The fallout from the University of Iowa gambling investigation is, well, more of an occasional drizzle. The university confirmed a probe into online sports betting involving 26 current athletes.
That’s about as far as the inquiry has gone.
“We’re dealing with a situation right now which, quite frankly, we still don’t have a lot of the details on,” Iowa head football coach Kirk Ferentz said before an I-Club event last Thursday.
UI Athletics administrators have yet to reply to questions submitted by The Gazette of Cedar Rapids—including how the school is alerting student athletes on sports gambling and the strict conference rules from the Big Ten conference.
Ferentz said the current gambling discussions reminded him of a time in the 1980s, when he was an assistant coach at Iowa, and FBI agents would speak to the team. At the time, sports betting in Iowa was illegal and conducted underground.
“I was amazed,” Ferentz said. “They threw out estimates of what they thought was going on in Iowa City in those times.”
What was going on was not legal. Legal since 2019, sports betting in 2022 drew $2.5 billion a year or $6.5 million daily.
“I’d venture to say gambling is a big issue in our whole country right now,” Ferentz told the Gazette. “It’s in our face. It’s accessible pretty much to everybody.”
Wes Ehrecke, president and chief executive officer of the Iowa Gaming Association, the umbrella group of state-licensed casinos, said there have been “guardrails” meant to prevent collegiate athletes from betting on sports.
“Those guardrails were appropriately established when this was legalized, and they are still in place,” Ehrecke told the Gazette.
Sportsbooks attempt to verify a user’s identity for an online app—with by far most sports betting in Iowa now conducted online.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation is part of the scrutiny even though no criminal charges were filed. The NCAA expects to be heavy handed in meting out punishment if violations surface. When Virginia Tech football player Alan Tisdale self-reported that he’d made legal bets on the NBA Finals, the NCAA suspended him for half the season (!).
Any sports wagering activity through the internet, a bookmaker or a parlay card could cost an entire season.
If the athlete spends less than $25, no suspension is recommended. But more than $500 would line up with a “sit-a-season/charge-a-season” condition.
The UI volleyball program had to vacate all wins over the 2017 and 2018 seasons, pay a $5,000 fine and face recruiting penalties, the NCAA announced in its conclusion.
Iowa received information that in addition to 26 student athletes, 111 people were part of the investigation.
“The vast majority of the individuals are student-staff, former student-athletes or those with no connection to UI athletics,” the university said in a statement.
One full-time athletics department staff member is involved in the probe, the UI said, although he or she is not a current or former coach.
For now, the waiting will continue for Ferentz and fans.
“We’ll just see what all comes out of this,” Ferentz said.
One of the outcomes of the probe into potential missteps regarding a baseball game involving LSU and the University of Alabama was the emergence of U.S. Integrity, a sports data company.
U.S. Integrity recently unveiled “Athlete Alert Powered by RealResponse” a hotline service so coaches, players and others can be anonymous but voice concerns. The hotline tips would go to regulators who could then verify them and bring the matter to law enforcement, the companies said in a statement.
Operators of a sportsbook located in the Cincinnati Reds stadium alerted U.S. Integrity about suspicious activity, which in turn notified state gambling regulators in Ohio. The call set in motion the probe currently ongoing.
Alabama fired its baseball coach Brad Bohannon last week amid the investigation.
“Nothing is more important than the health and well-being of the professional and student athletes who have committed their lives to compete at the highest levels, and it is our job to help protect that paradigm,” U.S. Integrity President Matthew Holt told the Associated Press. The hotline enables concerned athletes and others “to stay one step ahead of any bad actors.”
In the Alabama case, no athletes are suspected to be involved. In the Iowa case, some Hawkeyes baseball players have already been suspended from some competition and face possible eligibility issues.
Leonardo Villalobos, counsel for sports betting and compliance with Major League Baseball (MLB), said recent events involving sports integrity questions are being viewed through two different lenses.
Regulators and leagues point to these signs as evidence the regulated market is working.
Does the general public think similarly?
“Stories like this will continue to pop up,” he said. “It will be very interesting to see how stories like these are viewed.”
Alexandra Roth, associate vice president and associate counsel for the NBA, said the leagues rely on granular assessments of betting data.
“There’s no shortage of data on who’s betting on what for how much money,” she told the Associated Press. A key question is “when does an anomalous betting pattern rise to the level of something isn’t right? We should be humble in terms of how young this market is and how much learning remains to be done.”
Kelly Pracht, CEO of nVenue, a sports microbetting company that offers wagers on rapid-fire, precise things like the outcome of a single pitch in baseball, said not everything flagged by analytics is necessarily indicative of nefarious activity.
“People are betting with their hearts,” she told the AP. “When everyone at Minute Maid Park is betting on the home run when it makes no sense at all, that’s not cheating; it’s just hope.”
With probes already underway, the NCAA will take a close look at the link between sports betting and college athletics.
“As more states legalize sports betting and as hundreds of millions of dollars are spent advertising to young people across the nation, everyone from parents to coaches, campus leaders, state regulators, and the NCAA have to work together to make sure all young people know the rules and know what problem gambling looks like,” NCAA President Charlie Baker told Sports Handle. “Advertisers may see this as an emerging market, but this could be an emerging threat to young people everywhere if we all don’t work together.”
The NCAA completed a national survey on sports betting habits of those 18 to 22. Results will be forthcoming. The agency also plans to conduct a national sports wagering survey of student-athletes during the 2023-24 academic year.
The agency works with integrity monitoring services, which track suspicious betting activity. Out of 13,000 regular and postseason competitions with wagering offered, “less than 0.25 percent of competitions are flagged for suspicious betting patterns and even few require action.
“While sports wagering creates opportunities for our fans to uniquely engage with NCAA competition in a legal and responsible manner, we have to be mindful of the enhanced risks it creates, particularly around student-athlete well-being and competition integrity,” Stan Wilcox, the NCAA’s executive vice president of regulatory affairs, told Sports Handle.
In addition to the prohibition of betting on sports games, the ban includes sharing information on bettors. The NCAA bans student-athletes from betting on any sport that has an association-sponsored championship, The Alabama baseball game attracted the NCAA and the sports betting industry because of allegations the head coach contacted a bettor who wagered against Alabama.
“The NCAA Mental Health Advisory Group is revamping its best practices plan, the legislative blueprint for mental health, the current Best Practices document, which serves as the legislative basis for mental health care for all member schools,” Dr. Brian Hainline, chief medical officer at the NCAA, told Sports Handle. “Part of their updated focus is to address the potentially negative impact of social media harassment and abuse, which often springs from individuals who are involved with sport corruption or wagering. In addition, there will be updated guidance on management of gambling disorders.”
