Almost a decade of young NCAA athletes at odds with college gambling

College athletics entered a new era on May 14, 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a decision that removed the federal barrier preventing states from authorising sports betting.

The ruling dissolved the federal prohibition on sports betting at the collegiate level, but it did not legalize gambling outright. Instead, it gave individual states the authority to decide.

Since that time, athletes and colleges have been exposed to unprecedented levels of funding, sponsorship, and commercial interest.

The other side of that bargain, however, has been the steady growth of illicit betting activity and a regulatory framework that critics argue has failed to adequately protect impressionable, developing talent.

As we previously reported, the NCAA has been rocked by a betting scandal with roots that weave to the heart of college athletics, and the machine-like relentlessness of a gambling ecosystem that has increasingly become a lifeblood of academic sporting environments.

NCAA: a decade of commodification

Since 2018, exposing young talent to the world of sports betting has created escalating new risks, including the temptation to pursue monetary gain and the pressure to influence outcomes in subtle but consequential ways.

The most recent flashpoint came when a protracted point-shaving scheme emerged amid a turbulent year for professional sport that also saw high-profile integrity controversies in Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The NCAA now finds itself grappling with the fallout from a federal indictment, United States v. Smith et al., which charges 27 individuals with alleged crimes, including bribery in sporting contests, wire fraud, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting, all of which were hard to deduce.

History of a gathering gambling storm

In 2023, one of the biggest cases reared its head at Iowa and Iowa State, uncovering widespread illegal betting involving current and former alumni.

As ESPN reported, this was not limited to a single sport but involved multiple sports, triggering eligibility losses and raising serious questions about the NCAA’s monitoring methods for detecting betting activity in college environments.

A year later, in 2024, Alabama would see one of the most surreal gambling stories when a youth baseball coach approached a betting store window with $100,000 and told the staff that he “had inside information.”

Sports Illustrated covered the story, saying the man, Bert Eugene Neff Jr. exposed an encrypted Signal mobile chat with then head coach Brad Bohannon.

NCAA enforcement later found that Bohannon had provided insider information to an individual he knew was placing wagers, marking one of the clearest examples of betting-related ethical violations reaching a program’s leadership and rumours abounded he was openly trading information about starters to a gambling ring, including Neff.

In 2025, ReadWrite also reported on multiple Division 1 basketball breaches and highlighted a key study that showed 29% NCAA student athletes had been approached or been the subject of abuse related to student gambling topics.

NCAA president speaks out

The scale of the case prompted a direct public response from NCAA president Charlie Baker, who addressed the breadth of ongoing gambling-related enforcement issues.

“The conduct revealed today is not entirely new information to the NCAA,” Baker said. “Our enforcement staff have opened sports-betting integrity investigations into approximately 40 student-athletes from 20 schools over the past year.”

Baker continued: “We found 11 student-athletes from seven schools bet on their own performances or violated other betting-related rules, resulting in permanent loss of NCAA eligibility for all of them.

“Additionally, we found 13 student-athletes from eight schools failed to cooperate in our investigations or tried to mislead our investigators. They are no longer competing in college.”

The decision to publicly acknowledge the scale of enforcement activity over the past year sent a clear signal that internal NCAA integrity systems are actively identifying issues, but the federal authorities are now in place to carry the charges forward.

United States Attorney David Metcalf said, “The stakes here are far higher than anything on a bet slip. The criminal charges we have filed allege the criminal corruption of collegiate athletics through an international conspiracy of NCAA players, alumni, and professional bettors.”

Baker used his statement to call for a structural change in how college sports are offered by betting operators, urging regulators and sportsbooks to remove certain high-risk wager types, but this may also be out of the President’s hands.

NCAA urges federal agency to suspend college sport prediction markets. https://t.co/TAheMTwXhw

— NCAA News (@NCAA_PR) January 14, 2026

“We still need regulators and gaming companies to eliminate collegiate prop bets, especially first-half unders,” Baker said. “That’s why today I sent a letter to state gaming commissions urging them to ban these bets.”

Baker and the NCAA might have taken the case as far as their remit allows, but the incoming federal authorities could set a new precedent to cement penalties for fraud on this scale, with national ramifications.

As Attorney Metcalf concluded, that “When criminal acts threaten to corrupt such a central institution of American life, the Department of Justice won’t hesitate to step in.”

So this could be an important milestone in the timeline of the NCAA, that could have ripple effects reminiscent of that landmark decision in 2018.

Featured image: NCAA / Canva

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