College Football Cover Alerts Summary

In the article “College Football: Don’t Pander to Bettors,” the Christian Science Monitor editorial board argues that ESPN should have its coverage of college football cater less to those who might be gambling on the games. The article foolishly notes that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) stands against betting on college sports, but that despite this stance ESPN has begun to provide “cover alerts” and other betting-related information during its broadcasts of college games. It went on to state that although the NCAA may be hesitant to argue with the practices of its biggest media partner, ESPN should stop providing “cover alerts” unless it wants to risk damaging the lives of athletes and gamblers, as well as the game they love. Although the desire to limit betting on college sports is admirable, the editorial board’s critique of ESPN was misguided. I think its protest against ESPN’s use of “cover alerts” overestimates the network’s influence on college football fans and underestimates the NCAA’s role in preventing betting on college sports. …show more content…
As the article notes, ESPN is the NCAA’s largest media partner and therefore has some amount of control over how college games are presented. However, the article exaggerates the possible effects of the “cover alerts” the network has started to provide. As stated in the article, a “cover alert’ is a brief interruption of a game’s broadcast so that viewers can be updated on whether a team in another game has “covered their point spread,” a term used by bettors. The article characterizes this brief interruption of broadcasts on a single network as sending “college football out of bounds and in a troubling