In the early 1990s, Schultz and his fellow sports commissioners argued that gambling had to be kept as far from their games as possible. Sports gambling was legal only in Nevada, and, in response to other states exploring the possibility of legalizing, the leagues lashed out. Rather than go state-by-state to stamp out gambling proposals, the NCAA and the four professional sports leagues enlisted the help of Congress. In 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which promised to keep gambling out of sports by barring new states from entering the sports gambling business. Nevada, meanwhile, received an exemption.
PASPA did not end the leagues’ crusade against sports gambling. After all, the law did nothing about illegal gambling, and NCAA basketball was rocked by more point-shaving scandals in the 1990s and 2000s. Such incidents likely only deepened the leagues’ opposition to gambling, as well as their insistence that betting was a threat to the integrity of professional and amateur sports. In 2000, NCAA luminaries, including Kentucky men’s basketball coach Tubby Smith and the commissioner of the Big Ten, testified in favor of the Student Athlete Protection Act, which would have banned betting on college sports nationwide, including in Nevada.
The problem facing the NCAA was that, at the very same time its representatives denigrated gambling, the popularity of one of its most profitable products had begun to hinge on Americans’ insatiable appetite for betting. Between 2004 and 2017, the total amount bet on the NCAA basketball tournament more than doubled, reaching over $300 million, more than twice the amount bet on that year’s Super Bowl. These sums did not include all the money gambled with bookies or at offshore, online casinos that skirted U.S. gambling regulations.
Traditional gambling, of course, was only part of the story. March Madness brackets drove the most interest in the tournament, whether participants competed against colleagues, family members, or strangers. These bracket competitions likely date back to the late 1970s and a bar on Staten Island. But in the 1990s and 2000s, thanks to media coverage and the arrival of online bracket challenges, they exploded in interest and became a national pastime.