How Georgia and the SEC are addressing sports betting across college landscape

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — There were no head coach firings or major headlines when UGA learned about a violation of NCAA sports gambling rules last year.

It was considered a minor violation — Level III in NCAA parlance — when a Bulldog athlete placed a bet on a fantasy sports app.

Betting on any sport that is sponsored by the NCAA is a violation for athletes or coaches even if in a pro league or international competition.

As SEC coaches, athletic directors and league officials gather this week at the Hilton Sandestin resort, sports gambling is a major issue after Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired May 4 after it was found that he shared information to a bettor in Ohio used to place large bets on the Crimson Tide to lose to LSU in a game April 28.

“It’s a growing emphasis for us,” said Will Lawler, Georgia deputy athletic director for legal and regulatory affairs. “Not so much on just the compliance end but just the education end and the mental health. The two primary interests are obviously the integrity of the game but also the student-athletes’ mental health. It’s just become so much more commonplace in the world.”

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SEC commissioner Greg Sankey noted this week that 38 states now have legalized sports gambling (that includes 33 and the District of Columbia and four more that are not yet operational, according to the American Gaming Association) after the Supreme Court opened the door for legalized sports betting nationally in 2018.

Attempts to legalize sports betting in Georgia have not yet succeeded, but four states in the SEC footprint have sports betting legal: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

“There’s much more access,” Sankey said. “It has become enculturated.”

'A high level of attention' on college sports betting now

Twenty-six Iowa athletes and about 15 at Iowa State are alleged to have taken part in sports gambling. Four Iowa baseball players were held out of games. Cincinnati baseball fired two staff members May 17 for knowledge of gambling activity of Bert Eugene Neff Jr — the man who allegedly placed bets on the Alabama-LSU game — and not reporting it to school administrators, according to SI.com. His son is a Cincinnati pitcher.

“We don’t have a choice but to pay a high level of attention,” Sankey said.

New NCAA president Charlie Baker commissioned a survey on gambling of 18-to-22 year olds after taking over this year to gauge their sports wagering activity. It found that 58 percent have engaged in at least one sports betting activity.

Among those living on college campuses, 67 percent are bettors and “tend to bet at a high frequency,” according to the NCAA, and 41 percent of college students have bet on their school teams with 35 percent using a student bookmaker.

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Student assistants on training staffs and sports information departments and academic counselors are among those that Sankey mentioned could be sources of information that get into bettor’s hands.

“There’s information out there and bad actors out there always trying to make a dollar that are involved in running around campuses trying to gather information,” Missouri football coach Eliah Drinkwitz said. “It’s going to become one of the key issues that we face in our locker rooms.”

What's happening at UGA with sports betting

Lawler declined to provide details on the sport of the UGA athlete who committed the reported NCAA violation or the action the school took or even the date of the violation. It was reported between Oct. 1-Dec. 31, 2022.

“We’ve had issues with that in the past, too,” Georgia football coach Kirby Smart said. “It’s more prevalent. I can’t turn the TV on now without seeing something. There’s a lot of debate out there about what’s right and what’s wrong, but the NCAA rule is pretty harsh for gambling relative to some other things. It’s pretty obvious why. They don’t want that infiltrating teams.”

Smart was taken aback by some of the betting activity that goes on.

“When you start researching it — and we were researching it really in the last year — I mean, these kids, there’s like Chinese baseball games and stuff that people are gambling on,” Smart said. “It’s like, what? They’re betting on horse racing in another country. It’s literally crazy how easy it is and the access they have to it, and then the punishment. You have to ask yourself, oh, my gosh, this guy could lose his entire eligibility forever for betting on a horse race, you know, in another country.”

Lawler said Georgia has not had a lot of sports wagering issues hit its compliance office, but it’s certainly increasing on his radar.

The school has increased education about the rules to players and coaches — including around big events like the Super Bowl and March Madness basketball — to “even something as small as a fantasy sports app could be sports gambling now.”

Alabama coach Nick Saban said people may not even realize they’re gambling on some apps.

“You have to be more diligent about how you approach it with players so they understand the consequences of even some of the slightest things they may do when it comes to gambling,” he said.

Athletes’ mental health as it relates to gambling is also a focus for addiction.

Sankey mentioned this week the pressure put on athletes due to betting. A basketball player could face the wrath of bettors for missing a free throw that costs them money lost on a point spread.

SEC athletic directors have talked about lessons learned and best practices this week, according to Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne, who knows from experience with the baseball scandal.

“There are a lot of things that we train our student-athletes, our coaches and our staff on a regular basis and unfortunately at times until you really go through a really challenging situation, it’s hard to get everybody to recognize that you need to pay attention to these,” Byrne told the Athens Banner-Herald. “It’s a reminder for all of us, including certainly for us at Alabama that you can’t ever take any of these things lightly.”

Injury reports and how the SEC is trying to stay ahead on sports betting

The SEC since 2018 has turned to U.S. Integrity, a monitoring service that provides real-time information of the world of sports gambling.

“It provides a flow of information and it’s also illuminating,” Sankey said. “Learning what Vegas knows will open your eyes.”

Matt Holt, the founder and CEO of U.S. Integrity, is speaking at SEC meetings this week. Sankey said he will offer areas that states may need to adjust for oversight.

“Information escapes frequently,” Sankey said.

Discussion of creating an NFL style injury report to put more information about player availability for games out into the open could be one solution, but college football coaches are typically reluctant to make public information they think could provide any edge to an opponent,

Smart said he’d be willing to give an injury report if every program was required to do so.

“They do it in the NFL,” said Smart, who spent a season as a Miami Dolphins assistant. “I was in the NFL. That’s not a huge deal as long as it’s a level playing field.”

Drinkwitz already puts out an injury report on Thursdays during the season.

“The NFL is the best sports league in my opinion,” Drinkwitz said. “The more we can streamline some of those things the better especially since we’ve moved away from more our collegiate model to more of a business model. I think we need to put those safeguards in place.”

LSU coach Brian Kelly said about 25 people in the program now see a weekly injury report, but he’s not sure it needs to be that many, according to CBSSports.com.

Sankey fell short of calling for a publicly released injury report in the league, but said he told football coaches this week that “we’re going to have to think about a sophisticated response to manage our information. … We’re watching a change and we’re going to have to adopt to a change.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: What UGA athletics and SEC is doing to avoid sports betting scandals