When ACC Commissioner John Swofford gave his state of the league speech to kick off the ACC Kickoff Media event in Charlotte Wednesday, the most popular topic on the agenda seemed to be gambling. As he fielded questions on a wide variety of topics from the gathered media, three different times the subject returned to the what-ifs that could occur if a state with an ACC School legalized gambling.
Swofford gave good answers in the folksy, aw-shucks method he often effectively employs. But they really didn’t leave you with the feeling of a strong plan being in place. It instead gave the impression that this would be similar to the way the ACC approached the development of the ACC network: no real sense of urgency, and that the ACC would just figure it out as they went along.
Which is something I don’t understand.
When the Supreme Court ruled states could legalize gambling, there was no question in my mind that the ACC needed to decide what it was going to do. Legislation like this isn’t going to be passed by 25 states all at once, so the odds are great some states are going to have legalized gambling sooner than others. It’s particularly true when you consider that gambling is more ingrained in professional sports, and areas like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami that are heavily into pro sports are probably going to be the first to go after legalized gambling.
This means you could easily have a scenario where Boston College, Syracuse, Pitt, Florida State and Miami could be playing in states that allow gambling, and the rest of the league does not. Legalized betting will impose certain pressures (mainly about the dissemination of information regarding injuries or whether a player will participate in a game) and those teams are going to need help from the ACC to figure out what to do.
If the ACC doesn’t provide that advice, you will have teams in states with legal gambling playing league games with teams that aren’t, and each could be dealing with a different set of circumstances. Which could be a problem.
That didn’t seem to be the feeling you got from listening to the ACC Commissioner Wednesday. “I may be one of the most naive people in the world about gambling, quite honestly, Swofford said. “I can’t even tell you the lingo that goes with it, quite frankly. But I know it can be incredibly problematic for the integrity of our games. I don’t like the optics of gambling in college sports, but at the same time, I mean, it’s obviously going on illegally and has been for years, and there are people who are constantly trying to get information about programs and individual players, et cetera, so they can bet the most effective way they think they can.”
I wish Swofford hadn’t said that. I like Swofford and think he’s a good and honorable man. But gambling is a billion-dollar business and when it involves your member schools legally, you can’t just come right out and say you’re naïve about the subject. You don’t have to know what a parlay, a vig or juice is, but you do need to know how legalized gambling is going to affect ACC schools, and how you will deal with those effects on behalf of all schools.
With all due respect, I would think dealing with such challenges is part of the job of being a conference commissioner.
“I don’t know how much it changes everything, and I’m not sure anybody does,” he continued. “We’ve talked about this at our commissioners’ meetings a couple of weeks ago, and it’s kind of a, well, what if and what if, and is this going to change or not. I think we’re going to have to see how it plays out some.”
He did acknowledge that when large sums of money are bet involving a member schools, there will be people who come forward and generally try to figure out a way to get some of that money for themselves.
“I mean, there’s even an argument about — you see people talking about let’s get a one percent integrity fee, so to speak, to try and manage this and do what we need to do on our campuses with our athletes,” Swofford said. “And then you have others say, wait a minute, we’re going to ask to make money out of this, an enterprise in which people are betting on our players, and we’re going to take money because people are betting on our players. Some people have a moral problem with that.
“So it’s not going to be simple. I’m not sure — sometimes when you think something is just going to be horrible and an incredible mess, it comes into play, and a year or two later, you find out, well, you know, that’s not as impactful as I thought it would be.
And that’s the point. It’s not going to be simple. It may turn out in a couple of years to be no big deal. But then again, in a couple of years, it may be a disaster if you don’t plan for it now.
Swofford later said he hopes the federal government will step in and lay out some suggestions for how it should be handled, and then the league can use that as a template for its guidelines.
“One thing that would seem to make some sense to me is if Congress put some parameters to bring some consistency state to state, if a state decided to legalize gambling,” Swofford said. I’m not saying you take that right away from the states, I’m just saying that if the state of North Carolina decided to — or the state of Florida decided to legalize gambling, it would have certain parameters that it had to work within that were mandated by the Federal Government. Seems to me that might be helpful in at least laying out some consistency state to state. That’s coming from a very naive point of view.”
Getting the federal government to help could be an answer. But I’m also reminded of Ronald Reagan’s famous quote saying “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.
Instead, I’d just like to see the ACC take the bull by the horns and tell everybody “THIS is what we’re going to do.” It is very likely that a member school will be in a state with legalized gambling a year from now. You can deal from strength and come up with the policy now. Or you could wait, see how it goes, and hope maybe nothing changes.
That, it would seem, could really be coming from a very naïve point of view.