Open a daily sports section this week and turn to the agate page. Some newspapers call it the scoreboard, others the sportsline, but in the end, it's just the refuge for all of the meaningless statistics sports nerds gobble up.
Buried in the corner - usually in the smallest box with very little type - rests the heart of this campus and schools nationwide.
That's usually where 'Today's Line' is posted.
To a casual sports fan, interested only in his team's wins or losses, the outcome of a game can prove destructive. Following a devastating defeat - the likes of which this campus is rapidly getting used to - these passionate fans retreat into a personal shell. Even daylight becomes an enemy to the faint of heart wallowing in a loss.
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| Mark Snyder Mark |
These are the people who live and die by the fluctuation in a point spread. Hundreds, often thousands, of dollars are gained or lost on a last-minute field goal. The small type in the corner of the page establishes a method to their madness.
The image of a gambler - a middle-aged man flanked by a leg-breaker on each side - creates the appearance of an underworld of trouble, not that there's anything wrong with that.
But a deeper look into the world of first names opens our peers up to examination. On a smaller scale, the bets run rampant through our halls. The degenerates who fuel the world of illegal gambling are often sitting beside you in psych lecture or living down the hall in the dorm.
Fall is a prime time for the growth of sports gambling. Football, with its national exposure and once-a-week games, elicits the largest interest from the pocketbook. That makes fall a prime target for large wagers.
The process is hardly complex. A couple of betting services based in Las Vegas create point spreads at the beginning of each week for the following week's games. Various factors contribute to setting the lines - injuries, previous team records and even media analysis - and then the spreads for every football game believed to be of interest are printed in major newspapers across the country.
This is where the conspiracy grows.
In the past, newspapers and 900 numbers were the only method to obtain the lines. Now, with the expansion of the Internet and unlimited access, bettors around the world can find out in an instant what the margin is on any given game and, consequently, the market has expanded.
So daily newspapers - intended to provide a public service - are now aiding and abetting criminals and yet they pass it off as newsworthy.
Each week, a chosen group of games is distributed by a pool coordinator before the combatants select against the spreads. Entrants often pay a fee to participate and the winner - either on a weekly basis or for the season as a whole - takes home the bulk of the entrance fees.
(Note: We at the Daily do nothing to combat the problem, yet do not endorse the situation. On a weekly basis we select college football games - against the spread - with no reservations as to the implied gambling tendencies. It merely serves as a simple explanation of our vast football knowledge.)
Those who play the games dismiss the perils of dropping money as "a diversion" or "a reason to keep an interest in the games." But when college students wager hundreds of dollars on a single Sunday, the fun aspect begins to wane.
The expansion of gambling in campus life is an underworld that walks a tightrope. At times, the pools can prove eminently profitable. But the mix of too much money (from far-away parents) and too much time (from non-existent classes) can prove volatile despite its low-key nature.
As an objective journalist, my conscience remains clear. So, you ask, how do I know so much about campus gambling if the scene is all hush-hush?
Field research.
- Mark Snyder can be reached at msnyder@umich.edu. Though he thinks gambling is a bad thing, he says take Eastern Michigan and the 35 points. Bet the house.
09-17-98
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