The NCAA could vote as soon as today to allow college athletes, coaches, and staff members to bet on professional sports.
Currently, NCAA athletes, coaches, and staff are prohibited from betting on sports that are also contested by the sanctioning body. The proposed rule change still would not allow for betting on any college sports.
According to Sports Illustrated, a vote could occur today. The proposal to “adopt legislation to deregulate the prohibition on wagering on professional sports” advanced through the NCAA Division I Board of Directors in April and the Division I Council in May.
Passage this week would then send the proposal onto the D-II and D-III councils. That may never happen, according to SI, which quoted an anonymous source as saying the change “is not a slam dunk.”
Colleges, betting, ethics, scandal fresh topics
Policing betting activities on campuses where sizeable portions of the student and athlete populations are under legal betting age has been troublesome for the NCAA and college administrators. The legal betting age in most of the 41 U.S. jurisdictions with regulated sports betting is 21, and a spate of campus wagering scandals after the repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018 underscored the need for better outreach and education in an impressionable and vulnerable demographic.
Other scandals, such as former Alabama head baseball coach Brad Bohannon (pictured above) supplying insider information to a bettor, showed that adult coaches and staff are not immune.
College sports betting scandals since 2018
- May 4, 2023: Bohannon was fired and the NCAA issued a 15-year show-cause order against him after he provided information to bettor Bert Neff to inform a bet against the Crimson Tide.
- May 8, 2023: Iowa and Iowa State suspended more than 20 athletes after they allegedly bet on NCAA games. Five former Hawkeyes football support staff members agreed to a punishment settlement with the NCAA in May.
- Aug. 15, 2024: Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevacqua suspended the men’s swimming and diving teams for a year for “numerous violations” of NCAA betting rules.
- Feb. 22, 2025: The NCAA launched an investigation into the Fresno State men’s basketball team for alleged points-shaving.
Most of these cases happened after the NCAA in 2023 altered its guidelines for reinstating student-athletes whose betting transgressions fell below a certain monetary threshold.
“These new guidelines modernize penalties for college athletes at a time when sports wagering has been legalized in dozens of states and is easily accessible nationwide with online betting platforms,” Alex Ricker-Gilbert, athletics director at Jacksonville and chair of the Division I Legislative Committee, said in a press release at the time. “While sports wagering by college athletes is still a concern — particularly as we remain committed to preserving the integrity of competition in college sports — consideration of mitigating factors is appropriate as staff prescribe penalties for young people who have made mistakes in this space.”
