Adventures In Advertising

The sport of basketball, and especially its collegiate variant, is particularly vulnerable to influence by gamblers. Although it is a team game, individuals have a much greater effect on the outcome of games than in other popular team sport. Football squads are too big for a single player (other than, perhaps, the quarterback) to influence the outcome of the game. Although baseball is nominally a team game, its unique structure boils down to a series of individual confrontations between pitcher and batter, with random outcomes dictated by where the ball happens to be hit. In contrast, only five players are on the floor in basketball at any one time, which allows each of them the opportunity to have a significant impact on game action. Basketball is particularly prone to point shaving, the preferred illicit tactic of professional gamblers.

The NCAA has an uneasy detente with gambling interests. It educates its student-athletes about the dangers of gambling and tries to prevent gambling scandals at its institutions. However, the annual NCAA men's basketball tournament is one of the biggest and most popular gambling events in the world. People who have never set foot in a casino or horse track routinely throw a few dollars into their office bracket pool every March. It is a practice that the NCAA, the IRS and the FBI are powerless to stop.

College basketball players, like college students of all stripes, are particularly vulnerable to influence the gamblers because they are, generally speaking, poor. The promise of a cash payout for simply having a bad shooting night can be difficult for a morally conflicted basketball player to resist. Many institutions with prominent basketball teams have fallen victim to point shaving scandals, most recently Arizona State.

All of this makes what I heard on the radio yesterday particularly jarring. Stanford, rightfully known for drawing the best and brightest to its campus, aired a radio ad for its men's basketball team. The tagline at the end of the ad was, "we’re all in." Of all the slogans Stanford could have used to express enthusiasm and commitment to a cause, why use a well-known poker phrase?

I have no particular beef with gambling, but I think the dangerous influence major gambling interests can have on college student-athletes is obvious. For that reason, the "appearance of impropriety" that governs the ethical conduct of judges and lawyers is a concept relevant to collegiate athletics. Stanford is needlessly relying on gambling terminology to advertise its upcoming basketball game, unnecessarily dragging a shadow over its sport and institution. Stanford's opponent in the game advertised on the radio? Arizona State.

(Could it be that Stanford's clever band of tricksters in the athletic department intentionally alluded to gambling because the opponent is Arizona State? I'd say there is a slight chance of that; if it were confirmed that any member of the notorious Stanford band was involved in the production of the radio spot, that likelihood goes straight to 100%.)