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NCAA, Oregon at Odds Over Betting

OREGON – As reported by the Oregonian: "…National Collegiate Athletic Association officials say they will not place a men's basketball tournament event in Oregon as long as it has sports betting games run by the state lottery. Yet teams at Oregon's seven state universities have come to rely on revenue from those games. The resulting deadlock has left nearly everyone involved stumped.

"The stalemate on the men's tournament has existed for years. But NCAA officials recently said they plan to keep the women's tournament from sports gambling states as well, shutting Oregon out of another sporting event as Portland strains to boost its stock as a major league city.

"The conflict about the men's basketball tournament began with Sports Action, a low-stakes, pro football parlay game the Oregon Lottery has run for 15 years. Last year the lottery added Scoreboard, a game in which bettors match randomly selected numbers to the scores of NFL games. The lottery games are popular, generating more than $10 million in total sales last year.

"An average of $2.4 million of that revenue goes to state college athletic departments, which use it to pay assistant coaches, update equipment and fund athletic scholarships.

"…Larger schools receive bigger slices of the pie. Tom Burman, athletic director at Portland State, said if the lottery money disappeared he could not find a replacement.

"…To some, the most direct solution to the quandary would be to get NCAA leaders to change policies. But they aren't budging. Although the NCAA can do little to stop the billions of dollars wagered on the tournament in office pools, it is standing against states that sanction betting on amateur, college or professional sports: Montana, Nevada and Oregon.

"…Critics say the NCAA decrying gambling is like a farmer denouncing rain. After all, it is the tradition of sketching out winners on a bracket and throwing a few bucks in the pot that fuels the men's basketball tournament's broad appeal…"

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