NCAA should not regulate fantasy sports

Let me begin by saying I believe the NCAA does a fantastic job regulating college athletics and does not get the credit it deserves. However, it is not perfect.

The University of Missouri - St. Louis golf team recently was given two years probation because the coach was ... playing fantasy sports.

Fantasy sports are based on the principal of pitting created teams against each other. Fantasy sports users assemble a fake team with real players and then play other fake teams. The fantasy sports industry has grown exponentially in recent years — now more than $1 billion per year in revenue.

The former UMSL head coach, Dustin Ashby, is one member of the fantasy sports community. The NCAA said he allegedly paid an entry fee and competed for prizes in fantasy football and baseball. He also ran a multimillion-dollar fantasy business, according to the NCAA. He later resigned from his position at UMSL and the University was hit with the probation. I think it’s a real shame a university is punished for something as insignificant as a fantasy sports league.

The NCAA calls fantasy sports a form of gambling, and outlaws “pools or fantasy leagues in which an entry fee is required and there is an opportunity to win a prize.”

This brings up another big debate about fantasy sports — whether it is gambling. For an act to be considered

gambling in a legal sense, it must meet three criteria — an entry fee, “an element of chance” and a winnable prize.

Obviously, free fantasy sports leagues are completely legal. However, paid leagues are called into question. They clearly meet two of the three criteria by having an entry fee and a winnable prize. The debate rises about how much “chance” is involved in fantasy sports.

I firmly believe that fantasy sports take skill to play. If they were based only on chance, like the lottery, you would see little old ladies around the country proudly displaying fantasy trophies, and that is simply not the case.

There is a certain amount of skill in selecting players. Every year, there are many magazines and websites dedicated to helping managers identify the players to pick. If the games were based on chance, you could throw darts at players’ names to draft a team, but I’m confident that you would lose by doing that.

Skill also is involved in deciding who to play each game. It takes time and research to decide whether to start a player who faces a tough defense that day. Very few managers draft a team and leave it for the rest of the season without making any acquisitions or shuffling players from starting to the bench.

I am not saying luck doesn’t play a part in a fantasy sports victory. If my opponent has a player that gets injured, then sure, that helps my team and it was luck. However, the same can be said of real sports. In fact, I would argue that luck plays a bigger roll in actual sports than in their fantasy counterparts. In fantasy sports, only the statistics are measured. There isn’t the debate of whether a ball was fair or foul, though that can affect the fantasy game as well. But the statistics in the end make the game very much black and white.

I understand the NCAA not wanting its athletes to gamble, and I completely agree. Allowing athletes to gamble can lead to point shaving and eventually could destroy the integrity of college athletics. That being said, how does playing fantasy sports affect an athlete’s or coach’s performance? The simple answer is that it doesn’t at all.

I can’t figure out the reasoning behind banning fantasy sports. Let’s say a Div. I running back drafts a fantasy football team. When he gets on the field, I guarantee he’s not thinking about who to pick up on his fantasy team or second guessing who he drafted. Fantasy sports are probably the farthest thing from his mind. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Perhaps the NCAA believes college athletes would have an advantage in fantasy sports, because they are top-end athletes themselves. But, the beauty of fantasy sports is that they are based on intellectual skill, not athletic skill. Regular schmucks like myself finally can compete against others in all of the professionals sports. Of course the games are absolute fantasy, but that’s the point.

The only other possible conclusion I can draw is that the NCAA does not want its athletes to profit from fantasy sports. If that is the reasoning the NCAA is using, then it truly is a shame. Why can’t an athlete make a few dollars doing something he or she enjoys without affecting college athletics in any manner? I truly hope this is not why the NCAA refuses to allow fantasy sports to be played.

The NCAA has plenty of issues to worry about before getting involved in monitoring fantasy sports. College athletes should be able to play fantasy sports, unless fantasy sports invade the college games themselves. If a fantasy college sports league ever were to be created, then the student-athletes should be barred from participation. I don’t see that happening in the near future, but it’s possible.

In the mean time, college athletes, students, parents, teachers, plumbers, secretaries, engineers, farmers, construction workers and hair dressers all should be playing fantasy sports. In fact, that would be an interesting league right there.