At the heart of the financial tug of war begun between college athletics and the gaming industry is a disagreement: Administrators say betting on college sports will increase the likelihood of scandals on campus. Gaming entities, armed with watchdogs, believe the opposite is true.

What happened to Mike Hamrick in Las Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. It stayed with him. One particular memory from his six years as UNLV’s athletic director — at the nexus of sports and gambling in the United States, with a sportsbook across the street from the football team’s practice facility — resurfaced recently.

It was the first men’s basketball game of Hamrick’s tenure there in 2003, and a UNLV walk-on passed up a wide-open layup in the closing seconds and instead dribbled out the clock in a double-digit win. Some fans near the court started booing.

“We just won a big basketball game by 11 points, and our fans aren’t happy that we didn’t win by more points?” Hamrick recalled asking his wife. A fan seated beside him explained, “No, that’s not why fans are upset. They’re upset because the point spread was 12, and we didn’t cover.”

Hamrick was in a brave new betting world. This story on Americans betting on college sports originally appeared on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette website.