Ncaa Student Athlete Gambling Rules

STUDENT-ATHLETES ON NCAA.ORG The following is a brief summary of the rules and regulations that directly affect you, the student-athlete. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all NCAA rules and regulations – for a copy of the NCAA manual, click here. NCAA rules prohibit participation in sports wagering activities and from providing information to individuals involved in or associated with any type of sports wagering activities concerning intercollegiate, amateur or professional athletics competition.

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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NCAA officials have expressed concerns that collegiate athletes may get confused by the spread of legal sports betting and think they can wager on games without violating NCAA rules.

There is also concerns that sportsbooks will look to take bets on more obscure collegiate sports as sports betting grows.

Eight states have now legalized sports betting and another six could enact legislation by the end of the year.

Speaking at the International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NCAA officials expressed concerns about this rapid growth.

“We recognized similar to the marijuana conversation that when something becomes legal for our student athletes, in particular, that can become confusing,” said Naima Stark, deputy general counsel for the NCAA who appeared on a panel: The Changing Landscape of Sports Wagering and the Impact on NCAA Competition. Her comments were reported by CDC Gaming Reports.

“They might think it’s OK to do so something that is no longer illegal in states,” Stark said. “That is similar for gambling, but it is still impermissible for student athletes to smoke marijuana. Similarly, gambling from our policy is a violation that can impact eligibility. We have to make sure our student athletes understand that even though the legal environment has changed. The NCAA rules have not changed at this moment in time.”

Stark also said that the NCAA is also concerned about sportsbooks taking bets on the association’s less marquee sports such as golf, baseball and softball that are conducting championships now.

“There will be seasons throughout the year where there might be a down time like right now where there’s not a whole lot of competition outside of baseball going on domestically,” Stark said. “We learned that the men’s lacrosse championship had a betting line in some sports books. That is different, and we might see these things increase. We have wrestling around the time of the Final Four. Certain parts of the country might put a line on that.”

The NCAA has hired an integrity services partner to do a risk assessment of NCAA sports to make sure they understand what competitions are being bet on, Stark said.

“We have always had information relationships to keep the pulse on the environment and after the Supreme Court we thought it was important to formalize a relationship,” Stark said. “We’ve entered into a long-term relationship for monitoring services, and we are keeping an eye out for the integrity of the game-related issues and any anomalies.”

Ncaa Student Athlete Gambling Rules Scoring

Stark also discussed disclosing of injuries, which is becoming an issue for sports bettors.

Ncaa Student Athlete Gambling Rules 2020

Athletes providing information on injuries for the purposes of someone making a wager remains a violation that can lead to suspension, she said, but the association is discussing whether the NCAA needs to provide player injury information. However, student athletes have rights to protect their medical and other personal information that makes it more difficult to do it at the collegiate level, she said.