With gambling becoming more ingrained in the day-to-day of sports fans, NCAA president Charlie Baker is calling for some additional legislation.
On Wednesday, Baker released a statement urging for states to ban prop betting in college games.
Prop bets revolve around a player or team’s stats rather than the game’s winner or final score. Popular options include whether or not a player will score a certain number of points or finish with a certain number of rebounds.
Recent incidents have put bets like these in the spotlight, both for putting individual players under scrutiny for their performance and for leading to potential conflicts of interest. In an ESPN story on the subject, San Diego State athletic director JD Wicker said players attending class among fellow students who may be betting on their performance creates negative interactions.
“Prop bets (continue) to threaten the integrity and competition and (lead) to student athletes and professional athletes getting harassed,” Baker wrote in his statement.
Within the last week in the world of professional sports, MLB star Shohei Ohtani fired his translator for stealing money to place sports bets and the NBA began investigating a Toronto Raptors player named Jontay Porter for potentially providing insight on his own prop bets.
“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,” Baker added in his statement.
