NCAA GAMBLING STANCE A BLUFF.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

With a wink and a nod at a New York press conference this week, the NCAA granted SportsLine.com permission to launch and operate its new official championship Web site for the next four years.

The deal-breaker to the creation of NCAASports.com was simple: SportsLine had to break off its advertising ties to two Las Vegas gambling Web sites. That's because the NCAA doesn't condone that kind of seedy activity and doesn't want to be associated with it in any way.

What a noble gesture by SportsLine.com. What a bold stand by the NCAA.

What an obvious charade.

First, none of this has anything to do with SportsLine finally developing a conscience. This a business deal, clear and simple, that makes far more dollars and sense for its long-term survival.

``We felt it was in our best interest to sell these sites and move forward with the NCAA,'' said SportsLine CEO Mike Levy, adding they'll probably get around to selling off the contracts for those sites within the next few months.

The two sites in question - VegasInsider.com and Las Vegas Sports Consultants - generated just 15 percent of annual revenue for SportsLine, which has yet to show a profit since it partnered with CBS (which owns 31 percent) and launched in conjunction with the NCAA Tournament in 1997.

Meanwhile, to a company like Viacom, which owns CBS, dropping those two accounts is hardly a strain on the bottom line. Viacom brought in $6.8 billion in sales during the fourth quarter of 2002.

Even Levy admits the revenues lost by the wagering sites would be ``more than offset'' by money generated by new advertisers who want to be associated with the NCAA logo.

Second, NCAA president Myles Brand had to say his organization would not do this deal without the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company dropping the sites.

``This reinforces our stand against sports wagering,'' said Brand, who, like Levy, carefully danced around the word ``gambling'' at Wednesday's press conference.

But Brand had little option but to hire SportsLine, which also does the NFL and PGA Tour's official sites. ESPN.com might have had a shot at the business, but because of its ties to CBS and its 11-year, $6 billion contract with the NCAA, SportsLine was first in line the whole time.

From a public relations standpoint, though, the NCAA has to show it's concerned about condoning any kind of gambling, which will reportedly generate about $63.5 billion this year, half of that from bets on sporting events. Last year, the NCAA pushed for legislation to prevent Vegas from posting odds on college athletics and do away with all Internet wagering.

But even with that, the NCAA continues to hold a double standard. Without the masses throwing money into the March Madness office pools -- no matter how much that looks like a non-gambling activity -- the NCAA men's basketball tournament wouldn't nearly have the rabid interest this time each year.

How is the NCAA cracking down on that? Cosmetically, apparently.

Wipe away all the Vegas ties, the NCAA is telling SportsLine, but please don't stop generating fan interest in the brackets when they come out in a couple of weeks.

Marc Isenberg, a West L.A.-based critic of the NCAA and author of ``The Money Sucker Machine: The Truth About Gambling and How It Affects Students' Lives,'' said he's ``guardedly optimistic'' about this latest NCAA-SportsLine sanctimonious agreement.

``I've never been against the office pools; I've been doing them since I was in the seventh grade,'' said Isenberg, who operates his own site called A-Game.com, which tries to help guide high school and college student-athletes through the mazes of rules and regulations. ``But what I don't agree with is how the NCAA, with a corporate partner in CBS, directs kids to the SportsLine.com site to participate in the pools. They don't understand the math and the marketing behind them.''

Isenberg also points out that SportsLine.com, once upon a time, was forced to divest itself of a Web site called SportsBook.com. But that eventually returned under a new name, VegasInsider.com, which SportsLine.com continued to support.

CBS Sports president Sean McManus said SportsLine.com's gambling ads were out of the network's control, but ``we had ongoing discussions about it. It's one less thing to worry about now.''

And one less thing that, at least on the surface, looks fishy.

--War games: Despite reports that CBS will shift NCAA Tournament games to MTV if a possible conflict with Iraq causes the network to pre-empt coverage, McManus made it clear that TNN (The National Network, formerly known as The Nashville Network, available in 86 million cable homes) would be the more-likely candidate.

``That's a decision you have to make at a time of the crisis,'' McManus said of a switch. ``If there is a war going on and there are important news elements to cover, that will take precedent over a sporting event.''

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By Tom Hoffarth