NCAA President Charlie Baker is calling on state governments to ban individual player prop bets at the college level. His plea comes after a spate of threats towards players and a rising number of betting-related scandals at colleges and universities across the country.
Baker made his announcement in a recent X/Twitter posting saying, “Sports betting issues are on the rise across the country with prop bets continuing to threaten the integrity of competition and leading to student-athletes and professional athletes getting harassed. The NCAA is working with states to deal with these threats and many are responding by banning college prop bets.”
“This week we will be contacting officials across the country in states that still allow these bets and ask them to join Ohio, Vermont, Maryland and many others and remove college prop bets from all betting markets. The NCAA is drawing the line on all sports betting to protect student athletes and to protect the integrity of the game – issues across the country these last several days show there is more work to be done,” he added.
While even the most ardent sports betting supporters would have supposed that regulated betting would have some impact on US sport, few would have predicted what is actually happening at the college level. Student, and professional, athletes across the United States are reporting instances of harassment from gamblers. With the rise of social media that harassment is nearly constant, and extremely intimate, for student-athletes, many of whom are still teenagers themselves.
Baker has not indicated that the NCAA will be seeking a federal ban on college-level player props, but don’t be surprised if that subject gets raised in the near future.