
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 3, 1994                   TAG: 9411030121
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

NCAA BAN ON BETTING LINE STILL LONG SHOT

In an effort to discourage gambling on college games, the NCAA is considering giving newspapers a powerful reason to stop publishing the betting line:

If they don't, they might be barred from covering the NCAA Final Four.

The idea will be debated this month when the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee meets in New York.

Already, sports editors are lining up to defend their right to tell readers which teams are favored each week, and by how much.

``There are First Amendment issues, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and also common-sense issues,'' said Paul Anger, president of the Associated Press Sports Editors and sports editor of the Miami Herald. ``As soon as you launch into something like this, you run into a gray area bigger than a cumulus cloud, and I don't think there's any way the NCAA is going to be able to pull this off.''

The idea came up in July, when Duke athletic director Tom Butters, who was stepping down as chairman of the basketball committee, warned of the danger posed by illegal gambling. He cited the billions of dollars bet on sports and quoted Walter Byers, the former executive director of the NCAA, as saying gambling posed the greatest threat to college sports.

``I thought a lot about that during my tenure on the committee,'' Butters said. ``When you're dealing with something as, hopefully, pure and pristine as intercollegiate athletics is meant to be, and when you have outside forces involved, obviously the concern for that is very present.''

Last year, $394 billion was wagered on all types of sanctioned gambling, according to the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. Far more is bet illegally.

The fear on college campuses is that people with so much at stake will try to influence players.

Kansas athletic director Bob Frederick, now chairman of the basketball committee, has asked the NCAA's lawyers for opinions on whether a credentials ban on papers reporting the betting line would be constitutional.

``We may never do anything like that,'' Frederick said, ``but we want to somehow increase the awareness of the problem.''

by CNB