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The NCAA announced on Thursday that its “enforcement staff is in the process of alleging violations of sports betting rules and/or related failure-to-cooperate violations” for 13 former men’s college basketball players. They also stated that the players competed at six different universities, including Eastern Michigan, Temple, Arizona State, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T, and Mississippi Valley State. The players’ names were not released.
“While the facts and alleged behaviors 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 stated in a press release announcing the alleged violations.
The NCAA claimed that it is releasing this information “because of the extensive public reporting regarding these cases.” The organization stated that it wanted to clear up which universities are involved in current ongoing cases due to the “number of schools” that “have been identified in media reporting.”
According to the NCAA, the betting violations were discovered after they became aware of unusual betting activities around regular-season games played by these specific college basketball teams. In some of the cases, text messages, direct messages on social media platforms, and other material evidence were used in determining whether violations had occurred.
The schools will not be punished by the NCAA
Interestingly, the NCAA also added that “the schools and respective school staffs in the ongoing cases are not alleged to have been involved in the violations by student-athletes” so their enforcement staff won’t be seeking any penalties for the schools.
“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, adding, “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.”
Earlier this year, the University of New Orleans made news when they hired music mogul Percy “Master P” Miller as its President of Basketball Operations. His hiring appeared to coincide with the team being linked to a federal sports betting investigation. North Carolina A&T, Mississippi Valley State, Eastern Michigan, and Temple – four of the teams cited by the NCAA on Thursday – were also linked to the investigation at that time. Arizona State was not one of the schools that had been mentioned in reporting at that time.