Mind, Body and Sport: Gambling among student-athletes

Only a few years removed from winning an NBA title with the Miami Heat, Walker is now out of his luck. A warrant was issued for his arrest in 2009 for accumulating $822,500 in gambling debts. Back in 1997, Jagr ran up a $500,000 line of credit from a Belize-based sports gambling website. When he stopped making payments on his debts, the owner of the site leaked the story to the media.

An excerpt from the Sport Science Institute’s guide to understanding and supporting student-athlete mental wellness

By Jeffrey L. Derevensky and Tom Paskus

Gambling remains one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, with multinational corporations investing billions of dollars to attract customers. While age restrictions exist in most jurisdictions (the age often is dependent upon the type of gambling), it is an activity in which many colleges students participate.

Most individuals gamble legally, occasionally and in a generally responsible manner (that is, setting and maintaining time and money limits). However, for a small but identifiable subset of youth, gambling can quickly escalate out of control and affect both psychological and physical well-being.

Excessive, problematic or pathological gambling has been repeatedly shown to result in consequences that can include deviant anti-social behaviors, decreased academic performance, impaired athletics performance, and criminal and legal problems.

Generally, the social and problem gambling experiences of college student-athletes are similar to those of other youth gamblers. Results of a 2012 study that the NCAA commissioned found that 57 percent of male student-athletes and 39 percent of female student-athletes reported gambling in some form during the past year, with those student-athletes in Division I reporting the lowest incidence of gambling (50 percent for males; 30 percent for females).

While pathological gambling is a problem that affects relatively few student-athletes, it is nonetheless a persistent health concern for some individuals: 1.9 percent of males and 0.2 percent of female student-athletes are exhibiting some clinical signs of problem gambling, placing them at extremely high risk for mental health issues.

One notable difference between student-athletes and their peers is that student-athletes tend to be drawn to sports wagering at higher rates. This is not surprising, given their background and interest in sports. However, for student-athletes, wagering on sports can have negative consequences even if the behavior is not classified as excessive or pathological.

To protect the integrity of college athletics contests, NCAA regulations prohibit student-athletes from betting money on any sporting event (college, professional or otherwise) in which the NCAA conducts collegiate championships. Violations of this regulation can result in a student-athlete losing his or her athletics eligibility, which has clear negative repercussions for the individual and his or her team.

Despite NCAA regulations prohibiting sports wagering for money, 26 percent of male student-athletes report doing just that, with 8 percent gambling on sports at least monthly. Of particular concern is the culture surrounding golf, where on-course wagering is considered a normative aspect of the experience. Males who participate in NCAA golf are approximately three times more likely to wager on sports (or engage in other gambling behaviors) than other student-athletes.

While most student-athlete sports wagering occurs solely among friends and teammates, many are now placing bets with online sites or using bookmakers they can access easily via their smartphone. Technology is also allowing outside gamblers seeking “inside” betting information easier access to college student-athletes (for example, through social media). Nearly 1 in 20 Division I men’s basketball student-athletes in the 2012 study reported having been contacted for such inside information.

Unlike other more publicized addictive behaviors (for example, alcohol, drug abuse, tobacco consumption), gambling problems often go undetected. It is important that student-athletes and athletics personnel understand that a gambling problem parallels other addictive behaviors. Helping student-athletes with a gambling disorder requires education, early assessment, an acknowledgment of a potential problem and effective referrals into the mental health care system.

The ability to identify the college-age problem gambler may be more difficult today because more of it is occurring online. But two-thirds of student-athletes believe that teammates are aware when a member of the team is gambling. They also report that the coach has a strong influence on tolerance for gambling behaviors and for empowering members of the team to intervene when a teammate needs help. Athletics departmental personnel, including athletic trainers and coaches, are in a unique position to observe and interact with student-athletes on a daily basis and help refer student-athletes for the appropriate assistance should such a need arise.

Gambling behaviors among male student-athletes

Percentages displayed are cumulative rather than independent. A student-athlete reporting having wagered “once/month or more” is also included in the “past year” figure.

Gambling behaviors among female student-athletes

Percentages displayed are cumulative rather than independent. A student-athlete reporting having wagered “once/month or more” is also included in the “past year” figure.

Q&A with Jeff Derevensky

When it comes to understanding the effects of gambling behavior on student-athletes (or the population in general), few people are more knowledgeable than Jeff Derevensky, the director of the International Center for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviors at McGill University in Montreal.

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Following is a Q&A that probes Derevensky’s insights on gambling behaviors.

Question: What are the most alarming trends you’ve seen to date?

Jeff Derevensky: There are several. Perhaps the one from which all others emerge is the global normalization of the behavior. The gambling industry has done a terrific job in that regard – they don’t even call themselves gambling anymore. Now it’s “gaming.” They’re selling entertainment. They’ve gotten away from the sin-and-vice image that had been associated with gambling to where it’s now a normal socially acceptable behavior. TV also has done a remarkable job advertising gambling, not just through sports but through poker tournaments. ESPN has been able to develop inexpensive programming along those lines that has attracted millions of people. The electronic forms of gambling have made it accessible to the average person 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even the government is in on the act, supporting lotteries as an easy kind of “voluntary taxation.”

Self-reported personal beliefs of student-athletes about sports wagering
(all divisions, among student-athletes who reported wagering on sports in the last year)

Q: What about other trends and concerns?

JD: The landscape has changed dramatically. There are more states with casinos than ever before. When the NCAA initiated its first gambling task force in 2003, only Nevada and New Jersey had casinos. Now there are plenty of casinos in Florida, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana and many other states. Also, electronic forms of gambling are becoming increasingly popular. In 2003, very few people even thought of gambling online. Now you can wager virtually on anything online. There were odds on what Prince William and Kate Middleton were going to name their baby. You can gamble on who’s going to be the next pope, or the next president. There were odds on where Angelina Jolie would adopt her next child from. In that vein, there is now live in-game betting – odds generated in real time for participants to bet on various aspects of a game as it unfolds. About 10 percent of male student-athletes in the 2012 study who wager on sports have engaged in live in-game betting. “Spot fixing” is another one. Spot fixing is just a single midgame event or portion of a contest needing to be fixed for a bet to pay off. It’s generally seen as easier to do and harder to detect than manipulating a final outcome.

Q: What about the technology? Has gambling through social media become pervasive?

JD: Simulated forms of gambling – often referred to as “practice sites” – that’s the new phenomenon. We currently don’t know if there’s a causal relationship between simulated forms of gambling (for virtual currency) and actual gambling. We do know, however, that as simulated gambling goes up, so does actual gambling and gambling-related problems.

Percentage of student-athletes reporting that they played simulated gambling activities in the past year

Q: What do you mean by simulated forms of gambling?

JD: If you play a simulated form of gambling online, such as virtual slots or fantasy sports or filling out brackets for “virtual money,” it hasn’t been proven that it will prompt you to gamble for real money. But the link is rather intuitive, isn’t it? Playing for “fun” or the “social media-type” games often have greater payouts than the real-money games do. So if you’re playing these games and you’re winning all this virtual money, the natural thought is that, gee, if I had only been playing for real money, look how much I would have made. One of the most frightening findings we’ve recently found in terms of motivation for gambling is that children, teens and even young adults are gambling either for virtual or real money to relieve boredom. It’s just a click away.

Q: How do audiences accept you when you’re presenting around the world?

JD: These days, the most receptive crowd is the industry itself. Years ago, I gave a talk to the Internet gambling industry and they regarded me as a pariah. Somebody in the audience emailed me afterward in fact and said that while it was an interesting presentation, why was I walking back and forth across the stage so much? I answered, “It’s harder to hit a moving target.” Now, the industry is looking at “responsible gaming.” They are concerned about keeping players safe; making sure that people don’t lose their homes, drop out of school, get involved in illegal behaviors or commit suicide because they’re overwhelmed by their gambling problems. Nobody wants that.

Q: What about the reception from colleges and universities?

JD: It’s a little more under the radar at the collegiate level. Most people are more familiar with drug and alcohol issues and violence on campus. But gambling is just like alcohol. While it’s a normalized behavior – for example, with drinking, the message is “as long as you’re old enough and you drink responsibly, then you’re OK.” But you can’t become an alcoholic if you don’t start drinking. And you can’t become a problem gambler if you don’t start gambling. At the youth level, authorities talk with young people about drinking, but not about gambling. We do need more prevention, education, awareness and treatment programs for our youth and their parents.

Q: What’s your advice for colleges and universities now?

JD: First of all, don’t ignore it. Does it affect, or is it harmful to, the majority of your student population? Probably not. But is it negatively affecting at least some of your students? Absolutely. I was with a university president once whose school had collected research on gambling behaviors on campus, but he said he wasn’t going to release the results. I asked him why, and he said he couldn’t trust “gambling researchers” because they would make a big deal of three people out of 5,000 having a problem. I said I understood, but I added that by not releasing the findings, people think you’ve got something to hide. That convinced him to be more transparent. Just like most campuses have policies on drugs and alcohol, they need a policy on gambling.

Q: What is a good way to spot problem gambling behavior?

JD: It’s difficult to do, because not many problem gamblers are open about their situation. But if you notice someone who maybe talks a lot about gambling or is pretty secretive about where he’s going, then that’s a clue. Also, problem gamblers become consumed with the behavior, and everything else tends to slide. If someone who had been doing well in class begins to let his or her grades slip, or if a usually outgoing person becomes reclusive, and of course if that person starts having financial trouble, then problematic gambling might be at the root of those behaviors.

Q: Are there approaches on campus that are known to work?

JD: Student-athletes report that coaches and teammates are their primary influences, so programs targeting those people – particularly coaches – are helpful. I like the idea of involving student services groups as well. The more campus-wide involvement, the better. This is a more general student issue, and not one that affects only student-athletes. It’s important to understand that what starts off as a fun, harmless activity can lead to other serious problems. One or two out of 100 college students having a problem isn’t likely to set the world on fire, but if you approach the gambling issue as being among a number of things that can negatively impact student health and well-being, then your odds of resonating, so to speak, are much greater. It’s important to remember that every problem gambler tends to seriously impact a dozen other people: boyfriends, girlfriends, peers, teammates, coaches, parents and employers. And for student-athletes, it can jeopardize their eligibility.

Most effective ways to influence student-athletes not to wager on sports
(as reported by student-athletes who have wagered on sports in the past year)

Jeff Derevensky is the director of the International Center for Youth Gambling Problems and High-Risk Behaviors at McGill University in Montreal. The National Center for Responsible Gaming recently honored Derevensky with its coveted Scientific Achievement Award, one of dozens of accolades he has earned from his research over time. He and NCAA Principal Scientist Tom Paskus co-authored the 2008 and 2012 NCAA studies on student-athlete wagering behaviors.

Tom Paskus is the principal research scientist for the NCAA. In this role, he directs the NCAA’s national portfolio of studies on the academic trajectories of college student-athletes and oversees the NCAA’s data collections and research initiatives pertaining to the academic, athletic, social, and personal well-being of current and former student-athletes. Before joining the NCAA, Paskus was a faculty member in the quantitative research methods program in the College of Education at the University of Denver. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in quantitative psychology from the University of Virginia, and an A.B. in psychology from Dartmouth College.

With the Supreme Court ending a federal ban on sports betting, the floodgates have opened for some, or all, of the 50 states to legalize wagers on athletic events. With this brave new world of gaming, we’ll see extra focus on players, officials, spreads, lines and money, all as leagues, law enforcement and sports books try to ensure that sports gambling stays incorruptible. Good luck with that: Ever since professional sports were created, players have been betting on games and gamblers have been finding ways to infiltrate the games to shift the odds in their favor. Here are 11 of the biggest scandals in sports gambling history.

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1. The Black Sox (1919 World Series): “Never before in the history of America’s biggest baseball spectacle has a pennant-winning club received such a disastrous drubbing in an opening game.” So wrote The New York Times after the Chicago White Sox were defeated 9-1 in Game 1 of the 1919 World Series, unaware that said drubbing was the result of eight players who had agreed to help throw the Series for gamblers.

The degree to which each player helped has been a debate for almost a century. Joe Jackson, banned for life along with seven teammates, hit .375 with a .956 OPS over the eight games and didn’t make an error. “How do you explain that?” Kevin Costner correctly asks in Field of Dreams. (Jackson admitted taking money.) Others, like pitcher Eddie Cicotte and Chick Gandil (allegedly the on-field mastermind) took a noticeable dive.

It turns out that the Sox throwing the Series was the worst-kept secret in baseball. Even before Game 1, the baseball world was atwitter with word that the fix was in but the commissioner’s office was apparently content to look the other way. It was until a separate case one year later that the word about 1919 got out. None of the Black Sox were found guilty in court (a rumor suggests that owner Charlie Comiskey and kingpin Arnold Rothstein helped disappear some key paperwork) but were banned from baseball for life.

2. CCNY point shaving (1950): In 1951, 32 college basketball players from seven schools around the country were caught up in a mafia-run point shaving scheme that hit four New York schools and three out-of-state teams, including Kentucky. It was a major blow for college basketball, especially considering that the bulk of the accused players had been on CCNY’s 1950 team, which became the first (and only) team to ever win the NCAA and NIT tournaments. The scandal decimated the team — which rivaled the Yankees and the Dodgers for New York sports supremacy at the time — and effectively ended the school’s affiliation with big-time athletics. Despite an insistence from a holier-than-thou Adolph Rupp that his boys weren’t involved in such nefarious schemes, Kentucky was banned for a full season as well.

3. Pete Rose: The all-time hit king was banned for life in 1989 for betting on games, something he adamently denied for 15 years. He finally admitted to betting while managing the Reds, but insisted he never bet on baseball while he was a player. Never! A few years later, that was proven to be another lie — evidence showed that Rose bet about once a day in 1987, typically for around $2,000. Though he frequently bet on his Reds, Rose vows he never bet against his own team and, despite his flexibility with the truth, this claim seems legit. No evidence has ever come out to suggest otherwise and, to be honest, it doesn’t really fit with what we know about the man.

4. Paul Hornung and Alex Karras: Before Pete Rose, there was Paul Hornung and Alex Karras. The former was an NFL MVP who set a league scoring record in 1960 that stood for 46 years (and is still the second-highest total in history). The latter was a first-team All-Pro defensive lineman. Despite their success (or maybe because of it), Hornung and Karras routinely bet up to $500 on NFL games while associating with known gamblers. Both men were contrite (Rose should have taken note of that in 1989) and, in issuing his indefinite suspension, Rozelle took care to mention that neither player bet on or against their own teams. The suspension was dropped after a full season. Hornung was later elected to the Hall of Fame and Karras starred on the 1980s sitcom Webster.

5. BC Goodfellas: The most notorious real-life gangster portrayed in Goodfellas didn’t go down for the Lufthansa heist, whacking Billy Batts, robbery, murders or aiding and abetting Joe Pesci being called a clown. Jimmy Burke (played by Robert DeNiro in Martin Scorsese’s mob masterpiece) went to jail because Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) ratted, almost off-handedly, about a point shaving scandal involving the Boston College basketball team. Hill had been arrested on various drug counts and, in his interviews, casually mentioned the BC story. Once it became clear that the Feds were interested in this to help bring down members of the Lucchese family (remember, Al Capone went down for tax evasion), Hill asked for immunity and ratted on his friends. It had been a successful partnership, for a little. After a rocky start, the syndicate began winning money on Boston College, by betting the Eagles to win games but lose against the spread or fail to cover a big spread in a game they wouldn’t have won anyway.

6. John “Hot Rod” Williams: Before he became a beloved NBA veteran, John “Hot Rod” Williams faced jail time over a 1985 point shaving scandal at Tulane that ended up shuttering the basketball program for four seasons. With a healthy mix of money, cocaine and 1980s-era bravado, five players were accused of shaving points in two games, all for a shared pot of $17,000. Williams twice went to trial – the first was declared a mistrial and the second ended with his acquittal on five counts. He went on to play 13 years in the NBA.

7. Rick Tocchet: The story of Tocchet, an NHL All-Star and Stanley Cup champion, was sordid enough. He pled guilty to involvement with a $2 million gambling ring that took bets from the rich and famous. But Tocchet’s tale took an unexpected turn when the name of Janet Gretzky, wife of the Great One, appeared in the books.

8. Art Schlichter:The fourth pick of the 1982 draft accrued nearly $1 million in gambling debts by the end of his first year in the NFL, by betting various sports including, allegedly, 10 NFL games. (Like Hornung and Karras, Schlichter was never accused of betting on his own team or using his position to influence his wagers.) Schlichter was reinstated in 1984, was out of the league by 1985, never won an NFL game and has spent the last 30 years in and out of jail. His latest offense — a scan selling phony tickets to sporting events — sent him to prison for a decade.

9. Joe Namath: After Super Bowl III, Namath, a playboy bachelor, was the biggest thing in American sports. He decided to capitalize on it by opening a night club named, cleverly, Bachelor III. Mark Kriegel wrote in his biography Namath: “ regulars included con men, fences, bookmakers and of course made men — exactly the kind of guys you’d expect to find in a hot East Side joint.”

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Commissioner Pete Rozelle told Namath to sell his interest in the club because of its reputation but, rather than sell, Namath retired instead. He changed his tune one month later after a meeting with Rozelle. On his way out of the commissioner’s apartment, after agreeing to cut ties with his club, Namath was approached by Rozelle’s 11-year-old daughter. “Mr. Namath, I just want you to know that everyone in the Rozelle family doesn’t hate you.”

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10. Tim Donaghy: In 2007, an FBI investigation revealed that Tim Donaghy, a longtime NBA referee, had bet on NBA games and fed information to other gamblers after falling into debt. The scandal was both a huge story and quickly faded from the public consciousness, almost like sports fans want to delude themselves into thinking that everything is always on the up and up.

11. Northwestern: Dewey Williams and a teammate were given a brief prison sentence for their role in fixing games during the 1995 season. Why gamblers didn’t trust Northwestern basketball players to simply lose games on their own, as per usual, is the enduring mystery of this tale.