You watched every game since the season started. You carefully filled out the brackets for the NCAA basketball tournament pool you entered. You dreamt about what you are going to buy if your picks won you money. You also broke the law. Oops.
March Madness, the yearly NCAA tournament that recently concluded, is not only a time for the excitement of college basketball, but for the thrill of winning some cold, hard, cash. Fairfield University is no exception to the betting craze that sweeps college campuses across the nation. “More guys do bet on March Madness than don’t. And even if you don’t, you definitely know people who are.” Says Matt Grasso, ’04.
There are many big-time sporting events that are traditionally bet upon. The Super Bowl is the most popular, but the NCAA basketball tournament is a close second. The most common way to bet on this event is fill out a NCAA tournament bracket with which teams you think are going to win each set of games, and enter your picks in a betting pool. Betting pools can be as large scale or small scale as the participants want. For example, Grasso has run pools before with “the average cost to enter being 5 to 10 dollars.” He does not earn himself any money by coordinating the pool (unless he wins), but merely organizes it for the fun of betting. Whoever gets the most picks right is the winner. For Grasso’s average betting pool, the winner would take 500 dollars for first place, 200 dollars for second place, 150 dollars for third place, etc. Not too bad for such a small investment.
As fun and simple as this form of betting sounds, it is, in fact, illegal. Over 90 percent of betting on sports is done illegally, according to The National Gambling Impact Study Commission. Betting on NCAA events is illegal in almost all states, except for Nevada, and in limited amounts in Vermont.
Although it may seem ridiculous to have laws against something that is, for the most part, just for fun, betting can be a major problem. An act that can be as simple as giving up five dollars once a year for one student can be a serious problem for another. A Harvard University Medical School study estimated that 4.67% of college students are found to have a gambling problem. While these problems are probably not started through betting on tournament brackets, developing a gambling problem is a serious matter.
Besides students, it can affect the very players themselves at big-name schools. The NCAA and many college coaches have tried to rally Congress to outlaw all college sports betting so that gamblers don’t influence college athletes to “throw” games. These officials believe legal betting, as little as it is allowed, is threatening the integrity of college basketball.
Students at Fairfield’s campus however, are not too concerned. Matt Reiner ’05 stated, “I think its ok to have betting pools as long as the person who is organizing it isn’t taking a profit from it, and athletes aren’t betting against their own teams.” The general student opinion seems to be that the betting they are doing is all in good fun. “Bottom line,” states Grasso, “it’s entertainment.”
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