College Conference Considering Injury Reports For Sports BettorsIdea Aims To Ease Pressure On Student Athletes |
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After several recent sports betting controversies, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) is now considering mandatory injury reports. The hope is that the reports would help make the information available to the betting public while easing gambling pressure on athletes.
So far, the plan has the support of at least some coaches and athletic directors.
“If it helps with gambling then I’m all for it,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart told USA Today. “If it’s geared to getting knowledge out there that people are trying to get from our student-athletes and it protects them, I’m certainly for that.”
Growing Concerns
Injury reports are meant to help curtail possible compromising situations for athletes, as well as to make this information available to everyone, rather than possible unscrupulous bettors seeking it out from athletes or school and conference insiders.
The SEC appears to be at the forefront of this effort. The NCAA doesn’t currently mandate weekly injury reports, despite recent efforts to protect players from pressure related to gambling. In April, the NCAA began lobbying states to ban prop bets on college athletes, for example.
A total of 39 states (also including Washington D.C. and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico) now offer legalized sports betting in some form.
Coaches and conference officials have since become concerned about the large amount of money in the industry and how that might affect athletes.
“When you start to see the number of dollars being bet on legalized sports gambling around college sports, not just football, but men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and baseball and softball, all those catch your attention,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told USA Today. “We have to be thoughtful about how information is managed.”
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