It’s March! So, what else could a person charged with focusing on college sports issues write about but March Madness? It also appears to be the time of ultimate hypocrisy in our world – and this got me thinking about the main subject matter of our time spewing hypocritical. For example, political leaders exhibiting the exact behavior they criticized their opponents for and swore never to do and new enticing communication platforms that actually curtail human communication. Perhaps best of all, the NCAA stating that it opposes all forms of gambling; legal or illegal, yet tweeting to the world before the 2015 tournament “No better feeling than filling out brackets in March!” and “Complete Yours Today!”.
Everyone with a pulse and a TV in this country knows that you fill out the bracket so that you can enter yourself into a pool at work, online or with some other organization. The point being, that you pay a fee to enter your picks in hopes of winning a cash prize. No one truly believes that all the people involved in pools are really avid college basketball fans. And certainly millions of people do not follow the early rounds due to their lack of suspense. March Madness has become part of pop culture and a way to feel included in the national conversation at the office, with friends or at home at night with your family, with the added potential of increasing your cash assets. According to Investopedia, the NCAA will earn around $900 million in revenue from the tournament, which represents approximately 90% of their total annual revenue. Therefore, knowing that the betting element adds to the overall excitement, which in turn increases viewership and produces better advertising dollars for CBS and Turner Broadcasting, gambling is essential to the health of the NCAA. Let’s face it, when the NCAA provides just a blank bracket for you to fill out – they are basically asking you to pick the winners you want to bet on. The national betting component is directly associated with the increase in viewership, and therefore a vital necessity to the only way the NCAA gets funded. It is as simple as that.
What is not as simple is coming to terms with the fact that only a small portion of the bets are placed legally. In fact, the American Gambling Association issued a press release on March 13, 2017 stating that “of the $10.4 billion wagered on the tournament in 2017, only about 295 million will be legally through Nevada sport books”. This means $10.1 billion is wagered illegally! Now just think of what we could do with a portion of the entire pot if the government would just admit what is true. Every American knows that people bet on March Madness and most see nothing wrong with this one-time betting event. Every news and entertainment program talks about the picks and even encourages it. If everyone is of the same understanding and accept that gambling is a part of the culture of college sports, especially the NCAA Basketball Tournament, why not find a way to use it to everyone’s advantage?
Finally, this issues reminds me of a story about New Jersey, my home state, in the 1970’s. When casinos were legalized in the state in 1974, elderly citizens (such as my great grandmother) received monthly checks from a portion of the gambling profits to be used for medical expenses and such. This money was coming from the same people who had recently been caught running numbers. Soon, the government decided to reverse this action and ended up passing an action that basically put the money back in the pocket of the people previously convicted, instead of monthly checks to those in need.
In the end, there is so much hypocrisy surrounding gambling. But in the case of March Madness, where an entire nation is involved at the same time of the year for the exact same duration and in the exact method, why not declare the event a special approved betting game much like the lottery tickets that are sold nation-wide. In this way, a portion of the betting pool profits can be distributed to setting up scholarships for college, or funding music and arts programs, or creating special vocational schools. Instead, the money is typically sent back to schools and conferences that already rake in major profits from their teams and TV deals. Whereas most gambling bets favor the house, here we could have our student population come out as the winners, and that is a sure winner everytime!