BY DOUG FEINBERG
The NCAA approved a rule change on Wednesday that will allow athletes and athletic department staff members to bet on professional sports.
Two weeks after the Division I cabinet approved the change, Division II and III management councils signed off on it, allowing the new rule to go into effect Nov. 1.
This doesn’t change the NCAA rule forbidding athletes from betting on college sports. The NCAA also prohibits sharing information about college competitions with bettors. The institution also doesn’t accept advertising or sponsorships of NCAA championships by betting sites.
Despite the change, the NCAA emphasized that it doesn’t endorse betting on sports, particularly for student-athletes.
NCAA President Charlie Baker anticipated the rule change would be passed when he talked with the media on Monday at a Big East roundtable on the future of college basketball.
“This change recognizes the realities of today’s sports environment without compromising our commitment to protecting the integrity of college competition or the well-being of student-athletes,” said Roberta Page, director of athletics at Slippery Rock and chair of the Division II Management Council.
The change comes as NCAA enforcement caseloads involving sports betting violations have increased in recent years. Last month, the NCAA banned three men’s college basketball playersfor sports betting, saying they had bet on their own games at Fresno State and San Jose State and were able to share thousands of dollars in payouts.
“We run the largest integrity program in the world on sports betting across all the various games,” Baker said Monday. “Sadly, we discovered some student athletes involved with some problematic activity.”
