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Rule change in spotlight
Amid a sports betting landscape dramatically altered by last week’s deep-reaching NBA scandal, the most powerful and wealthiest conference in college sports has heaped pressure on the NCAA for a spectacularly ill-timed rule change.
mixed-up in compromising circumstances”
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Greg Sankey sent a letter backed by his peers to the NCAA on Saturday, urging it to rescind the rule change that will allow student-athletes to bet on professional sports. College Football Insiders took to X with an excerpt of Sankey’s letter expressing fear for student-athletes getting “mixed-up in compromising circumstances”:
ESPN cited a memo from Sankey to NCAA president Charlie Baker stating that SEC presidents and chancellors made it clear at an October 13 meeting that the “policy change represents a major step in the wrong direction.”
Month of change
Last week, the NCAA Division I, II, and III board members approved a rule change first announced in early October to allow betting on pro sports initially effective Saturday, but later pushed back to November 22.
urges the NCAA to ditch the rule change
Which means Baker and co have a while to digest Sankey’s plea, which urges the NCAA to ditch the rule change and reaffirm the body’s pledge to maintain “strong national standards that keep collegiate participants separated from sports wagering activity at every level.”
Against a backdrop of insider trading blazoned across US newspapers after the FBI’s high-profile NBA arrests, the SEC letter said the integrity of the NCAA was threatened “when anyone with insider access becomes involved in gambling.”
The SEC added it was predictable that resource-strapped student-athletes with “far greater outside influence” were vulnerable to such scenarios.
Back to the drawing board
Sankey suggested the NCAA should heed the SEC chiefs’ opinion that it revert to its prior policy or modify it, but ultimately communicate “a prohibition on gambling by student-athletes and athletics staff, regardless of the divisional level of their sport.”
sends the wrong signal”
The SEC reinforced its call for a return to prohibition by stating the old policy reflected “collective integrity” and the new rule change “sends the wrong signal at a time when the gambling industry is expanding its reach and influence.” The NCAA essentially justified the rule change on campus sports betting peer pressure, stating it was allowing student-athletes to bet on pro sports “to better align with their campus peers.”
Charles Barkley summed up his take on the rule change when he called it, among other things, a “s**t show.” The NBA great added: “We’ve already got an issue with kids gambling now when they shouldn’t be gambling.”
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