Part two of a three-part series on college athletics and legalized sports gambling
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.