Betting on Collegiate Sports

ESPN ran an article recently about a University of Toledo football player who has been betting on his team. Now obviously this is a HUGE deal. This is essentially what banned Pete Rose, the MLB's most distinguished hitter, from baseball and the Hall of Fame. As you can see from my posts I have a deep love and respect for sports so this really gets on my nerves. Athletes who are given every opportunity in the world to live the dream of about 100 MILLION other people and they use their time to do illegal things that get not only themselves in trouble and probably kicked out of the sport, their team in massive trouble, but all their teammates that did nothing wrong also get punished. Classless. On the PR side of this, it will obviously make the university look bad, hurt their sports recruiting, and most likely hurt them in their academic recruiting. I fully believe that sports has a huge affect on the academic environment and recruiting. For example, as much as I HATE the University of Florida, you have to say that what they have done over the past 12 months is pretty incredible. They have won a football championship and two basketball championships. That school is getting so much press it is unbelievable. Now, their recruiting is like a machine. They don't have to do anything, people (student/athletes, and just plain students like myself) want to go there. Now the University of Toledo administrators are making statements about the allegations. I believe they are doing a great job of talking about how big of a deal it is and how serious they are taking it. Obviously, they can't do much until there are charges filed and so on. After reading these articles, I'm not sure they could do much more. They can't say too much or that would probably tick off the lawyers. So kudos to the University of Toledo and hopefully this will teach student-athletes a lesson. However, we all know that won't happen. Until next time...