latest scores provides gamblers with updates on their bets, and the “crawl” is particularly useful for bettors “in action” on a large number of games. In addition, ESPN.com provides minute-by-minute updates, as do other sports websites. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many student bettors simultaneously watch TV and scan the sports websites on their computers to follow their bets. Some also wager at one of the many Internet gambling sites; however, most undergraduates prefer local bookies—the latter extend credit on bets, whereas at a website, the bettor must pay immediately with a bank card to make the wager official. As a result, by dealing with bookies—often fellow students—many undergraduate gamblers go deeply into debt before considering the consequences of their betting and its negative effect on their lives.
Yet gambling—or “gaming” as its proponents term it—has become so accepted and mainstream in contemporary American society that few college students consider it a social malady and potential addiction, similar to alcohol and drugs, and, in some cases, as destructive. Reinforcing its acceptability are the ubiquitous TV, print, and billboard ads for lotteries, on- and off-shore casinos, and gambling meccas like Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Obviously, in this social climate, the average student bettor sees nothing wrong with putting down money on a college game or, if inclined and enterprising, becoming a student bookie for a few years, often affiliated with a professional bookmaker.
Compare student drug-taking and gambling: Many undergraduates dislike the current drug laws, but every student in America knows that selling, buying, and possessing narcotics is illegal and risky; also, no daily newspaper publishes the “street prices” on marijuana or any other “controlled substance,” or advertisements from drug dealers. On the other hand, USA Today and many local papers feature the daily betting lines on college and pro games; they also display large ads from betting “touts” with 800-numbers and websites. In addition, many TV and radio sports commentators, particularly on the ESPN networks and SportsTalk radio, regularly discuss the “betting situation” and “point spreads” on college games. “I don’t see a single thing wrong with betting on college sports,” a University of Florida student declared. “Everywhere you look it’s promoted like crazy by the most popular media in this country.”
Nevertheless, betting on intercollegiate athletics is illegal in all states except Nevada, and a recently introduced congressional bill aims to ban it in that state, as well as increase the penalties on all illegal bookmakers who accept bets on college sports events. Like the prohibitions on student drinking, for undergraduates the mixed message on gambling is clear: When politicians and university officials condemn betting on college sports—as many are now doing—they exhibit the usual hypocrisy, and should be ignored or, if that is impossible, defied.
How much money is actually bet on college sports games? A few years ago, the Omaha World-Herald asked a Las Vegas bookmaker to estimate the total on the 1998 University of Nebraska versus Kansas State football game: the legal betting in Nevada on this contest was almost $500,000, and the Las Vegas rule of thumb is that the illegal betting nationwide is usually fifty times the Nevada total—almost $25 million on this one game. Multiply that number by twenty other major games that Saturday; factor in thirty less-important but nevertheless bet-upon Division I-A contests; also add one hundred lesser college contests, as well as the popular “parley plays” on multiple games; and a total of $1 billion for that college football day seems a reasonable amount.
Multiply $1 billion by approximately fifteen weeks of full college football schedules; add a “huge take” during the bowl game season; factor in another fifteen weeks of college basketball of at least $1 billion a week; then add the “colossal action” on March Madness, the NCAA Division I basketball tournaments; and a bottom line of $75 billion a year bet on college sports becomes a conservative estimate.
With this much money “in play,” inevitably some of it will touch college athletes. The NCAA publicly worries about athletes betting on games and, as occurred during past betting scandals, players accepting money from gamblers to fix games (“shaving points”—athletes trying to make sure that their team does not “cover” the point spread—is the most popular way of fixing games). Nevertheless, the association has placed only a pinkie finger in the dike to hold back the $75 billion sea and the potential tidal wave of fixes. It assigns a single staff member to work part-time monitoring athletes’ betting, and trying to persuade them not to gamble in any way.
But the recent findings of a University of Michigan study sounded an alarm and, in so doing, called into question the NCAA’s commitment to combating gambling on college games. According to the U of M research on current athletic scholarship holders:
More than 5 percent of football and men’s basketball players have either given inside information to gamblers, bet on games in which they played or [have] shaved points. Also, 72 percent of athletes had gambled in various other forms [i.e., at casinos, in lotteries, etc.].
An Indianapolis sportswriter translated the Michigan statistics into game situations: “Assuming a college football team has 100 student-athletes [including walk-ons], that’s five players” involved in betting. “What if one is the free safety” who “accidentally” trips while defending on a long pass? Or “the tailback” who fumbles just before the goal line as Northwestern University’s Dennis Lundy did to save his bet in a Big Ten game a few years ago. Or “the quarterback” who throws an interception at a key moment in the contest. “Or all three?” Additionally, in basketball, players have a warehouse full of fixing devices, including blown shots and missed defensive assignments.
All of the college athletes involved in gambling scandals during the 1990s—at Northwestern, Boston College, Arizona State, and other schools—subsequently discussed the betting atmosphere on their campuses, the large numbers of regular students placing bets and asking athletes for “inside information,” and also offering players s
ome “free bets”—if the wager wins, the athlete receives money; if it fails, it costs the player nothing.
In this college gambling world, surrounded by the gaming mania of contemporary America, it is a small step for athletes to start placing their own bets, then a larger but not insurmountable step to trying to win those bets during games as Dennis Lundy did, or shaving points as Northwestern and Arizona State basketball players did. Such actions are immensely stupid, and, if detected, they destroy athletic careers and personal reputations; however, as the Michigan study indicated, they are neither idiosyncratic nor highly aberrant. Moreover, unless a radical change in American attitudes on gambling occurs, in all probability more intercollegiate athletes will bet on college games, and a growing number will attempt to fix them. A Big Ten athlete, when asked for his prognosis on future college fixes, replied, “You can bet on it.”
The single NCAA employee in charge of gambling investigations explains athlete betting as one more evil caused by contemporary American culture: “Something has happened to lower their [athletes‘] respect for themselves and the game.” However, this explanation omits the most frequent target of athletes’ disrespect—their coaches.
Beer and Circus Page 27