Senators launch fight against college sports betting

Laurence Arnold

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 8:56 a.m.

WASHINGTON - A congressional effort to outlaw betting on college sports opened with an endorsement from an unlikely ally, Kevin Pendergast, who served two months in prison for fixing Northwestern University basketball games.

Pendergast said the point-shaving scheme that landed him behind bars began with illegal bribes to players but ended with his cohort doing something legal - walking into a Las Vegas casino and placing bets on the fixed games.

"Without Nevada, without the option of betting money in Nevada, the Northwestern basketball point-shaving scandal would not have occurred," Pendergast said.

Pendergast, 28, lent his story and his support to a bill introduced Tuesday that would ban betting on college sports.

He bolstered a fundamental argument of the measure's sponsors - that legal sports gambling in Nevada promotes and legitimizes widespread illegal sports betting on college campuses.

"Sports gambling has become a black eye on too many of our colleges and universities," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who is sponsoring the legislation with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Nevada lawmakers and other gambling supporters wasted little time in criticizing the proposed ban as misguided.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called it "a red herring, an exercise in finger-pointing" that blames Nevada for the nationwide problem of illegal sports gambling.

Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., who lobbies for casinos as president of the American Gaming Association, said the bill "amounts to an ineffective Band-Aid on a campus cancer."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said they will introduce competing legislation asking the Justice Department to study illegal gambling on campuses.

Even a frequent critic of the gambling industry said the bill misses the point.

"It's going to help, but it's not going to solve the real problem," said Arnie Wexler, former executive director of New Jersey's Council on Compulsive Gambling. "The real problem is what's going on the campus."

Nevada is the only state that allows widespread sports betting. The state's gambling industry took in $2.3 billion in sports wagers in fiscal 1999, with 30 percent to 40 percent bet on college sports.

Leaders of the U.S. Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of State High School Associations were among those joining Brownback and Leahy at a news conference touting the bill.

Charles Wethington, president of the University of Kentucky and chairman of the NCAA executive committee, said a ban would strengthen the NCAA's long-running argument that newspapers should stop publishing point spreads for college games. The NCAA believes the spreads encourage betting.

Congress banned sports betting in most states in 1992, but exempted Nevada. Leahy called Nevada's exemption "a loophole" that should be closed.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which spent two years studying all aspects of gambling, last year recommended banning wagering on collegiate and amateur athletic events.

Brownback and Leahy's bill also would prohibit wagering on high school sports and Olympic events. Representatives of Nevada's gambling industry say there is little legal betting on the Olympics and none on high school sports.

Co-sponsors of the bill include Republican Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Jim Jefford of Vermont, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio and John McCain of Arizona, and Democratic Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Dianne Feinstein of California. Companion legislation in the House is sponsored by Reps. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Tim Roemer, D-Ind.