SEC’s Sankey Blasts NCAA Plan to Allow Pro Sports Betting

Greg Sankey said SEC presidents and chancellors oppose a new NCAA policy set to allow athletes to bet on professional sports.

The conference commissioner sent a letter to the NCAA on Saturday challenging the new gambling rules, set to take effect Nov. 1. College athletes will still be banned from betting on college sports. Yahoo Sports first reported the news.

“Even when the wagers are placed on professional sports, the simple act of participating in gambling normalizes behavior, blurs boundaries, and erodes judgement,” Sankey wrote.

The NCAA Division I Cabinet voted to allow athletes to bet on college sports on Oct. 8, which was made official when the Division II and III boards approved the change on Oct. 22. (The D-I Cabinet was formerly called the administrative committee.) The committee’s chair, Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman, wrote at the time that the group “remains concerned” about sports gambling’s risks, but wanted athletes to “better align with their campus peers” and allow schools to focus on “encouraging healthy habits” among betting athletes. The NCAA’s announcement came one day before the FBI announced a game-fixing indictment against Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and former player and coach Damon Jones.

On Tuesday evening, however, the NCAA announced it would move the start of the new rule from Nov. 1 to Nov. 22, which will allow schools to vote to squash the proposal. All schools in D-I have 30 days to tell the NCAA if they oppose the rule. If two-thirds of Division I schools decide to rescind the rule, it won’t go into effect for any division (all divisions have to agree to it).

The Division I Board discussed the Sankey letter asking for the betting rule to be rescinded, a source familiar with the matter told FOS—but it wasn’t the driving factor, and neither was the NBA sports betting scandal. The rule was controversial even before last week.

Sankey said schools in his conference are united against the rule changes they believe would be a “major step in the wrong direction” after discussing them at their meeting on Oct. 13. He expressed concerns about athletes suffering gambling losses or being exploited, and he said the NBA gambling scandal proves that even individuals with “extensive oversight, education and support systems” can become involved in impermissible conduct. “It is foreseeable that college athletics, with far fewer resources and far greater outside influence, can be involved in compromising circumstances,” Sankey wrote.

The NCAA predicted an argument like Sankey’s when the D-I Council proposed the change, because it got a stamp of approval from the National Council on Problem Gambling. The organization said following the D-I Council’s vote that it “supports the NCAA’s effort to modernize its student-athlete sports betting policy to reduce stigma around seeking help for gambling problems,” and that the old policy “actively discouraged” an athlete with a gambling problem from getting help.

A spokesperson for the NCAA declined to comment on Sankey’s letter, and a spokesperson for the Big Ten did not comment. Spokespeople for the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 did not respond.

In September, the NCAA banned three men’s basketball players for violating betting rules because last season they “bet on their own games, one another’s games and/or provided information that enabled others to do so.” All three players are no longer at their previous schools, Fresno State and San Jose State, which were not penalized. The NCAA said last week that it has opened investigations into about 30 current or former men’s basketball players for potential gambling violations, including the previously announced trio.