Student-Athletes and Campus Bookies

This chapter reviews further basketball scandals from the 1980s and 1990s. As the professionalization and commercialization of college sports continued, gambling became increasingly accepted among college students. Since wagering on college sports was illegal in all states except Nevada, shady bookmakers reaped immense sums from the public's interest in betting on college football and basketball. By the early 1980s, the NCAA relied on the federal, state, and local governments to enforce and prosecute gambling-related crimes because the association, along with the conferences and colleges' athletic establishments, found it impossible to prevent game fixing. Most coaches had convinced the public that it was impossible to detect the rigging of basketball games, a viewpoint that only encouraged anyone wanting to fix games. A new generation of college student gamblers on sports would contribute to the decades-old scourge of game rigging, leading once again to federal and state investigations and prosecutions.