Fresh on the heels of announcing the ineligibility of three former Fresno State men’s basketball players for violating gambling rules, the NCAA has revealed that 13 other former hoopers committed betting violations. The players attended Eastern Michigan, Temple, Arizona State, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T, and Mississippi Valley. None of the schools or staff members have been implicated in any wrongdoing.
The NCAA is waiting until the “infractions process” is finished before releasing the names of the offenders and details of what they did. The organization only made a statement at this point because some of the cases have already made the news.
Gambling violations include players betting on or against their own team, sharing information with third parties for betting purposes, intentionally manipulating their performances to win bets, and not cooperating with investigators.
“The NCAA monitors over 22,000 contests every year and will continue to aggressively pursue competition integrity risks such as these,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in Thursday’s statement. “I am grateful for the NCAA enforcement team’s relentless work and for the schools’ cooperation in these matters. The rise of sports betting is creating more opportunity for athletes across sports to engage in this unacceptable behavior, and while legalized sports betting is here to stay, regulators and gaming companies can do more to reduce these integrity risks by eliminating prop bets and giving sports leagues a seat at the table when setting policies.”
Permanent bans coming
The NCAA said that the violations were uncovered through its integrity monitoring program, likely working with betting integrity companies that monitor gambling traffic to try to spot unusual betting patterns. For the specific regular season games that were red-flagged, the NCAA followed up and, in some cases, used text messages, messages on social media, and the like, to determine that violations did occur.
Betting on any sport that has an NCAA Championship – even if the bet is on a professional contest – is against NCAA rules for any student-athlete or school, conference, or national employee. Punishment can include a lifetime ban from participating in NCAA athletics.
There is a process for banned athletes to become reinstated, but as the NCAA statement put it, “ NCAA members have maintained that any betting by a student-athlete on his or her own team should continue to result in a permanent loss of any remaining collegiate eligibility.”
By the sounds of what is being alleged, the athletes could be deemed permanently ineligible. At the same time, though, all of them are “former” basketball players, so that part of any potential punishment may not matter.
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