Newsletter: NCAA prez makes speech, misses point - Bettors Insider, Vol. 1, No. 40 (April 5, 2019)

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NCAA prez makes speech, misses point

Last night we ran a story about NCAA President Mark Emmert's annual speech at the Final Four, in which he discussed how the NCAA is doing everything it can to stop its student athletes from gambling.

It took a minute or two to stop laughing.

The NCAA, which is enmeshed in a college coaching bribery scandal - the latest questionable admit involves the Harvard fencing coach selling his house in Massachusetts for double its value to a Maryland man whose son just happened to get into Harvard soon thereafter - and various recruiting scandals the usual way (in which the athletes get paid and not the coaches), has had very little success policing any aspect of its sports landscape and the places where it does crack down are generally silly and petty.

But that aside, Emmert's mentioning of prohibiting student athletes from gambling (and does he mean any form of gambling or just sports gambling or just gambling in one's own sport or on one's team - keeping in mind that you're probably not going to be able to get a line on 90% of the intercollegiate action so it's kind of moot.

But even that aside, why did Emmert single out the students? Why not the coaches, whose ability to impact a game is greater than the athlete's? How about the refs? A key call in a close game can change the spread or move an over to an under -- or vice versa. What about the sports info directors who can hold back on an injury report? Or the team trainers? Or a player's roommate who might have inside dirt worth a few dollars to a gambler with bad intentions?

Signaling out the athletes sends exactly the wrong message because an individual player shaving points is going to be the least of the NCAA's problems: The vast majority of athletes want to win and want the game to be on the up-and-up. Plus, it's not that easy to shave points and affect the outcome. You have to be a super elite player, or you have to have help.

The first thing the NCAA can do to get ahead of this potential problem is set up injury report rules similar to the NFL. Every team has to report its injury status at the same time on the same day and there are penalties for BS-ing. Take that inside info power away from the players and those close to the team. Be transparent. Make sure anyone involved in collegiate athletics knows there will be no penalty for coming forward if one sees something dodgy -- some benchwarmer is suddenly walking around with a wad of bills or a too-hot girlfriend, a series of weird substitutions or questionable calls while games hover around the spread.

Fortunately, there's so much data available now that many iffy patterns will be picked up quickly. But policing the playing field and making sure it stays level should not just be on the heads of the student athletes. It's a campus-wide issue.

Because you can bet on anything . . .

Bettor Bits

Gee, wonder what the tampering fine is going to be.

MLB Fantasy Stars of the night

Today's Schedule

• Overnight - How we fared on Thursday.
• 10 am - Andrew Albert 's baseball picks.
• 10 am - Boop Single Digits (BoopStats for the digital attention span) (Single Digits will also give you an early peek at Boop's Quickie Quiz, which posts at noon on Twitter @BoopStats.)
• Noon - RT's thoroughbred racing picks of the day.
• Noon - Alan Mitchell's harness racing picks of the day.
• 1 pm - 5 pm - Craig Dietel's NHL and Greg Frank's NBA picks. Plus Neal Abrams' tennis picks.
• 6 pm - Boop's Philly Props.

Thursday Results

The big winners yesterday have been consistent big winners: Sean Miller went 6-2-1 with his European soccer picks (17-2-2 in the past two days) and Neal Abrams went 4-2 picking women's tennis at the Volvo Car Open (8-3 over the past two days). Craig Dietelwent 3-1 with NHL picks. On the Harness Racing side, Alan Mitchell had a 17-1 winner in the 7th at Harrah's Philadelphia and also had the lucrative exacta and trifecta in that race if you boxed his picks. Then in the 7th at Yonkers he picked the winner and boxing his picks would have won you the exacta, trifecta and superfecta. That's a good night. With the thoroughbreds, RT won one race outright and boxed three exactas and a trifecta.

We'll try to do even better today...

Good luck at the tables, windows, kiosks and apps.

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