The American Phenomenon of Gambling
The American Phenomenon of Gambling
Americans are familiar with the nation’s major addictions: narcotics, alcohol, and tobacco. Society has spent countless millions of dollars warning about these substances, however another addiction that receives far less attention is sweeping across America. This addiction is having a major impact on the college campuses across our nation. The executive director of the N.C.A.A., Cedric W. Demsey, in his 1997 “State of the Association” address called gambling the most serious threat facing intercollegiate athletics(Naughton A52). At the heart of the gambling problem on college campuses is college sports gambling. Gambling on college sports has two major impacts. First, gambling on sports just like casino gambling is addictive. Secondly, gambling on college sports has hurt the integrity of college athletics. Because gambling on college sports is causing negative consequences for college students, athletes, and athletic games, the U.S. government should ban all gambling on college sports, and steps should be taken to decrease the prevalence of illegal and Internet gambling on college campuses.
On March 19, 1931, the Nevada state government voted to legalize gambling. At this time no one had ever heard of the term, “sports book”. It would be some forty years later before the first sports book would open up in Las Vegas. The Union Plaza Hotel in downtown Las Vegas opened the first casino sports book in 1975.
A sports book is a place where a bet can be made on a sporting event. Nevada is the only state where a person can bet on an individual game or sporting event legally. A person can bet on almost every professional sport, along with some collegiate sports, which mainly consist of men’s basketball and football. The sports books in Las Vegas each have huge electronic odds boards that tell which teams are playing, the team that is expected to win, and how much the team is expected to win by. The team that is supposed to win is called the favorite, and the team that is supposed to lose is called the underdog. Now someone new to sports betting would say, well I’ll just bet on the favorite and win most of the time. Unfortunately, however it is much tougher than this. The one thing that makes gambling on sports very...