Michael, a clean-cut, 22-year-old business student, is watching the New Orleans Saints trounce the Atlanta Falcons on a big-screen TV in his home.
"Lost that one," he says in a casual tone. According to thegreek.com, where he checks odds, the Saints weren't supposed to win by quite so much.
He lies shirtless on a dingy, beige couch, channel-surfing. Michael is working, but due to the illegal nature of his work, he won't allow his full name to be used. His part-time job is to book illegal sports bets for his friends, most of whom are ASU students.
In another Tempe home, ASU graduate student Travis Barbieri plays Texas Hold'em, a seven-card poker game. When a six of diamonds is dealt, he frowns, folds his hand and opens an Anchor Steam beer with a bottle opener.
On average, Barbieri says, between $200 and $300 changes hands in one evening of play. In addition to private poker games, he says he likes to play blackjack at the casinos, and he occasionally bets with his friends on sports.
In a bill that took effect last July, the Arizona Legislature cracked down on gambling among young people. The legal age for buying lottery tickets and going to casinos was raised from 18 to 21.
Jeff Groscost, a former state representative who strongly supported the change, says the bill was pushed in response to a basketball point-shaving scandal at ASU in the early 1990s.
"Our aim was to reduce the availability of gambling for young people," Groscost says. "It's a problem at ASU, with a casino [Casino Arizona] close to campus, and the students who run sports books out of their frat houses. We have to take measures that we can to make legal forms of gambling less appealing."
Casino owners across the state were supportive of the change in the law, saying that 18- to 21-year-olds composed a tiny portion of their customer base. Likewise, off-track betting venues were unconcerned about losing money. Jerry Simms, owner of Turf Paradise, a racecourse in Phoenix, says raising the legal betting age has had no visible effect on his business - revenue was higher than ever this past season after the new law went into effect.
And the biggest gambling outfit in Arizona, the Arizona Lottery, has not seen a slump in sales either.
Local and state studies show that the popularity of gambling, both legal and illegal, is on the rise among young people. A recent survey done by ASU's Health and Wellness Center showed that 66 percent of students have gambled at least once in the previous year. That's up 11 percent from the 2000 survey results, and it's 20 percent higher than the total percentage of adults in Arizona who answered "yes" to the same question in a 2003 study done by the Arizona Lottery.
The study also showed that students seem to be getting deeper into debt. The number of students who report losing $100 or more while gambling has more than doubled between 2000 and 2002, increasing from 8.5 percent to 17.6 percent. The number of students who say they're worried about paying off a gambling debt rose even more - from 1.8 percent in 2000 to 4.5 percent in 2002.
"There may be a trend here," says Karen Moses, assistant director of Student Health and Wellness at ASU, "but we don't know how strong it is, or if it will go down." Moses says she'll have a better picture of the problem after the next survey is done this spring.
The new law does not address what may be the most popular, hard-to-regulate kind of gambling: sports betting.
Beating the Odds
Betting on sports is illegal in every state except Nevada, but Bill Saum, the National Collegiate Athletics Association's director of agent and gambling activities, says he believes it happens on every college campus in the country. Legal sports books make up between 2 percent and 3 percent of the estimated dollar amount of nationwide sports books, according to information compiled by the NCAA in 2000. Nevada calculates the odds, which are widely published online, and underground circuits across the nation book bets.
At ASU, as at many large schools, a bookie is often just a couple phone calls away.
Although Michael's fledgling enterprise is just a couple months old, he's already taken as much as $600 in a single bet. He gets most of his business from friends and acquaintances.
"I really try to keep [the business] between the people I know," he says. "Something I started doing to spice up football season.
"It makes sports more exciting," he adds as he peruses the sports channels on TV without expression. His eyes are large and focused, but his posture is slack, uneven. "It gets people into the game; they get to feel involved."
Each week, Michael pays out wins and checks odds. Bets are usually placed up front to avoid the hassle of collecting. Occasionally, with friends, Michael will take bets on credit, and if they lost, he'll allow another bet to make up for the first one - a kind of double-or-nothing strategy.
This is how Lucas, a 21-year-old political science senior, came to owe Michael more than $100 last semester. Lucas only wants his first name used because of his involvement with Michael.
"I owed him money to begin with," Lucas says, "and he offered to waive the debt if I bet on the right team. I bet on my Packers on the wrong weekend, and now my debt's twice what it was."
Lucas paid off his debt to Michael this year.
Betting on college sports causes more concern among university officials than other kinds of underground gambling (poker games at students' houses, for example) because of the potential for tarnishing the integrity of college sports. Because student athletes are not paid, but are in a position to affect games' outcomes, they are seen as being vulnerable to corruption.
Losing streaks
A 1999 University of Cincinnati study estimated that anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent of student athletes nationwide participate in gambling activities. The fear is that after a streak of lost bets, bookies will approach desperate athletes, offering to erase debt in exchange for fixing games or shaving points.
That's what happened at ASU during the 1993-94 basketball season. Stevin Smith and Isaac Burton, both starters, got involved in point shaving after Smith had built up $10,000 in gambling debts to a local businessman. In 1997 both players pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit sports bribery.
The NCAA estimates that more money was involved in the ASU case than in any point-shaving scam in the history of college sports. The resulting scandal, which got nationwide publicity, hurt ASU's reputation and was partly the reason that former President Bill Clinton commissioned a two-year national panel to study the problems.
The 2003 Arizona Lottery study, concluded that the types of gambling that involve skill and/or point spreads tend to appeal more to those who report problem and at-risk gambling behavior. The study also showed that sports betting and private wagers are more popular than casino gambling and second only in popularity to the state lottery.
The same study showed that problem gamblers are more likely than non-problem gamblers to be white, male, use tobacco and alcohol regularly and to have used illegal drugs within the past year. Of problem gamblers surveyed, 42 percent began gambling before they were 18 years old.
Problem gamblers often become involved in other risky behavior, including illegal activities. Information compiled by the NCAA showed that if there is a large sports book in a city, a percentage of the money is going to organized crime.
"Often, gambling losses are linked to embezzlement, fraud, any sort of dishonest behavior," former state representative Groscost says.
He believes that if Arizona's law change deters even a few people from becoming involved in legalized gambling, it will result in fewer problem gamblers overall. He likened gambling to drug use, saying, "The lottery, the Indian casinos - these are the gateway drugs of gambling. If someone tries out these things, and has the personality for addiction, they will move on to find illegal ways to gamble. Nobody starts out on heroin."
NEED HELP?
If you or a loved one has a problem with gambling, here are some numbers to keep handy:
Arizona Office of
Problem Gambling Helpline: 1-877-921-4004
For times and locations
of Gamblers Anonymous meetings to assist the families and significant others of problem
gamblers please call: 602-266-9784.
There are potential downsides to the law change, however. When asked whether the change might drive young people to find illegal gambling opportunities in the absence of legal ones, Rep. Karen Johnson, who strongly supported the law, says, "Probably so." Johnson adds that if law enforcement were more attentive to the problem of illegal gambling, it would be more difficult for young people to find such opportunities.
And find opportunities, students will - even if they don't make much money.
Barbieri, who mostly plays cards, bartends full time at an upscale Chandler restaurant.
Lucas, who bets mainly on sports, is living primarily on student loans, scholarships and credit cards.
Michael, the student bookie, says he doesn't ask where his friends get the money, but some is probably from parents, some from part-time jobs. When asked how he knows he can cover all of their bets, Michael says simply, "This isn't my only business."
Michael says he got into the business after betting with another bookie for several months. "I lost more than I made," he says.
He soon decided that he might as well be the one collecting, the one with the odds on his side, and he offered to book bets for other people. "I lose a few, of course, some people bet well," he says, "but in the long run, Vegas always wins."
He smiles a half-smile, still focused on the television.
"I'm Vegas."
Reach the reporter at emily.lyons@asu.edu.
