Fri, Mar 26, 2010 (3 a.m.)

For many sports fans, the best time of the year began last week and is continuing this weekend and next.
March Madness.

It’s the time of year for miracle three-pointers at the buzzer and college basketball teams from schools few people have ever heard of to have the chance to take down the powerhouses.

Because the NCAA tournament is an event stretched out over three weekends, there’s a greater effect than a single-day event such as the Super Bowl at Nevada’s sports books.

Nevada is the only state where legal wagering occurs. On opening weekend, when 64 teams in the tournament were playing, Las Vegas’ sports books were jammed with hoops fans making wagers.

Although March is a special time for Las Vegas, it unleashes a different kind of Madness for Arnie Wexler, who regularly lectures on the dangers of compulsive gambling, especially during the NCAA tournament and especially by college students.

“Because it’s stretched out over a long period, it’s the biggest gambling event of the year,” said Wexler, who says he placed his last bet April 10, 1968, and has been involved in helping compulsive gamblers for the past 40 years.

During March Madness, Wexler doubles his awareness efforts, claiming the big basketball tournament sucks in unsuspecting students who enjoy the thrill of winning a wager, then find themselves gambling money they once dedicated to educational expenses.

Wexler says the addictive gambling behavior has worsened with the growth of the Internet.

“We can’t stop it, and it’s getting worse,” he said. “Addiction is an impulse and with the Internet, you can jump on your computer in the middle of the night and lose thousands of dollars in no time.”

The NCAA and professional sports leagues have hypocritical stances on gambling, Wexler said.

He said he has tried to persuade the NCAA to act on growing evidence that gambling on college campuses is out of control. The organization pays him lip service and sends him on his way, he says. Its effort to combat gambling is to show student athletes a tired 20-minute film warning them not to associate with professional gamblers who may try to influence them to throw games, Wexler said.

The NCAA also provides a “gambling hotline” that rings into its office so that students can report illegal activity.
“What kid in his right mind is going to call the NCAA office?” Wexler said. “An athlete who did that would be barred from playing. What the NCAA needs is a real program that teaches about addiction.”

Professional leagues have their own problems, he said. Most have no problem talking about favorites and underdogs in their releases and broadcasts, and all operate their own “fantasy leagues” using statistics generated from games for fans to compete with one another for prizes.

Wexler had a few choice blasts for newspapers that publish gambling lines and point spreads.

“Why don’t they at least publish a phone number for people to call if they have gambling problem if they’re going to publish those lines?” he said. “I can’t even get the newspapers to do that. At least on cigarette packages, there are warnings that smoking is harmful to your health.”

Wexler wonders how much productivity has been lost in the American workplace this month with employees moving their attention from work to March Madness tournament brackets. He knows attention to academics is being diverted on college campuses across the country.

He said about one-third of the calls he received in the past three years on his gambling addiction hotline — 888-LAST BET — came from people from the age of 12 to 25. At the Comprehensive Addiction Rehabilitation Education center, C.A.R.E. Florida, near Wexler’s Boynton Beach, Fla., home, seven people are in treatment for gambling addictions. Five of them started gambling when they were in college.

“It’s completely out of control and it’s on college campuses everywhere,” he said.

The atmosphere at UNLV is a little different from other college campuses, since sports wagering is legal in Nevada for people 21 and older. But it’s just as pervasive.

Sage Sammons, sports editor of UNLV’ student newspaper The Rebel Yell, says the three questions that always come up in his circles are who’s playing, at what time and what’s the line.

Because sports wagering is legal, the gambling culture is more about social interaction than trying to beat the books.
“My friends usually bet anywhere from $10 to $150,” Sammons said. “The biggest bet one of my friends made was $100 on one game, and we were all looking at him like he was crazy.”

Sammons said he has seen some addictive gambling behavior in friends of friends.
“Some friends know a guy who gambled $1,000 at the opening of Aria,” he said. “A friend of a friend blew through $2,000 in one night, most of it on blackjack. Most of us can’t do that — that’s a semester’s worth of tuition.”

But he and his friends have seen some students move back in with their parents because they couldn’t handle the financial pressures, including gambling losses.

Although sports wagering is legal in Nevada, Sammons admits he has seen some instances where underage gamblers have convinced older fraternity brothers to place a bet for them.

“It’s like a rite of passage,” he said. “When I turned 21, one of the first things I did was get a beer at the sports book bar and place a bet.”

As sports editor, he has plenty of contact with student athletes and he said he has never seen or heard of any UNLV athletes betting on sports.

“There’s too much at stake for them,” he said. “They’d have their scholarships revoked, and they would be in trouble for a long time. I would be 100 percent shocked if there are any athletes at UNLV that gamble.”

By Arnie Wexler

As the cheers and jeers slowly quiet down for the 2009 World Champion New York Yankees, a festering problem throughout many sports remains: No, I am not talking about steroids. The problem is compulsive gambling by athletes.

Athletes may be more vulnerable than the general population when you look at the soft signs of compulsive gambling: high Levels of energy; unreasonable expectations of winning; very competitive personalities; distorted optimism; and bright with high IQs

It is time for college and professional sports to outline and executive a real program to help players who might have a gambling problem or gambling addiction problem. Yet college and professional sports still do not want to deal with this. They do not want the media and public to think there is a problem.

Ten years ago, as a compulsive-gamblers counselor, I went to the National Basketball Association office in Manhattan and met with league officials, players and union officials, concerned about players’ gambling. I was told, “We have a problem, and we’re trying to find out how bad the problem is” Officials asked me to keep my calendar open for the spring of the following year and said to me that they hoped that I might address every team in the league.

When I hadn’t heard from the NBA, I called and asked, “When do we start?” The talked were cancelled, and the response I got was this: “They said that the higher-ups didn’t want the media to find out”

And over the years, I have spoken to many college and professional athletes who had a gambling problem. One NCAA study a few years ago reported: “There is a disturbing trend of gambling among athletes in college” You can’t think that these people will get into the pros and then just stop gambling.

Compulsive gambling is an addiction just like alcoholism and chemical dependency, and all three diseases are recognized by the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic and statistical manual. Nevertheless, we treat compulsive gambling differently than the other two addictions. Society and professional sports treat people with chemical dependency and alcoholism as sick persons, send them to treatment and get them back to work. Sports looks at compulsive gamblers as bad people and gets barred them from playing in professional sports.

If colleges and professional leagues wanted to help the players, they would run real programs that seriously address the issue of gambling and compulsive gambling. Education and early detection can make a difference between life and death for some people who have or will end up with a gambling addiction.

One sports insider said to me: “Teams need to have a real program for players, coaches and referees, and they need to let somebody else run it. When you do it in-house, it’s like the fox running the chicken coop. You must be kidding yourself if you think any player, coach or referee is going to call the league and say, ‘I’ve got a gambling problem, and I need help.’ ”

When you look at the headlines about professional athletes, coaches and referees on the perils of gambling, odds are very good that might be looking at the tip of the iceberg. Here are several from the recent past:

= Pete Rose [on the Donahue show, November 1989]: “I didn’t seek help for my gambling problem until the middle of September, and I know it’s something I can’t lick by myself. I need help”

= Charles Barkley troubled by gambling addiction problem.

= Dolphins’ Will Allen investigated for pulling out gun in dispute over gambling debts.

= Antoine Walker has a scheduled court in Las Vegas in a case involving an $822,500 gambling debt.

= An arrest warrant for Shawn Chacon as a result of his alleged failure to pay Caesars Palace $150,000 in gambling markers.

= John Daly says gambling problem will “ruin me” and says he has lost between $50 million and $60 million during 12 years of heavy gambling .

= Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko was at the center of the match-fixing controversy in tennis.

= Michael Jordan was spotted at the baccarat pit of an Atlantic City casino in the wee hours of the morning before game two of the Eastern Conference Finals.

= Art Schlichter spent a decade in prison: “Ten years, seven months and two weeks, inside 44 various jails or prisons” because of gambling addiction.

= NBA referee Tim Donaghy is now in recovery for his gambling addiction. (From Tim Donaghy’s book if ever released: “I kept waiting for a Knicks game when Stafford, Bavetta and Kersey were working together. It was like knowing the winning lottery numbers before the drawing!”)

= March 1991: Lenny Dykstra, a notorious high-stakes bettor, was linked to a gambling probe in Mississippi.

= Paul Lo Duca says he bets with off-shore bookies, which, he claims, is legal. Running up big gambling debts — or even being perceived as a heavy gambler — leads to serious trouble. (What’s interesting about is that neither Major League Baseball nor the Mets seem bothered about the reports. Oh, the commissioner’s office mumbled something about gambling being bad.)

There are people in various sport’s halls of fame who are convicted drug addicts and alcoholics, yet compulsive gamblers are unable to get into these halls of fame. In fact, as far as professional sports goes, an alcoholic and chemical dependent person can get multiple chances, whereas a gambler cannot.

I am a recovering compulsive gambler who placed my last bet on April, 10, 1968, and I have been fighting the injustice of how sports, society and the judicial system deal with compulsive gamblers for the last 40 years. I run a national help line: 1-888-LAST BET.

Arnie Wexler (aswexler@aol.com)
Arnie & Sheila Wexler Associates
213 Third Avenue
Bradley Beach, New Jersey 07720
Office #: 561-200-0165
Cell#: 954-501-5270