Since sports betting was legalized by the US Supreme Court in 2018, gambling of all forms has taken a much larger place in American’s daily lives than it once did. Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible, and potentially dangerous, than on college campuses. That’s why the NCAA is launching a new program aimed at educating college students about the potential pitfalls of sports betting called, Draw the Line.
Draw the line is a two-pronged program that includes a series of social media posts aimed at students, as well as a toolkit that schools can use to help boost the message. The program’s launch is timed to coincide with the first week of the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships. The tournament, also known as March Madness, is one of the peak gambling periods in the United States and it’s expected that $2.72 billion will be bet on the tournament, that’s almost twice as much as was wagered on the Super Bowl.
Given that it’s estimated that 67 percent of 18-22-year-olds on America’s college campuses have engaged in sports betting of one kind of another, the program’s launch cannot come a moment too soon. (And that’s to say nothing of the growing number of betting scandals involving college athletes that have plagued college campuses of late.)
https://www.ncaa.org/news/2024/3/19/media-center-ncaa-launches-draw-the-line-to-address-sports-betting.aspx#:~:text=%22Sports%20betting%20is%20everywhere%20%E2%80%94%20especially,NCAA%20President%20Charlie%20Baker%20said. shared his thoughts on the program in a recent press release saying, “Sports betting is everywhere — especially on college campuses — so it’s critical student-athletes get the real story about how it can impact them and their ability to play. We know some bettors are harassing student-athletes and officials, so that’s why we are advocating for policy changes at the state level and launching monitoring tools around championships to refer serious threats to law enforcement. The NCAA is doing more than ever to protect the integrity of the game and arm student-athletes with the truth about sports betting.”
While the program is likely to help some students out, the scope of sports betting on America’s college campuses is so massive that the NCAA will need to be continuously fighting the problem.