The Washington Post
Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
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Washington, D.C. 20071
Dear Editor:
U.S. Rep. Tim Roemer’s defense of a bill that would ban legal sports wagering on amateur athletics in Nevada [Letters to the Editor, April 1] just confirmed George Will’s independent analysis of this measure, which, according to Will, “sets some sort of indoor record for missing the point.”
Will’s op-ed, as well as the views of law enforcement experts, sports columnists and hundreds of thousands of our customers and sports fans, demonstrate that this bill is opposed by many more people than just “the gambling industry.”
I’m sure Rep. Roemer’s right that coaches know firsthand how pervasive sports gambling has become. The reason they know that is because the activity is right under their nose, on their own college campuses - not because of Nevada, where one must be at least 21 years old and physically present to place a bet. In fact, legal sports betting in Nevada makes up only about 1 percent of all sports betting in this country. To ban college sports betting in Nevada to address this problem would be like shutting down Napa Valley to curb binge drinking on campus.
The truth is, illegal student bookies operate on every college campus in America, a fact the NCAA admits. Prosecutors and law enforcement in the Northwestern and Arizona State point-shaving cases will tell you that illegal bookmaking was at the heart of those scandals.
Rep. Roemer’s “logic” on the supposed “growth” of point-shaving and game-fixing scandals could just as easily be the result of the presence of the modern legal sports books in Nevada, which are now able to detect illegal betting patterns and bring them to the attention of law enforcement. He neglects to mention that the most widespread scandals occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, when modern legal sports books as we know them today did not exist in Nevada.
If Rep. Roemer were really serious about reducing illegal sports betting on college campuses, he would work to enforce the existing laws on our books, instead of pointing the finger at a legal, highly regulated business in Nevada.
Sincerely,
Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr.
