[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 8 (Thursday, February 3, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E67]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E67]]



               SUPPORT THE STUDENT ATHLETE PROTECTION ACT

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                            HON. TIM ROEMER

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 3, 2000

  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join today with 
Representative Lindsey Graham in introducing legislation to prohibit 
legal betting on high school, college and Olympic sporting events.
  Our bill has the strong support of the NCAA, coaches, athletes and a 
broad spectrum of the education community. It is intended to help 
protect the integrity and purity of amateur athletics from the growing 
and increasingly negative influence of legal sports betting.
  In my home state of Indiana, we take our high school and college 
sports very seriously. You can't get a ticket to a high school 
basketball game in my district on a Friday night, or to a Notre Dame 
football game on a Saturday afternoon. They are sold out for months and 
even years in advance.
  Why is that? What's the magic of high school and collegiate sports 
that attracts so many student-athletes to compete, and draws so many 
fans to watch?
  To me, it's the purity and uncertainty of amateur sports. In an era 
of movies and television shows, where the outcomes are scripted in 
advance, you just don't know what's going to happen when a 17-year-old 
boy or girl steps to the line to attempt a game-winning free throw or 
kick a winning field goal. Your home team may win, they may lose, but 
at least you know the players tried their best in the pure spirit of 
competition.
  Today, that purity and integrity is being threatened by the growing 
influence of gambling. Not by small-time office betting pools or 
parking lot wagers, but by high-stakes, legal, government-sanctioned 
gambling: some $2.3 billion worth last year alone in the Nevada sports 
betting parlors.
  As the popularity of sports betting has increased, so too have the 
number of scandals involving collegiate athletics. According to the 
NCAA, more point-shaving and game-fixing scandals occurred during the 
1990's than the previous five decades combined. Let me repeat: more 
scandals in the 1990's than the previous five decades combined!
  As long as that kind of big money is out there, and sports betting is 
both legal and indeed encouraged through the publication of betting 
lines, the temptation to shave points or throw a game will always be 
there. We will no longer know if a player misses a layup, or drops a 
pass deliberately, or if he just plain misses. And once we lose that 
certainty, we'll no longer know if amateur sports are still an act of 
competition, or just another act that has been scripted not in 
Hollywood, but in the back rooms of the legal gambling parlors.
  It's not the right to gamble that is at stake with this legislation. 
It is not office pools on NCAA ``final four'' teams that we are out to 
ban. It's not tailgate party wagers we are out to ban. People are 
always going to place those kinds of bets on sporting events whether 
this bill passes or not. Rather, it's the integrity of athletic 
competition which players and fans have come to love and trust, and 
which has become such an integral part of our American panorama. The 
stakes are high. Protecting our teenagers' integrity and virtue is the 
heart and soul of the legislation.
  By banning legal sports betting on high school, collegiate and 
Olympic events, we can put the emphasis back where it belongs: on 
athletes playing their best, not placing their bets. On beating the 
competition, not beating the spread.
  Let's keep high school and collegiate sports as an institution which 
all Americans can value and trust.

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