NCAA Continues Loose Association With Reality As Desire To Ban Prop Bets Shows | Barrett Sallee
Another day, another instance of the NCAA being woefully out of touch with reality.
NCAA president Charlie Baker released a statement on Wednesday about the organization’s desire to ban prop bets in college athletics. This comes after several states have legalized sports gambling over the last few years.
"Sports betting issues are on the rise across the country with prop bets continuing to threaten the integrity of competition and leading to student-athletes and professional athletes getting harassed," Baker said in a post on the NCAA’s public relations X page. "The NCAA has been working with states to deal with these threats and many are responding by banning college prop bets.
"This week we will be contacting officials across the country in states that still allow these bets and ask them to join Ohio, Vermont, Maryland and many others and remove college prop bets from all betting markets. The NCAA is drawing the line on sports betting to protect student-athletes and to protect the integrity of the game — issues across the country these last several days show there is more work to be done."
Are You Freaking Kidding Me?
College sports — and sports in general — thrive in large part to all aspects of gambling. Prop bets, which are odds placed on a player’s point totals, touchdowns, home runs, etc., are a big part of the intrigue and enjoyment fans crave.
Yes, there have been several issues that have popped up in college athletics over the last few years including football investigations at Iowa and Iowa State, an investigation into Temple basketball earlier this year and an investigation into Alabama baseball that resulted in the dismissal of coach Brad Bohannon last spring.
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The most important aspect of all of those incidents is not that they existed, it’s that they were discovered. The very last thing that sportsbooks want is to be taken to the cleaners. The safeguards that they have in place led to the investigation and dismissal of Bohannon, and will certainly prevent other instances from happening moving forward.
Generally speaking, players know what oddsmakers expect them to do on any given night. That rarely factors into their performances, but it’s information that is out there. Does that make it more likely that they will shave points or otherwise adjust their approaches for certain tickets to cash? No. It’s the opposite.
Betting Is Safer When Out In The Open
We’ve all seen Blue Chips — the Nick Nolte classic from 1994 that details a basketball program’s rise to prominence via cheating. In it, Nolte busts into a fraternity house and approaches one of his players about shaving points. At first, the player denies it. But he comes clean and admits that he made some iffy decisions in a game in order for the opponent to cover the spread. Sure, the storyline had to do with the game line and not prop bets, but that’s not the point. The point is that the incident flew under the radar for years because of unregulated sports gambling.
If Baker succeeds and prop bets on college athletics are banned, it’s just going to go back underground. That will actually make it MORE likely that players and coaches will fix games and chip away at the integrity of the game. Plus, it’s not going to stop fans from going online and dropping a few bucks anyway. This is 2024 … we all have the Internet.
The NCAA just doesn’t get it. The organization is grasping at straws to maintain any possible control over college athletics, and it will fail miserably this time. Why? Because it continues to show how out-of-touch it is with the current sports world.