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2 Seton Hall J. Sport L. 5 (1992)
The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act--Policy Concerns behind Senate Bill 474

handle is hein.journals/shjsl2 and id is 11 raw text is: THE PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR SPORTS PROTECTION ACT-POLICY CONCERNS BEHIND SENATE BILL 474 with introduction by Senator Bill Bradley* I. INTRODUCTION As a former professional basketball player, I have witnessed first-hand some of the negative effects of sports gambling. In one game at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks were ahead by eight points with thirty seconds left in the game. We scored a basket, which put us up by ten points. Instead of cheering, however, a por- tion •of the crowd in the Garden booed. The point spread was evi- dently eight instead of ten. On another occasion, a player on our team threw the ball up at the end of a game. Although the Knicks won the game, the ball en- ded up going into the basket of the opposing team. During the next week, the press in New York speculated about what had essentially been an inadvertent act. It was the prevalence of sports betting which encouraged this speculation. State-sanctioned sports betting puts the imprimatur of the state on this activity. It conveys the message that sports are more about money than personal achievement and sportsmanship. In these days of scandal and disillusionment, it is important that our youngsters not receive this message. Athletes are not roulette chips, but sports gambling treats them as such. If the dangers of state sponsored sports betting are not confronted, the character of sports and young- sters' view of them could be seriously threatened. Senate Bill 474 (S. 474) and House Bill 74 (H.R. 74) attempt to stem the growth of teenage gambling and protect the integrity of sports by proscribing the development of sports gambling. The bills * United States Senator (NJ-D), B.A., 1965 Princeton University;, M.A., 1967 Oxford Uni- versity, Rhodes Scholar. Senator Bradley has been a United States Senator for three consecu- tive terms beginning in 1978. He is a member of the Finance and Energy and Natural Re- sources Committee, the Special Committee on Aging and the Select Committee on Intelligence. The Constitutional Challenges, Commerce Clause v. States Rights and Uniform Applica- tion of Federal Legislation sections of this article were written by Serene Murphy of the Seton Hall Journal of Sport Law.

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