Name: MilesHerndon
Price range: $

“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

President John F. Kennedy

As legalized sports gambling proliferates across the United States, the NCAA and its membership are recognizing ‘comfortable inaction’ with its philosophy and regulations on sports wagering may not be the right approach in 2025. There is risk with the status quo.

For starters, the barrier to entering the sports gambling universe for college athletics stakeholders is exceedingly easy. And for young adults including college athletes, the deluge of DraftKings and FanDuel advertisements creates an echo chamber of the lure of financial opportunity.

And getting set-up to wager on sports in America can be measured in 2025 by a stopwatch. During a recent study on North Carolina sports betting apps conducted by information services company TESTA, the following registration times were recorded by a tester in the Tar Heel State[i]:

BetMGM: 3 minutes
DraftKings: 3:19
Caesars Sportsbook: 3:41
FanDuel: 4:01
Fanatics Sportsbook: 4:09
Underdog Sportsbook: 4:22
bet365: 4:31
ESPN BET: 13:43 (photo ID verification delay)

All to say, risks abound for the NCAA, its member schools, and its athletes, coaches, and administrators in and around the sports betting environment. One risk the NCAA is recognizing is the financial and adjacent opportunity costs to casting too wide of a regulatory net around sports wagering when the greatest risks from sports wagering for college athletics can be more narrowly defined.

This fall, the NCAA membership considers a legislative proposal to deregulate the long-standing rule prohibiting student-athletes, coaches, and staff from betting on professional sports. Procedurally, deregulating this rule can move forward only if all three NCAA divisions are in lock-step with red-lining an Association-wide rule.

Division I took the first step toward making this change when, on October 8, 2025, the Division I Council adopted Division I Proposal 2025-20.[ii] That proposal specifically removes professional sports from the definitions and application of sports wagering prohibitions applicable to college athletes, coaches, and administrators.

If the proposal is adopted by all three NCAA divisions, it clears the way for college coaches, student-athletes, and athletic administrators to permissibly bet on NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, the Masters, and other professional sports competitions. This includes participating in NFL fantasy football leagues and similar sports gambling frameworks centered on pro sports.

Restrictions on wagering on college and amateur competitions would remain. Per the NCAA, student-athletes, staff members of athletics departments and conference offices and nonathletics department staff members who have responsibilities within or over the athletics department would continue to be prohibited from placing, accepting or soliciting a wager of any type with any individual or organization on any intercollegiate or amateur team or contest.

[As of this writing, Division II and Division III’s respective governance structures were scheduled to review the proposal later in October. If the proposal is adopted by all three divisions, the prohibition on wagering on professional sports will be eliminated as of October 22, 2025.]

This regulatory pivot should not be viewed as the college sports ecosystem caring less about gambling risks. This reset is about turning the lens to refocus the NCAA’s and its member schools’ time, attention, energy, and resources to more effectively mitigate the most palpable risks when it comes to sports gambling. The NCAA and its member universities’ recognize the real risks persist ---from gambling addictions and escalating gambling debt to on-line harassment by other bettors directed toward college athletes.

With assistance from industry experts, the NCAA and its member conferences and schools are educating student-athletes and staff about risk behaviors tied to gambling, tracking online threats and monitoring the integrity of competitions to protect student-athletes against the risk of sports betting.

The NCAA has pushed state legislatures to reconsider permitting sports books from taking prop bets on college sports competitions. Prop bets – such as whether one team wins the tip at beginning of a basketball game or whether a certain player scores a touchdown in the first half of a football game – are most vulnerable to manipulation because of the small number of athletes and the compartmentalized sequence from which the outcome could be orchestrated within the game and, ultimately, threaten the integrity of the competitions.

Following a letter from NCAA President Charlie Baker, the Ohio Casino Control Commission took action in February 2024 on prop bets whereby bettors in Ohio are now no longer able to place prop bets on individual player achievements, including in-game statistics and in-game achievements for collegiate sporting contests.[iii]

Another catalyst driving the potential rule change are resources -- or the lack thereof – to monitor and investigate the ever-ballooning volume of sports wagering cases the NCAA Enforcement staff is pulled into.

In September, NCAA President Charlie Baker reminded the world on the significant volume of competitions at the intercollegiate level the NCAA is most focused on:

"The NCAA monitors over 22,000 contests every year and will continue to aggressively pursue competition integrity risks such as these," NCAA President Charlie Baker said. "I am grateful for the NCAA enforcement team's relentless work and for the schools' cooperation in these matters. The rise of sports betting is creating more opportunity for athletes across sports to engage in this unacceptable behavior, and while legalized sports betting is here to stay, regulators and gaming companies can do more to reduce these integrity risks by eliminating prop bets and giving sports leagues a seat at the table when setting policies."

In a twist of irony, the spree of litigation, the multi-billion-dollar House settlement, and the new era of revenue-sharing in Division I along with more investment in the NIL environment, has every level of college athletics from Universities to conference offices to the NCAA national office justifiably sensitive to expenditures and hyper-focused on ROI including as it pertains the scope and enforceability of its rules.

The NCAA is recognizing that regulating secondary risks that orbit the college athletics galaxy -- like betting on professional sports – cannot be the strategy in 2025 and beyond. Focusing in on primary risks — including prop bets that could compromise the integrity of college sports competitions to the harassment of athlete issues—should garner more pro-action, monitoring, and prevention.

For the sake of forecasting, let’s assume this NCAA proposal is adopted and college athletes, coaches, and administrators may bet on professional sports. We highlight both questions and data-driven findings that may be top of mind for college athletics and high education leaders as sports gambling remains ever-present on college campus.

What adjustments can we anticipate from athletics departments if pro sports gambling becomes permissible under NCAA rules?

What could change for on-campus athletic administrators is spending more time and resources dedicated to educating athletes, coaches, and administrators about the risks of sports betting and less time on reporting, processing, and overall clean-up of professional sports betting violations. That includes perhaps the most excruciating aspect of NCAA violations involving wagering on professional sports – having to withhold an athlete from competition for betting on pro sports.

In 2023, the NCAA modified its student-athlete reinstatement penalty guidelines around pro sports betting to soften the consequences for athletes.[iv] That may have been a harbinger to this wholesale legislative change before us this fall.

Although hard to quantify and not historically tracked, the amount of time that campus athletic administrators including compliance professionals as well as NCAA Enforcement staff spend on investigations and processing sports gambling NCAA violations tied to athletes, coaches, and administrators gambling on professional sports will naturally decrease.

Since January 1, 2025, more than 30 violations involving sports wagering across all three NCAA divisions were processed by the NCAA Enforcement staff. In some instances, an individual violation report might involve multiple student-athletes and/or coaches and involve a spree of bets over many months with varying amounts wagered. Sports wagering cases can take on a contagion effect where many teammates and/or coaching colleagues are involved in betting together.

The NCAA and its member schools are shedding that consequence in favor of offering more preventative education and counseling services to address problematic gambling behaviors by student-athletes.

The prevalence of sports-gambling by college students -- including student-athletes — is not going away and athletic administrators and university leaders know that.

One aspect to the NCAA’s longstanding rule prohibiting sports wagering including betting on pro sports is the difficulty for athletic administrators to directly monitor their athletes, coaches, and themselves on betting. That challenge is NOT disappearing. There is no all-seeing college athletics betting oracle that can flag each instance an athlete or coach creates an account or logs on to a betting platform and places a wager.

Athletic Departments have long relied on outside organizations (including state and federal law enforcement agencies) already involved in closely monitoring betting lines to come forward and notify the University in instances where a particular contest

Will Universities and Athletics Departments gravitate to sports books for corporate sponsorships in the years ahead?

According to Sponsor United, sports betting companies have leaned-in to the sponsorship space in the pro sports ranks as companies like BetMGM and FanDuel, respectively, have sponsorship agreements with at least 25 different pro sport franchises and groups.[v] The revenue those companies bring to the table may be difficult for some in college athletics to ignore.

Interestingly, the NCAA is considering a deregulation to its playing rules that restrict the placement of corporate logos on game uniforms and adjacent apparel. This deregulation concept is a natural progression for college athletics’ increasingly commercial-friendly, NIL environment. That shift could be a game-changer for athletic departments in terms of unearthing a new revenue stream.

Whether game jerseys or in-stadium billboards, moving forward with casinos and sports books at corporate partners will likely take additional deliberation by Universities and Athletic Departments. Some Division I athletic departments have already headed down this road. In 2020, the University of Colorado secured a sports sponsorship agreement with PointsBet, a sports-betting operator in Denver.[1]

College athletics leaders may also learn from approaches other sport leagues have taken when it comes to corporate sponsorship relationships with gambling entities. For example, after years of permitting the practice, the English Premier League (EPL) decided in 2023 to restrict its clubs from having betting companies serve as front-of-jersey corporate sponsors for EPL Teams. The last year in which logos of betting companies will be permitted on the front of EPL jerseys is this current 2025-26 season.[2]

Are the concerns with sports wagering primarily centered on Division I athletes?

When it comes to the targets of “angry sports bettors”, Division I athletes competing in games that have betting lines are certainly the foremost targets. [vi] The NCAA’s 2024 survey data (in addition to data from several other studies recently conducted) indicate Division I athletes are much more likely than those in Divisions II or III to have experienced harassment (e.g., via social media) or received unwanted attention from fellow students or others who placed bets on their team.

When it comes to concerns around gambling activities by college athletes, the NCAA’s most recent data on sports wagering show that 21% of men's sports student-athletes across all divisions violated NCAA bylaws within the previous year by wagering on sports for money (over 10% reported wagering on sports once per month or more). Over 5% of women's sports student-athletes reported wagering on sports in the past year.

With the data showing sports wagering activity cascading across all three NCAA divisions, the prospective rule change may place more pressure on Division II and Division III member institutions as it pertains to the level of preventative education, programming, and counseling they may want to make available to their student-athletes but may not have resources to do so.

NCAA surveys done in 2020 and 2023 of campus athletics compliance administrators detail the expansive campuswide sports betting educational programs that are nearly universal in Division I since the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) repeal, but less common in Divisions II and III.

In a more recent study (2025) released by the NCAA[3], when a map of the “states with legal and operational sports betting” is overlaid with the locations of NCAA member schools, the highest percentage of NCAA schools in states with legal and operational sports betting is Division III with 86% of Division III schools located in those states followed by Division I (72%) then Division II (63%). The same trend line applies to legal mobile sports betting where 79% of Division III schools (and their student-athletes) have direct access to mobile sports betting – the highest percentage among all three divisions. Division III is the largest NCAA division, with 422 active schools and over 200,000 student-athletes.

The 2025 NCAA study also noted that frequent bettors have become more numerous in Division II and especially in Division III. For example, in 2016, 12% of Division III men bet on sports once a month or more versus 17% in 2024.

What else are researchers discovering regarding college athletes’ attitude toward, and involvement with, sports gambling?

The recent NCAA study also found that more NCAA men are reporting that they gamble alone. Over the past two decades, NCAA men have commonly reported that they are most likely to gamble with teammates or other friends in/out of sports (78% in 2016, 73% in 2024). However, the percentage of men reporting that they typically gamble alone increased from 6% in 2016 to 15% in 2024. The percentage of women who tend to gamble alone was 5% in both surveys.

The Rutgers University Center for Gambling Studies (RUCGS) conducted an aggregate study of 56 studies focused on gambling behaviors and populations more at risk with sports gambling.[4] The RUCGS study showed that 78.9% of the studies found that athletes gambled at higher rates than non-athletes and that 75% of the studies found that athletes were more likely to gamble than non-athletes.

The study also showed that, when controlling for gender, age, race, and ethnicity, individuals currently playing sports while in college were associated with a higher risk of problem gambling compared to those individuals who never played a sport.

Even in states like Mississippi where on-line sports wagering is illegal, college students including athletes are wagering on sports. A recent University of Mississippi study of students from seven Mississippi universities found that 39% of college students gambled in a variety of formats in the past year.[5] Of those who engaged in sports betting, 6% met criteria for problem gambling as defined by the American Psychiatric Association.

The study also found that, despite mobile sports betting being off the books and illegal in Mississippi, students found ways to place bets. Most students, 57%, who engaged in sports betting did so online through a sportsbook in the U.S. or Canada, with the remaining betting online through a sportsbook outside the U.S. or Canada or in-person with family and friends, with a bookie, or at a casino. The survey of nearly 1,600 Mississippi college students showed that almost 60% of students who reported gambling in the last year said they placed online bets on “legal” sportsbooks.

The constant drumbeat of sports wagering through advertising is also a factor. More than a third, 36%, of students in the University of Mississippi study reported seeing daily sports betting ads, while 38% said they saw such ads once a week. The study involved students from the University of Mississippi, Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University and the University of Southern Mississippi – all NCAA member institutions.

Is there a connection between the New NIL World and Sports Gambling risks for College Athletes?

The NCAA remains steadfastly focused on flagging and mitigating any wagering activity that undermines the integrity of intercollegiate athletics competition – its own games.

Even with that heightened focus on its own competitions, college athletics –and specifically men’s basketball – were targeted in the past two years by an outside gambling syndicate trying to manipulate game outcomes and undermine the integrity of competitions.[6]

Although purely a hypothetical, it has been noted that the Division I men’s basketball programs that have been targeted by outside gambling syndicate, intertwined with irregular betting activity, and flagged by multiple outside monitoring agencies – are all lower resourced Division I athletic departments and universities.[7] Generally speaking, the “low-major” Division I programs have far less NIL money and revenue sharing flowing through their roster – and athletes on those basketball programs may see the large NIL and revenue share dollars circulating through higher resourced programs.

All to say, outsiders trying to sway a college basketball player with an easy payday in exchange for manipulating a game outcome might see upside in targeting athletes who do not already have significant amounts of NIL money and revenue sharing money lining their pockets. It will be interesting to see further research around the potential correlation here.

[1] https://coloradosun.com/2020/09/08/university-of-colorado-sports-betting/

[2] https://www.premierleague.com/en/news/3147426

[3] https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/research/wagering/2025RES_WageringReport.pdf

[4] Rutgers University Center for Gambling, National Center for Problem Gambling Conference, https://ncpgconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Summit-on-Sports-Betting-College-Students-1.pdf

[5] University of Mississippi Study, https://olemiss.edu/news/2025/09/um-researchers-warn-of-problem-gambling-risk-among-college-students/index.html#:~:text=Ten%20percent%20of%20students%20who,begin%20with%20conversations%20at%20home.

[6] https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/46607545/records-gambling-syndicate-ncaa-basketball-suspicious-bets

[7] https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/46607545/records-gambling-syndicate-ncaa-basketball-suspicious-bets

[i] https://www.sportsbettingdime.com/guides/deposits-withdrawals/verifying-your-sportsbook-account/#:~:text=You%20should%20only%20ever%20need,out%20on%20any%20valuable%20bonuses

[ii] https://www.ncaa.org/news/2025/10/8/media-center-di-administrative-committee-adopts-proposal-to-allow-student-athletes-staff-to-bet-on-pro-sports.aspx

[iii] https://governor.ohio.gov/media/news-and-media/governor-dewine-calls-on-casino-control-commission-to-remove-prop-bets-following-mlb-investigation-previous-player-threats#:~:text=digital%20security%20standards.-,Governor%20DeWine%20Calls%20on%20Casino%20Control%20Commission%20to%20Remove%20Prop,MLB%20Investigation%2C%20Previous%20Player%20Threats

[iv] https://www.ncaa.org/news/2023/6/28/media-center-di-approves-changes-to-reinstatement-guidelines-for-sports-wagering-violations.aspx#:~:text=Student%2Dathletes%20who%20engage%20in,plus%20rules%20and%20prevention%20education.

[v] https://www.sponsorunited.com/....