A visitor to the Vegas Insider site can link directly to CBS SportsLine, although after CBS joined with Sportsline in 1997 a link from the sports site to Vegas Insider was eliminated. So were gambling-related ads.

As for ESPN, with a little perseverance a determined bettor can access overseas gambling sites that link off ESPN.com's partner sites. In spite of barriers designed to prevent U.S. users from placing bets, visitors to ESPN.com, with just a few clicks, can link to English gambling sites that take wagers on NCAA basketball games.

Asked if these gambling relationships concerned him, Brand said: "I was pretty sure that was no longer the case. I'm going to have to plead, I don't know about it."

Later, in response to written questions, Brand acknowledged that the NCAA has concerns about some practices of the Internet sites associated with CBS and ESPN, while saying: "We would have little hope of making changes if we were not in a contractual relationship with these two media companies."

Yet both Vegas Insider, part of the CBS family, and ESPN.com continue to offer links to gambling sites that take action on college basketball, including futures on who will win the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

The NCAA has a history of sending mixed signals when it comes to gambling. Saum, the NCAA's point person in its crusade against gambling, held shares in International Game Technology when he was named to oversee gambling activities in 1996, according to a source at Saum's former brokerage firm. IGT is the world's largest manufacturer of casino slot machines.

When first asked about his investment in IGT during a tape-recorded telephone interview, Saum denied ever having held the stock. Told that someone with knowledge of investments had confirmed his purchase, Saum then acknowledged having once owned the stock, but said it was before he joined the NCAA. When pressed further in this same conversation, Saum said he owned the shares before "doing gambling stuff" at the NCAA.

In a subsequent interview, Saum said he confirmed through the brokerage firm that he had sold IGT stock on Sept. 25, 1996, almost a month after he was promoted from NCAA enforcement rep to the gambling position. (The divestiture most likely proved profitable, since the IGT closing price of $20.13 a share on Sept. 25 was up nearly 50 percent from the same date a year earlier.)

"I spoke to my supervisor, said that I had some of this stock and we agreed that I decided to sell it," Saum recalled. "When I was an enforcement rep, that is different than what I do now. So I had it as an enforcement rep."

Saum declined to identify the supervisor.

Of several former supervisors contacted by SI.com, David Berst, who oversaw Saum briefly in 1996, is the only one who recalled a conversation about slot-machine stock. He said Saum approached him after he'd already been appointed to the gambling post; Berst added that he never followed up to see if Saum had divested himself of the stock.

In fact, there was no reason for Berst to pursue the issue. The NCAA has general conflict-of-interest guidelines, but no policy that specifically addresses gambling-related or other potentially embarrassing investments by staff.

Asked whether the NCAA should have specific policies that prohibit ownership or investment in gambling-related companies, Brand responded: "The Association has clearly articulated its position with regard to sports wagering, but we have not taken a similar position with regard to other forms of gaming."

Dempsey, the former president, further drew a distinction between casino gambling and sports wagering in his defense of Saum. "Slot machines have nothing to do with sports wagering per se," Dempsey said. "However, Mr. Saum recognized that his ownership of stock in a company that manufactures slot machines could be perceived in a negative light ... [and] sold that stock and has owned no other such investments."

Saum acted appropriately, Dempsey maintains, and brought the NCAA no embarrassment.

Several former NCAA staff members, including directors, disagree. They say Saum exercised poor judgment when, as an NCAA investigator policing violations in college sports, he held investments in the gambling industry. Some of them also question whether Saum would have been promoted to the high-profile gambling position if his stock holding had been widely known.

"If he had spoken to me about gambling stock it would have set off all kinds of alarms in my head," said Carrie Doyle, a former NCAA director who oversaw Saum. "I would have said, 'Well, that is nuts.'

"You can't be splitting hairs [slot machines vs. sports gambling], either. If in fact your responsibility has to do with educating people about the evils of gambling, we're not just talking about the evils of gambling on intercollegiate athletics."

Had she been aware of the Saum investment, said former NCAA public relations director Kathryn Reith, she would have questioned Saum's high profile as the organization's anti-gambling person. "That would be like if you were supposed to do an anti-smoking program and you had owned stock in Philip Morris," she said. "It doesn't have a good feel to it."

Dr. Henry Lesieur, a psychologist specializing in the treatment of problem gamblers, also believes it is inconsistent to separate sports gambling from all other gambling.

"There is a connection between the two," said Lesieur, a clinical fellow at Rhode Island Hospital and research fellow at Brown University. "I understand the NCAA is concerned about betting on sports because of the integrity of the game, but its [position] is very narrow. I have had professional baseball players whose real problem was a combination of sports and casino gambling. These are people I have worked with. I've had a college student who was betting on sports when in college and who shaved points, and then [later] the problem was the slot machines."

Lesieur said that person played college basketball on the East Coast and the point shaving he admitted to had gone undetected. His involvement in slots came after he moved to Illinois and frequented riverboat casinos.

Further clouding the NCAA's position is that Dempsey himself hit the roof on the issue of slot machines earlier in 1996, when then-Georgetown University basketball coach John Thompson contemplated the purchase of a 10 percent interest in the slot machine concession at the Las Vegas airport. At the time, Dempsey said, "It is ill-advised for anyone connected to college sports to be involved, even peripherally, with gambling interests."

Saum told SI.com he was unfamiliar with Thompson's situation, adding, "I personally don't see any similarity."

Less than two months into his job as director of gambling activities in 1996, Saum was widely quoted warning college athletic directors and other groups to keep their meetings out of casinos and areas involved in gambling, such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The NCAA has such a policy for its committee meetings.

"We don't want to be perceived as associated with gambling of any sort," Saum said at the time. "If we're going to encourage our student-athletes not to gamble on sports, we need to be good role models and stay away from those places."

Saum has estimated that "25 to 30 percent" of men's college basketball and football players gamble. The number is slightly less for female basketball players, he says, at 20 percent.

Saum and his employer have warned against holding basketball tournaments in Las Vegas casinos and have threatened to withhold credentials to its basketball tournament from newspapers that publish the betting line on college games. At the same time, the oddsmaker, Las Vegas Sports Consultants, falls under the umbrella of business partner CBS.

Dempsey, who as president signed off on the broadcast contracts, declined comment on whether an NCAA committee had debated the ethical issues, or if he viewed these business partnerships as consistent with the NCAA's position on gambling.

What he did say is that "CBS Sports has assured us that no gambling-related revenue accrues to CBS Sports from CBS SportsLine's subsidiaries."

But that's a hollow claim, because as a shareholder in CBS SportsLine.com, CBS Sports wouldn't share in revenues, anyway. CBS Sports holds 11.4 million shares of common stock in CBS SportsLine.com, which, according to documents filed with the SEC, has yet to show a profit.

"CBS is a stockholder," said Larry Wahl, CBS Sportsline's director of investor relations and corporate communications. "There haven't been any dividends paid, but if the stock goes up the value of their investment goes up."

In the end, the NCAA appears to be caught in the vast gap between what it practices and what it preaches.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Fish, click here.

 

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