Sports Betting hits college campuses
Sports betting and student-athletes are becoming increasingly entwined, and debates are arising on all levels, from the committees that oversee college athletics to the federal government in Congress and the FBI. Changes in regulations are leading to what the National Collegiate Athletic Association calls harm reduction, and what Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), calls “a step in the wrong direction”. The new rulings have a measurable impact on student-athletes, just like our Clark University Cougars.
In Oct., the Division III Management Council, which oversees schools like Clark University and other NEWMAC schools, aligned itself with DI and DII councils and approved a proposal that would legalize sports betting by student-athletes and staff on professional sports. However, betting on college sports, sharing insider information on college teams and sponsorship prohibitions are still in place. In their official statement, the NCAA and the DIII council discourage sports betting, especially among student-athletes, but hope that this policy and further education on the impacts of sports betting will give a level of protection to their student-athletes.
This new policy comes only a month after findings that at least 30 D1 men’s basketball student-athletes had been involved in either a point-shaving scheme or another deliberate manipulation of performance in response to prop bets. This policy news sits scarily among the current FBI investigations of NBA coach Chauncey Billups and former Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, as well as other former staff of the NBA. These recent events have led Congress to inquire about the new NCAA ruling and what the organization is doing to protect against illegal prop bets and protecting student-athletes from these illegal schemes.
It remains to be seen if the new policy will actually make it through. At first, the policy was supposed to be in place on November 1st, but the DI Committee made amendments that would delay the policy until November 22nd. Further inquiries by Congress and the FBI and by sports conferences like the SEC could have an impact on the fate of the new rules. In any case, college students across the country will be deeply impacted by whatever the eventual decision is, especially DIII student-athletes.
In a 2024 internal study conducted by the NCAA, 58% of DIII male student-athletes and 42% of DIII female student-athletes said they gambled for money in the year prior. When asked about how frequently they bet on sports, around 10% of male DIII student-athletes said they bet on sports once a week or more, and 30% said they bet on sports more than once a month. DIII Men’s baseball, basketball, football, golf, and lacrosse players all had an over 10% base of student-athletes who had bet on a college team that was not their own. It is easy to tell from this study, then, that NCAA or government rulings on sports betting would hit DIII players the hardest.
The new NCAA ruling would completely legalize the practice of pro sports gambling for student athletes at schools like Clark University, but detractors say that the totality of the ruling is a step too far. Sankey, for example, believes that the ruling completely strips any protection of student-athletes’ well-being.
On the DIII level, this is especially prevalent. A study of DIII college basketball players found significant levels of depression, anxiety, struggles with personal pressure and academic anxiety. Multiple academic reviews have found that stressful life events and the pressures of coming into adulthood are significant predictors of gambling as a coping mechanism. The wholesale deregulation of pro sports gambling for college athletes may protect their eligibility to play, but it could also put their mental health at risk, especially at the DIII level.
