On Thursday, NCAA President Charlie Baker issued the following statement regarding sports betting indictments in college athletics. The NCAA runs one of the largest integrity monitoring programs in the world and has implored states to eliminate prop bets because of the integrity risks those bets pose. The Association also has no commercial partnership with any betting company of any kind.
Protecting competition integrity is of the utmost importance for the NCAA. We are thankful for law enforcement agencies working to detect and combat integrity issues and match manipulation in college sports.
The pattern of college basketball game integrity conduct revealed by law enforcement today is not entirely new information to the NCAA. Through helpful collaboration and with industry regulators, we have finished or have open investigations into almost all of the teams in today's indictment.
Our enforcement staff has opened sports betting integrity investigations into approximately 40 student-athletes from 20 schools over the past year. While some of the investigations are ongoing, 11 student-athletes from seven schools were recently found to have bet on their own performances, shared information with known bettors, and/or engaged in game manipulation to collect on bets they - or others - placed. This behavior resulted in a permanent loss of NCAA eligibility for all of them. Additionally, 13 student-athletes from eight schools (including some of those identified above) were found to have failed to cooperate in the sports betting integrity investigation by providing false or misleading information, failing to provide relevant documentation and/or refusing to be interviewed by the enforcement staff. None of them are competing today.
The Association has and will continue to aggressively pursue sports betting violations in college athletics using a layered integrity monitoring program that covers over 22,000 contests, but we still need the remaining states, regulators and gaming companies to eliminate threats to integrity - such as collegiate prop bets - to better protect athletes and leagues from integrity risks and predatory bettors. We also will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement. We urge all student-athletes to make well-informed choices to avoid jeopardizing the game and their eligibility.
For more information about the NCAA's efforts regarding sports betting, click here.
