Columnist Dean Juipe: State lands a punch to NCAA’s chin

Dean Juipe

Friday, Feb. 9, 2001 | 10:55 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

This isn't what the NCAA, or the U.S. Congress for that matter, expected.

They expected Nevada to be submissive and humbled, maybe even contrite.

They thought the state would be cowering in a corner, whimpering about its potential losses and begging for leniency.

But as we now know, they thought wrong. For instead of reeling, the state -- via its Gaming Commission -- went on the offensive and launched a counterattack.

It decided if we were going to be called hypocritical for allowing legalized betting on games involving every college in the country except the two schools we call our own, then it would close that loophole. And, as of Thursday night's basketball game between Nevada-Reno and Hawaii, betting on either the Wolf Pack or the UNLV Rebels is suddenly permissible.

While the city's sports book directors aren't expecting much action on UNR or UNLV, they could be surprised. The games may attract a greater betting audience than the directors were forecasting this week.

But that's neither here nor there.

The central issue is that Nevada tossed a pie in the NCAA's face by lifting the ban on wagers on Nevada's teams. And it feels good.

The NCAA, of course, has been lobbying Congress to put Nevada out of the legalized sports-gaming business. It has spent and will continue to spend a small fortune in its misguided quest to ban betting on college sports.

When the issue first arose last year, the NCAA -- among its many points of attack -- argued that Nevada was inconsistent in banning wagers on its own schools. It asked why what was good for the goose wasn't good for the gander.

It thought it had caught the state in a philosophic pickle. It thought the state would shrug and take the hit.

But state regulators had a gutsy response. They said "OK, you're right. But instead of pulling all the college games off the board as you have so rudely demanded, we're going to put all of them up. All of them, including those involving Reno and UNLV."

It was a response that must have stunned the stuffed shirts at the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. At a time when they would like to see less betting on college games, they're going to get more.

As a side benefit for the local sports books, allowing wagers on UNLV and UNR games also allows the books to put up all-inclusive futures on the NCAA Tournament. (In previous years they couldn't do it until UNLV and UNR were eliminated from national title contention.)

Futures are now up all over town and that translates into added revenues for the books.

Of course this could be one last fling for the state's books and their association with collegiate sports, as the NCAA may yet prevail and have its proposed ban passed by Congress. Nevada is fighting it on the grounds that it's beyond federal jurisdiction, but a good many people in the industry actually believe the ban could be legislated into place later this year.

So enjoy your freedoms before it's too late and put a buck or two down on the Rebels in their Saturday game with BYU.

Do it while you can. Do it as a matter of pride, if nothing else.