College Football: Assessing the implications of legalized sports betting

The Supreme Court has opened up the possibility of legalized sports gambling. How will that impact college football this fall and beyond?

Despite a strong argument by the NCAA, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to allow sports betting, overturning the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). Much like state-to-state marijuana laws, the Supreme Court has left it the legalization of sports booking up to the states.

Essentially this means that if your state allows it, you no longer have to deal with shady, back-alley betting pools or fly to Nevada to place a bet on your favorite sports teams.  That seems simple enough, but how does it impact college football?

The good

More televised football, y’all. This means that alumni of smaller-conference teams that don’t get a lot of love from the television networks may finally get to see their games on t.v. Granted, it may be on a Tuesday night, sandwiched between “Cops” and “American Pickers”, but it means that networks will play a passel of football games to get a piece of that sweet, legal book action.

I don’t care if I’m watching Kennesaw State at 4:30 on a Tuesday–more college football on television just makes me happy. It’s also going to make college games a heck of a lot more interesting. I mean, it’s just no fun to watch Alabama beat up on Georgia State–unless there are substantial sums of money involved.

The bad

The continued debate about college athletes in big-name sports getting paid is going to rise up again. The problem with this isn’t that betting is going to generate much-needed revenue. That’s awesome, particularly for smaller schools. What will probably happen is that schools won’t redistribute the revenue to sports that don’t generate it but desperately need the cash–like lacrosse, for example.

I get it–the marquee sports like football and basketball are going to be the biggest earners. That doesn’t make it fair to kids on the swim team that work just as hard as their football-playing counterparts. (By the way, that is also argument #645 why college athletes don’t need to be paid.)

Related Story: Even more reasons why student-athletes don't need to be paid

But think about this–if you can bet on the outcome of, say, Northwestern’s women’s fencing team, it could make a humdrum Monday night a great deal more fun. Unfortunately, bigger schools might simply channel the money back into the football and basketball teams and leave the swimming athletes in the [figurative] dust.  They are going to need some serious regulation about the distribution of revenue, and they are going to need it quickly.

The really ugly

The NCAA is going to have to watch schools and student-athletes like an FBI surveillance van watches a known arms dealer. If not, bribery is going to move in faster than Alabama’s defense. Think about it–you have some 20-year-old kid that gets offered $20K to act injured and throw a game. For most college kids, that temptation will be far too great to pass up. Game fixing happens everywhere, even in the big leagues where athletes are getting paid tremendous sums of money.

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In college, though, where athletes are already dealing with peer pressure, academic pressure, and trying to grow up at the same time, taking a bribe to throw a game might seem like a great solution.

The upshot

There will have to be some regulations put in place tout de suite. However, a veritable waterfall of more college football games on television is a win-win in my book. (Heh.  See what I did there?)