NCAA athletes, coaches, and athletic staff members are prohibited from participating in ANY sports wagering activity, AND are prohibited from providing information to individuals involved in any gambling activity (such as telling a friend or classmate that a point guard or pitcher is injured and won’t be completely healthy in an upcoming game). An NCAA official is voicing concern over sports betting on the performance of individual student-athletes and suggesting that gambling regulators consider restrictions on such wagers to protect. NCAA legislation prohibits SDA student-athletes and staff members from gambling or wagering on any sport (amateur, professional, or otherwise) in which the NCAA conducts a championship or bowl game.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — An NCAA official voiced concern Thursday over sports betting on the performance of individual college athletes, and she suggested that gambling regulators consider restrictions on such wagers to protect the integrity of the games.

Speaking at the Sports Betting USA 2020 online seminar, Naima Stevenson-Starks, the NCAA's vice president for law, policy and governance, expressed concern about so-called proposition bets involving college athletes.

This type of bet concerns whether a given player will or won't surpass a certain threshold during a game, like whether a quarterback will throw 3 touchdowns or whether a running back will rush for 100 yards.

“Unlike the professional leagues, we are now talking about student-athletes attending class with people who may be betting on their efforts on the field or the court,” Stevenson-Starks said. “That's a concern. If you can think about missing a field goal or a free throw that might make the difference in a result, that's not the most settling thought.”

The NFL expressed similar concern about prop bets on its own players a few years ago. But NFL player props are a much larger segment of the sports betting industry than those on college players, something Stevenson-Starks acknowledged.

A survey Thursday of leading U.S. sportsbooks found little in the way of college player props, although they were more readily available on unlicensed offshore sites that are beyond the reach of U.S. regulators.

A spokeswoman for DraftKings said its college props usually involve which team scores first or last, and how many points a team will score. The lone game listed on the site for Thursday, the Colorado State-Boise State football game, did not offer bets on any individual player.

FanDuel was offering a bet on whether Colorado State quarterback Patrick O'Brien would throw for more than or fewer than 275.5 yards.

Legal sports betting is quickly spreading in the U.S. With six additional states approving or expanding sports betting in this month's elections, more than half the country is poised to have legal sports betting by the end of next year.

New Jersey is in the process of removing its restrictions on college sports betting to allow bets on New Jersey teams and all games played in the state.

The NCAA's concern over player bets resonated with at least one state gambling regulator participating in Thursday's seminar. Cathy Judd-Stein, chairwoman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, said one of the things her state will consider in any future legislation to legalize sports betting is “the safety of amateur athletes to protect them against exploitation.”

Stevenson-Starks also voiced renewed support for federal regulation of sports betting that would replace the current system of state-by-state supervision. A push to enact such a law soon after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2018 that cleared the way for all 50 states to offer sports betting has languished in the 2 1/2 years that followed.

A federal law “would be the most desirable. I don't think the momentum is there for that to be resurrected, but it is something that should be on the radar,” she said. “The state-by-state approach is more difficult for an institution like the NCAA.”

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has elected to change their existing sports betting policy regarding student athletes.

Before the amendment to the sports betting by laws, student-athletes found guilty of participating in sports betting related activities would be automatically disciplined. The athlete would lose at least one season of eligibility, up to a lifetime ban if the student took actions to influence the outcome of a game that they participated in. The NCAA’s former zero-tolerance policy did not allow any appeals.

You may recall that in May of 2017, five University of Richmond baseball players were suspended for sports wagering. While four of the players were shortly reinstated, one had to sit out an entire year.

The NCAA has now revised the law to allow for additional review rather than guaranteed suspension.

'To promote increased fairness, the committee believes it is important to conduct a case-by-case review of sports wagering violations and also provide an appellate opportunity,' wrote the NCAA Division I Council.

The modification was implemented on April 25, and the timing of the altered language is interesting, to say the least.

The Supreme Court is slated to issue their ruling on the controversial New Jersey sports betting case, Murphy vs. NCAA within weeks. If the Court rules in favor of New Jersey, states all over the nation could potentially offer legalized sports gambling – a privilege currently only held by Nevada.

While the NCAA is a plaintiff on the case along with the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB, it is one of the only litigants that have not started any lobbying efforts. The NBA and MLB have been vocal about their proposed sports betting model, which would allow the leagues to directly profit from sports betting should it become legal.

The NCAA has remained consistent in their opposition to sports betting, with their website reading that the association “opposes all forms of legal and illegal sports wagering, which has the potential to undermine the integrity of sports contests”.

Still, it seems like more than a coincidence that the decision to amend a decades-old policy comes so close to a landmark ruling on sports betting in America.

LegalBettingSites.com thinks it is reasonable to prohibit athletes from wagering on sports in most scenarios, the NCAA may have realized that should sports betting become widely regulated, a one-size-fits-all approach may no longer work.

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