Nobody really wants to admit it, but gambling helps make sports popular. It's why practically all media outlets, including this one, make a point of providing all the point spreads they can find. There comes a time, though, when the action on the game become bigger than the game itself. On Wednesday, six student athletes at the University of Toledo were indicted for taking part in a point shaving scheme allegedly masterminded by two Detroit-area gamblers. The 30-page indictment (PDF file) names two former Toledo football players and four former Toledo basketball players as part of the scheme but does not allege if any games were successfully "shaved."
The university maintains it knew nothing about any possible point shaving. That may be true, but the culture of college athletics made a scandal like this all but inevitable.
FanHouse's Greg Couch has already pointed out how the NCAA is of two minds about gambling, but there's more to the problem than accepting a casino sponsorship here and there. NCAA regulations which keep student athletes in a state of perpetual poverty are just as much to blame. They make it too easy for athletes to be swayed by gamblers.
I mean, those of you who went to college and lived in a dorm, answer me this: Back when you were a freshman, what would've been your price of betrayal? How much, or maybe how little, money would've convinced you to rat out the locations of all the beer (assuming it wasn't allowed in your dorm), weed, or other banned items, substances, and/or persons? (What, you didn't have somebody in your dorm who was trying to keep a girlfriend and/or boyfriend hidden from the RAs?) I'd have done it for $100.
So why are we surprised that a couple medium-time gamblers were able to recruit some athletes into their plan? Are we that worried about a repeat of the SMU mess that we have to make sure student athletes stay more impoverished than the rest of the student body? Everybody knows that the veneer of amateurism which covers Division I revenue sports is thinner than the meat on a prison sandwich, but does that mean a coach shouldn't be able to buy a bagel for one of his players? The coaches are about the only people who directly benefit from the revenue big-time athletics bring in to universities.
Yes, it would be nice if student athletes, who are not forced to accept scholarships at gunpoint, would always remain perfectly within the bounds of legal and ethical conduct. It would also be nice if coffee and doughnuts fell from the sky every morning at 10:30. It doesn't matter how airtight your rules are, nor how strict your punishments; your chances of getting compliance go way up if you make it easy to be good and hard to be bad. The athletes involved may get their just deserts, but it might not have happened if those two Detroit-area gamblers couldn't have afforded to buy their souls.
