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Arkansas Universities Work to Protect Student-Athletes from Sports BettingLock Icon

5 min read

Anyone wanting to bet on professional or college sports can do so quickly and easily from a cellphone thanks to a proliferation of betting apps.

While this convenience is a boon to gambling sites and bettors, it has increasingly become a headache for college administrations working overtime to keep a proper distance between their student-athletes and the gambling industry. For officials at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, protecting their athletes from sports betting is a high priority.

“We have obviously big educational programs around the whole gambling world,” said UA Deputy Athletic Director Dan Trump. “There is all that going on with every team. We have speakers that come in and talk about that.

“With the Super Bowl, probably next week we’ll be sending out a reminder to all of our student-athletes and staff about ‘Don’t bet on it,’ and those types of things. It’s a kind of a continual message that has been ramped up. [Gambling] is so prevalent.”

It’s not just a player betting on a game that worries officials, which is against NCAA rules and could result in an athlete being barred from sports. In the modern social media world, where anonymity and instant communication collide, student-athletes are becoming targets of online abuse from upset bettors.

A recent NCAA survey showed that of 1.3 million social media posts or texts, 72,000 directed abuse at a student-athlete. Of those abusive texts, 12% were related to sports betting; the figure jumps to 19% among football and men’s basketball players.

“I’ve heard too many student-athletes talk about abusive messages they have received, and for the first time ever, we now have evidence of the scale at which this is occurring,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in October. “It’s incredibly alarming and completely unacceptable.”

Prop Bets

The NCAA has worked to get states to forbid proposition bets, or prop bets, in college sports; so far, 18 of the 38 states where sports betting is legal have agreed to either full or partial restrictions on prop bets.

Arkansas has no restrictions on prop bets, which involve bets made on a specific player or event. For example, a bettor can place a wager on the Razorbacks quarterback throwing for more than 200 yards or an ASU point guard scoring 10 or more points or how many points are scored in the second quarter.

Just about any bet a bettor wants to make can be wagered somewhere online where it’s legal. The bets can also be made instantly and during games.

David Kern

Losing prop bettors have engaged in abuse of athletes, especially online where anonymous insults don’t have face-to-face repercussions with physically fit college athletes. Trump and ASU’s David Kern, the university’s NCAA faculty athletic representative, both advocate for a prop bet ban in Arkansas.

“I think the long-term solution is if there would be the ability to remove, at a minimum, prop bets involving student athletes,” Trump said. “That’s where you see the majority of the online abuse. Are we going to get to a point where gambling on college athletics is against the law? No, the toothpaste is out of the tube.

“But can we ban the prop bets involving student-athletes? That’s something that’s been pursued at the NCAA level, because I think that’s where we see the biggest problems.”

Kern agreed, saying he was surprised by one report that 1 in 4 athletes said they were criticized for causing a lost bet.

“I was really surprised by the amount of harassment,” said Kern, who is also a business professor. “You walk into class and sit down and someone says, ‘Hey, man, you cost me 50 bucks on that missed shot.’”

Kern and Trump said they tell athletes not respond and turn over any abuse to university officials.

“Don’t respond to trolls; that would probably be the number one thing,” Trump said. “The worst thing you can do is to react and respond. We can handle it.

“They can hide behind [anonymity]. It’s definitely much more difficult in today’s world for student-athletes than it was 25 years ago.”

New Normal

Gambling on sports isn’t going to go away. Before sports betting was legalized in states beginning in 2018, there was plenty of money bet and lost illegally through bookies.

University officials worry about their athletes being harassed but also try to protect them from some of the ills of gambling. While not everyone who gambles becomes a problem gambler, those who do can face crippling issues such as financial ruin, being barred from sports or even a criminal record.

The NCAA and universities have technology available to prevent athletes from directly making bets. Trump said phone and email information from players and staff can get pinged if they try to interact with an online betting app.

“The downside is, what I worry about is how it affects them, their life,” Kern said. “It creates anxiety, depression, gambling debt, other risky things. I know the impact of addiction on their life.”

In July, the University of Arkansas brought in a guest speaker, Patrick Chester with EPIC Global Solutions, a consulting company that helps universities with gambling education. In Arkansas, two popular sports betting apps, BetSaracen and Oaklawn Sports, regularly advertise during TV sporting events with popular former Razorback athletes such as Joe Kleine, Sidney Moncrief and David Bazzel.

Trump said he isn’t necessarily worried about any of the Razorbacks athletes betting — there is no 100% prevention if someone wants to bet — but is more concerned about protecting information about athletes. University athletes typically know a lot about their fellow athletes and some of that information may be desired by gamblers.

Learning who to trust is as important to learn as anything that’s taught in the classroom or on the athletic field.

“It ties into our overall programming for student-athlete development,” Trump said. “This is a definite component of it, just the same as career networking and all of those types of things. It’s a life skill that we talk about that is a big component of the 18- to 22-year-olds’ life nowadays.”

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