CHICAGO -- More than one-third of male athletes violated NCAA rules and jeopardized their eligibility by gambling on college or pro sports, according to an association study released Wednesday.
That could have included serious illegal gambling, but also tossing a dollar into an NCAA basketball tournament pool, making a bet with a friend or making legal sports wagers in Nevada.
The survey of almost 21,000 athletes in all sports -- by far the largest of its kind -- also reported serious violations in football and basketball, but in relatively small raw numbers.
In Division I football, 49 players (2.3 percent of those responding) said they had been asked to "affect the outcome of a game" because of a gambling debt. Thirty of those players (1.4 percent overall) said they actually did it.
The number of Division I football players responding was 2,132. Participating in the survey was voluntary and anonymous for the players.
"I do not now see evidence that the integrity of the game has been compromised," NCAA president Myles Brand said. "But the risk is real. We want to be ahead of this problem. . . . In the past, the NCAA has often waited until a problem boiled over and then reacted."
