Editorial: Narduzzi advice is better than NCAA rules on gambling

Coaches — no matter the sport or the discipline — help make people better at what they do.

Voice coaches help turn good singers into stars. Dialect coaches can be the difference between a wannabe and an Oscar winner. A good defensive line coach could turn a struggling team around — looking at you, Steelers.

But what a coach really does is take the rules of the game they are playing and help the talent grow within them. You don’t teach the rules to ignore them.

And Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi has feelings about a rule change.

The NCAA, in its less than infinite wisdom, decided last week to allow student-athletes and athletic department officials to gamble on professional sports.

As an example of how odd this decision was, it came just one day before the Department of Justice unveiled a massive NBA gambling scandal tied to coaches, players and organized crime. Eastern District of New York prosecutor Joseph Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

It is hard to escape gambling in the sports space anymore. The branding is everywhere. The push to bet more, more often and in more ways is a relentless rain on an already drenched field.

But NCAA school sports officials and players — young adults who are ostensibly students before they are athletes — were a dry spot in the deluge. They were not allowed to participate in wagering. Even in a world where name, image and likeness deals were making it less sport and more business, this was a line where things still felt a little pure — until the rules changed.

Narduzzi minced no words about his feelings.

“I think it’s absolutely one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever seen,” he said.

He had plenty of reasons to back that up. It could turn gambling into a habit and a habit into an addiction. It invites excuses and accidents that could impact a player’s future — like inadvertently betting on a college game instead of a professional one.

He’s not wrong. Inviting college players to dive unfettered into the world of sports betting is unfair to them, placing additional stresses on them that could tear down everything built as student-athletes. It encourages them to threaten everything they could build as professionals.

On Tuesday, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors called a time-out, punting the plan for a few weeks. The rule change will now take place Nov. 22 — unless division members want to rescind the decision entirely.

That potential gives some hope, but in a world where sportsbooks and casinos are flagrant with sponsorship deals, that hope is thin.

Narduzzi is not relying on it. He’s advising his people of his position on the issue regardless of the NCAA’s rules.

“Nothing changes in our room,” he said. “You guys shouldn’t be doing any of that.”

It might be the best coaching advice his players ever receive.