The NCAA fancies itself as some kind of beacon of morality meant to protect the well-being of student-athletes. In reality, it’s just a soul-less cash cow whose udders spew utter nonsense.
The latest example is the case of Virginia Tech football player Alan Tisdale, who was suspended nine games of his senior season for placing bets on NBA games.
The NCAA wouldn’t have known about the violation if Tisdale didn’t self-report in August after learning that his bets on the NBA Finals were against the rules. But did the NCAA show leniency to the athlete it claims to care about for being so forthcoming? Not at all.
As reported by The Athletic, Tisdale missed half of this season (his suspension was reduced to six games on appeal), all because the NCAA remains slow to adjust to changing landscapes and inflexible in its application of antiquated rules.
Change the Rule
Current rules ban student-athletes from earning anything, cash or not, from wagers on any sport the NCAA sanctions, no matter the level. So it didn’t matter that a college football player was betting on professional basketball, it broke the rules.
It’s an incredibly outdated restriction when you consider that sports betting is now legal in over 30 states, including Virginia where Tisdale placed the bets from his mobile phone. The ability to do so is literally at the fingertips of millions of people, and millions more to come.
The NCAA has to know that a good chunk of its athletes are placing bets, and most of them aren’t self-reporting. The priority should be ensuring athletes aren’t betting on the sports they play. Limits could even be placed on all college betting if necessary to uphold the integrity of contests.
But to remain so rigid as to prohibit student-athletes from potentially winning a meal or prize on Super Bowl squares or $20 on an NBA player prop bet — things becoming more recreational and less taboo by the day — only stands to unnecessarily jeopardize the futures of more athletes.
Reward Honesty
By the NCAA’s own research, 24% of male and 5% of female student-athletes wagered on sports within the last year. More than 80% of student-athletes who bet on sports placed their first bets before entering college. Those numbers are only going to increase in the future, and you’ll never know who any of the betting athletes are.
Tisdale, who placed several bets for a total of $400 to win $41, is one of the few who actually did what the NCAA encourages. Once he learned of the violation while attending Virginia Tech’s annual compliance department meeting before the season, he told head coach Brent Pry.
“We try and do things right,” Pry told The Athletic. “And even though the kid was wrong, he didn’t know he was wrong. And as soon as he realized he might be, he came forward. And I just don’t think there was enough consideration given for how things shook out.”
If the NCAA can’t give the one athlete who came forward a break, then what’s the incentive for anyone else to do so. The decision to suspend Tisdale for so long only threatens to make collegiate gambling more underground than it needs to be.
But the one thing it’s not going to do is stop. The NCAA desperately needs to adjust its rules to acknowledge that.
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