BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- College sports have faced no shortage lately of high-profile investigations and penalties. Very few of those cases, though, threaten the integrity of the games the way point shaving does.

The vulnerability of college athletes to gambling influences resurfaced last week when Yahoo! Sports reported the FBI is investigating suspended Auburn basketball Varez Ward's possible involvement in an alleged point-shaving scheme. The story also raises the difficult question of how often college games are manipulated in relation to point spreads.

"It's very difficult to say how common it is because you don't know how many people are doing it and not getting caught," said David Schwartz, director of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research.

"It's almost a perfect storm for criminal conspiracy when you've got young athletes with uncertain futures who may be financially vulnerable and, the rationale would be, they're not going to be really hurting anybody if they shave a few points or lose by a few more. There's a lot of potential for illegal bookies or even legal sports books to make a lot of money from this."

Justin Wolfers, an associate professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, studied 44,120 NCAA Division I men's basketball games and point spreads from 1989 to 2005. He concluded in a 2006 research paper that 1 percent, or nearly 500 games, involved "gambling-related corruption" and suggested about 6 percent of strongly-favored teams had players willing to manipulate their performance.

Wolfers based his conclusions in part from statistical analysis showing that teams favored by 12 points had too many 10- and 11-point wins and too few 13- and 14-point wins. He cautioned his study is not actual evidence of point shaving.

"There's no proof in such forensic statistics, merely suggestive patterns," Wolfers said by e-mail. "But they were very suggestive."

A less common form of point shaving occurs when players on underdog teams are paid to deliberately lose by more than the point spread. That appears to be the nature of the FBI investigation into Ward, who has privately denied wrongdoing, a source familiar with his version of the events told The Birmingham News.

A 2008 NCAA survey of more than 19,000 athletes found that nearly 30 percent of all male athletes admitted betting at least once in a year's time on college or pro sports, a violation of NCAA rules.

Less than 1 percent of the surveyed Division I football players (0.9 percent) and men's basketball players (0.6 percent) said they accepted money or another reward for playing poorly in games. Between 1 percent and 2 percent of those players acknowledged that they knew teammates who accepted such bribes.

That's just players who admitted to wrongdoing. Despite guaranteeing anonymity, the NCAA cautioned athletes may lie about activities that are illegal or could jeopardize their college eligibility.

More than one in five Division I men's golfers wagered at least once a month on sports, the most of any college sport. The ratio for men's basketball was about one in 20.

Slightly more than 6 percent of male athletes classified by the NCAA as frequent bettors -- betting at least once a month -- said they got their gambling money from unspecified illegal activities. That underscores how point shaving often surfaces: spin-offs from investigations of other criminal behavior.

Last year's point-shaving scandal at the University of San Diego emerged only because of a drug investigation. According to SI.com, authorities stopped a small-time bookie at a checkpoint and found $104,900 in the car that police believed the man planned to use to buy and sell marijuana.

The FBI kept the man on its radar and later learned he bet on sports and placed illegal wagers for friends and clients through an offshore Internet service. That turned into a four-month investigation called Operation Hookshot, in which the FBI used information from an informant facing 10 to 20 years in prison for an unrelated cocaine conviction, SI.com reported. Two former San Diego players and a former assistant coach were among 10 defendants charged with conspiracy to commit sports bribery, conduct an illegal gambling business and distribute marijuana.

Involving point guards

Most point-shaving scandals in college basketball have involved a point guard, the position Ward plays at Auburn. No one touches the ball more frequently than a point guard. Over the years, point guards were implicated in scandals at San Diego, Arizona State, Boston College and Arizona State.

Yahoo! Sports reported the FBI has looked at Auburn's losses on Jan. 25 to Arkansas and Feb. 7 to Alabama and whether Ward attempted to enlist other Auburn players in a possible scheme.

In the Arkansas game, Ward checked into the game early and immediately turned the ball over in the backcourt, falling to the floor as Arkansas turned the turnover into a layup. Ward stayed on the floor for more than a minute and left the game for good while limping. Coach Tony Barbee later said Ward had a quadriceps injury.

Against Alabama, Ward shot 1 for 5 from the field and 1 of 2 from the line and had six turnovers and two assists in 17 minutes. He had two turnovers in 21 seconds as Alabama, a five-point favorite, led by 10 with 15:25 left in the game and was subbed out. Ward returned with 11:30 remaining and committed two more turnovers in a two-minute span, extending Alabama's lead from 15 to 20 points.

"Point shaving can occur with very subtle swings," Schwartz said. "If you miss a fair number of shots, you turn the ball over and everybody is trying as hard as they can, there's not really an appearance something is wrong."

The NCAA has invested heavily into making athletes aware of the risks of gambling. FBI-assisted speakers talk to every team that reaches the Sweet 16 of the men's and women's basketball tournaments, and the NCAA more closely monitors betting lines.

Arnie Wexler, a gambling addict who has helped compulsive gamblers for 40 years, said he's not surprised when point-shaving scandals emerge. He said gambling has become socially acceptable with state lotteries and easily-accessible point spreads online and in newspapers, including The Birmingham News.

"The NCAA and the media are part of the problem," Wexler said. "...A couple years back the NCAA said it wouldn't credential any newspaper that carries the lines and odds. In two or three weeks that story went away very quickly because the NCAA knew they wouldn't get the hype" for its NCAA basketball tournament if it started banning media from coverage.

Since the Ward allegations broke, Wexler said he has written to Auburn offering his services.

There typically are two types of players who shave points: Those who want to make money, and those who are gambling addicts, according to Wexler.

"If they're addicted, they can't help themselves and they'll do anything to make up the money to the bookmaker they owe," he said. "I had one of the top college ballplayers that came to me for help probably 20 years ago because his sister brought him. He never got any help in college. He got suspended, ended up in community college and out of the country. I get it. But I think most people don't get it."

E-mail: jsolomon@bhamnews.com

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