NCAA PRESIDENT CHARLIE BAKER URGES STATES WITH LEGAL WAGERING TO BAN

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 In the midst of March Madness, the NCAA is pushing for states with legal wagering on sporting events to ban prop bets on college athletes.

“Sports betting issues are on the rise across the country with prop bets continuing to threaten the integrity of competition and leading to student-athletes getting harassed,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said Wednesday in statement posted on social media. "The NCAA has been working with states to deal with these threats and many are responding by banning college prop bets.”

Prop bets — short for proposition bets — allow gamblers to wager on statistics a player will accumulate during a game rather than the final score.

Baker's statement came two days after the NBA confirmed it opened an investigation into unusual betting patterns surrounding props involving Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter. The Raptors said Porter would miss his third consecutive game Wednesday for personal reasons.

Some NBA players and coaches have been outspoken recently about prop bets and how gamblers react when numbers fail to hit. Indiana Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton said his social media is filled with complaints and Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff revealed he received threats from gamblers last season and reported it to the NBA.

Earlier this month, U.S. Integrity, a company used by many professional sports leagues and college conferences to monitor betting activity, flagged a Temple regular-season men's basketball game for wagering irregularities.

The NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments are a huge draw for gamblers. The American Gaming Association estimates $2.7 billion will be bet this year on March Madness through legal sportsbooks.

Several states including Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Oregon have rules prohibiting prop betting on college athletes that predate the NCAA's recent push. Others such as Illinois, Connecticut and Iowa do not allow college athlete prop bets involving in-state teams.

Kansas, Michigan, Louisiana and Wyoming allow bettors to place prop bets on college athletes regardless of where they play.

The NCAA already has made some progress this year toward eliminating prop bets on college athletes. Gambling regulators in Ohio, Vermont and Maryland have removed prop betting on college athletes online and in sportsbooks. Baker and his staff are reaching out to regulators in other states to encourage similar bans.

The Ohio Casino Control Commission said last month in granting the NCAA’s request that prop bets last year on NCAA athletes with sports gaming operators in the state brought in approximately $104.6 million, which accounted for 1.35% of the total amount wagered. Prop bets on college athletes accounted for about 2.2% of wagers.

Chris Cylke, senior vice president for government relations for the American Gaming Association, said banning legal wagering on college player propositions would drive more bettors to illegal and offshore sportsbooks.

“While it is unclear how this advances our shared goal of reducing athlete harassment, we do know that driving customers to illegal channels will ultimately hinder the ability to monitor for and detect potential suspicious betting behavior,” Cylke said in a statement provided to The Associated Press.

The number of states that now allow some form of sports betting has grown to 38, plus the District of Columbia. Thirty states and the nation’s capital allow online wagering.

Companies that monitor sports betting for irregularities have warned college sports administrators that prop betting on unpaid athletes elevates the potential risk for a scandal because players can more easily influence their own performance than the overall outcome of a game.

The NCAA conducted a survey after last year's basketball tournaments that found 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds are gambling.

Baker has said the proliferation of legal sports gambling has increased stress on college athletes.

“All that chatter about who's playing, who's not playing. Who's sore, who's not sore. What's going on with the team you're playing? What do you think your chances are? Which is just classic chatter, where — in a world where people are betting — takes on a whole new consequence,” Baker said in January before his address to membership at the NCAA convention.

The NCAA has partnered with a data science company called Signify, which also works with the NBA Players Association and WNBA, to identify online threats made to athletes during championship events that are linked to wagering.

“Basically tracks ugly, nasty stuff that’s being directed at people who are participating in their tournaments and we’d use it the same way,” Baker said in January. “And it can shut it down or basically block it. And in some cases even track back to where it came from.”

In October, the NCAA announced it would be advocating for state legislators to update laws to crack down on harassment of athletes, coaches and game officials and bolster integrity protections.

In West Virginia, NCAA officials worked with lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow betting regulators to ban people from wagering in the state online or at sportsbooks who have been found to have harassed players, coaches, or officials online or in person. The bill is awaiting a signature from Gov. Jim Justice.

San Diego State men's basketball coach Brian Dutcher said he is concerned about how all the negative feedback impacts athletes' mental health.

“People complaining about how they’re playing, missing shots, and they just get beat up constantly,” said Dutcher, whose team is playing in Boston in the Sweet 16 this week.

Illinois guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn said he encourages his teammates to ignore the criticism.

“I never really am on social media but in person someone would be like, ‘I’m going to bet the under on you.’ In that moment you can’t say anything,” Gibbs-Lawhorn said. "So I’m just like, ‘OK, good job.’ Like, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

- RALPH D. RUSSO

JUDGE HANDS NCAA ANOTHER LOSS, SAYS COMPETITION RULES LIKELY VIOLATE ANTITRUST LAW, HARM ATHLETES

 

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The NCAA lost another legal battle Friday as a federal judge barred the organization from enforcing its rules prohibiting name, image and likeness compensation for recruits by granting a preliminary injunction demanded by the states of Tennessee and Virginia.

It was another blow to the NCAA's ability to govern college sports and more than 500,000 athletes.

Gabe Feldman, a sports law professor at Tulane, said an act of Congress might save the NCAA even as he noted this was just a preliminary injunction in one district court with the NCAA expected to appeal. That would go to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overseeing Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan.

“There’s no question the NCAA has never faced more attacks from different areas at one time," Feldman said. “And things are snowballing. And I think that’s why there are so many serious discussions about how college sports needs to change and what those changes will look like.”

U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker in the Eastern District of Tennessee issued the injunction that undercuts what has been a fundamental principle of the NCAA's model of amateurism for decades: Third parties cannot pay recruits to attend a particular school.

The judge wrote the NCAA's stance likely violates antitrust law with Congress so far unwilling to give the association an exemption. The judge said athletes with a limited window are hurt by not being able to know their true value before committing to a school.

The decision led to questions about whether boosters will suddenly open the floodgates with offers to potential recruits. Oklahoma State athletic director Chad Weinberg said the Cowboys had anticipated the decision but “we are awaiting further guidance from the Big 12 Conference and NCAA.”

NCAA AGREES TO $920 MILLION, 8-YEAR DEAL WITH ESPN FOR WOMEN'S MARCH MADNESS, 39 OTHER CHAMPIONSHIPS

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The NCAA and ESPN announced on Thursday a $920 million, eight-year agreement that will give the network exclusive rights to 40 championships, including the Division I women's basketball tournament, an event growing in popularity that the association has been accused of undervaluing in the past.

NCAA President Charlie Baker told The Associated Press the deal has an average annual value of $115 million, an increase of more than 300% per year on what the previous 14-year deal with ESPN was paying the association.

“Yes, it’s a bundle, but it’s a bigger bundle and it’s a bigger bundle that will be much better,” Baker said.

The deal covers 21 women's and 19 men's sports, adding tennis, track and field, men’s gymnastics, the women's Division II and III volleyball and basketball championships and the men’s DII and DIII basketball championships.

The deal guarantees national championship events in Division I women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s gymnastics, and the second-tier of Division I football known as FCS will be aired on ABC, though it does not guarantee any start times.

ESPN will also air selection shows for at least 10 championships on its linear networks.

NCAA PRESIDENT CHARLIE BACKER CALLS FOE NEW TIER OF DIVISION I WHERE SCHOOLS CAN PAY ATHLETES

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — NCAA President Charlie Baker is asking members to make one of the most dramatic shifts in the history of college sports by allowing highly resourced schools to pay some of their athletes.

In a letter sent to more than 350 Division I schools Tuesday, Baker said he wants the association to create a new tier of NCAA Division I sports where schools would be required to offer at least half their athletes a payment of at least $30,000 per year through a trust fund.

Baker also proposed allowing all Division I schools to offer unlimited educational benefits and enter into name, image and likeness licensing deals with athletes.

He said the disparity in resources between the wealthiest schools in the top tier of Division I called the Football Bowl Subdivision and other D-I members — along with the hundreds of Division II and III schools — is creating “a new series of challenges.”

“The challenges are competitive as well as financial and are complicated further by the intersection of name, image and likeness opportunities for student-athletes and the arrival of the Transfer Portal,” wrote Baker, the former Massachusetts governor who took over at the NCAA in March.