For additional photos, click here.

June 13, 2000

University Park, Pa. -- Penn State President Graham Spanier today (June 13) testified about sports gambling before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., and called for the adoption of legislation to close a loophole in federal law that allows legalized gambling on college sports to continue in Nevada.

Spanier, chair of the NCAA's Division I Board of Directors, said he has never heard genuine fans of intercollegiate athletics suggest that they support collegiate contests because they can bet on the outcome of the games.

"Gambling on college student-athletes and the games they play, whether done legally in the sports books of Nevada or illegally in any other state, or on the Internet is a problem," said Spanier. "Gambling on high school, college and Olympic sporting events should be prohibited in all states and greater efforts should be taken to enforce existing laws that ban gambling on the athletics success of our young people."

Among those joining Spanier in supporting the legislation were former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, Kentucky's men's basketball coach Tubby Smith and South Carolina's football coach Lou Holtz.

The bill to close the sports gambling loophole, strongly supported by the NCAA and its more than 1,000 college and university members, has bipartisan co-sponsorship by more than 70 House members. Called the Student Athlete Protection Act (H.R. 3575), it was introduced in February by Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Tim Roemer, D-Ind. It follows a recommendation of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission that all currently legal gambling on college sports be discontinued because of its harmful effects on students and the games.

The bill would remove the grandfather clause from the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). The law prohibited gambling on amateur and professional sporting events with an exemption for those states that already conducted sports gambling or had enacted legislation to do so. Nevada was the only state at that time and continues to be the only state to allow gambling on college sporting events. The NCAA has taken a number of steps to address problems associated with sports wagering. Among such actions, the NCAA established rules to prohibit all sports gambling by student-athletes, campus and conference athletics personnel, and NCAA employees. Recently, the NCAA's membership adopted a stringent two-tiered penalty structure for violations of the NCAA's bylaws regarding sports gambling.

The new by-laws take effect on August 1, 2000 and include a no-tolerance policy for student-athletes who engage in activities designed to influence the outcome of an intercollegiate contest or beat a point-spread or bet either legally or illegally on their own team.

The Senate version of the bill, the Amateur Sports Integrity Act, S.2340, was adopted by the Senate Commerce Committee in April. The bill’s sponsors, Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., continue to press the Senate leadership to allow the legislation to be considered on the Senate floor in the near future.

For a copy of Dr. Spanier’s complete testimony, go to http://www.psu.edu/ur/oped/

***aj***

For more information on this issue, contact Jane Jankowski at NCAA, (317) 917-6222.