The NCAA enforcement staff announced Thursday it is in the process of alleging violations of sports betting rules and/or related failure-to-cooperate violations for 13 former men's basketball student-athletes who competed at six schools at the time the conduct in question occurred.
One of them in question is an unnamed former Arizona State Sun Devil.
Eastern Michigan, Mississippi Valley, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T, and Temple are other schools named in today's press release, none involving current players. Additional cases are also in various stages of the investigation.
The schools listed and their respective school staffs in these ongoing cases are not alleged to have been involved in the violations by student-athletes, and the enforcement staff is not seeking penalties for the schools themselves for the student-athletes' conduct.
While the facts in each case vary, they include student-athletes betting on and against their own teams, sharing information with third parties for purposes of sports betting, knowingly manipulating scoring or game outcomes and/or refusing to participate in the enforcement staff's investigation.
The NCAA is releasing this information now because of the extensive public reporting regarding these cases and will not publicly name the involved student-athletes until the infractions process has concluded.
"The NCAA monitors over 22,000 contests every year and will continue to aggressively pursue competition integrity risks such as these," said NCAA President Charlie Baker in a news release. "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."
The school released a statement in response to the allegations: “Arizona State University is aware of the NCAA investigation and outcome related to a former student-athlete who is no longer enrolled at ASU. The university cooperated fully with all inquiries and was not implicated in any way."
The NCAA Committee on Infractions has already finished with three similar cases involving Fresno State and San Jose State.
Current NCAA rules do not allow student-athletes or school, conference or national office staff to engage in sports betting in Arizona or any other location at any level (professional or college) for any sports that have NCAA championships. In 2023, NCAA members changed the reinstatement guidelines for student-athletes who participate in sports betting to focus on harm reduction for problematic betting behaviors, but 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.
In April, the Division I Board of Directors instructed the Division I Council — now the Division I Administrative Committee — to consider changes to sports betting rules for professional sports, but if adopted, those changes are not expected to impact rules or penalties for betting on collegiate sports. The administrative committee could consider those changes during its October meeting.
Even if approved, no changes to sports betting rules can be made without the agreement of all three NCAA divisions.
