Purdue University President Mitch Daniels has asked the board of trustees to prohibit faculty and staff from placing bets for or against the Boilermakers. The ban would be the first of its kind at any school in Indiana, where legalized sports betting recently launched at the state’s 10 casinos and three off-track betting sites. It would include the West Lafayette camps and Purdue Fort Wayne and Purdue Northwest and apply to full-time, part-time and temporary employees, and possibly non-student athletes attending Purdue. Players and coaches already are prohibited from betting under NCAA rules and state law.
In a statement, Daniels said the issue was a matter “of integrity and sportsmanship.” He said faculty members and Purdue athletics department staff urged the administration to draft a policy. “In that spirit and out of respect for our student-athletes and coaches we believe this is the right action to take to reduce the potential for any student-athlete to feel compromised, for any implication of profiteering or inside information or other problems,” Daniels stated. Legal Counsel Steve Schultz said Purdue was “in the early stages of what such a policy would look like.”
Student betting also could be prohibited under the proposed ban, Daniels said.
Purdue Associate Athletics Director for Compliance Tom Mitchell said his office has been working with student-athletes and others since Governor Eric Holcomb signed the state’s sports wagering law in April. “One thing we give as messaging is, ‘Keep it in the family. Keep all your problems, keep your injuries, keep what’s going on with the team in the family. Because you just don’t know who’s going to take that information and place a bet with it,” he said. Mitchell added, “If we can make a bigger safe space, that’s only going to be good for the student-athlete and for the faculty/student-athlete relationship, which is really important.”
Indiana University Director of Media Relations Chuck Carney said the school did not have a policy regarding banning faculty from betting on IU sports teams. “It would be something that we would need to have decided through the trustees,” he said.
Former IU basketball player and coach Dan Dakich said he questioned the benefit of banning university faculty from wagering on its sports teams. He said with sports betting legal in Indiana, faculty not related to the athletic program have the same right to use information as any other gambler.
Purdue trustees will consider the issue at their October 10 meeting.
And in Ohio, state universities want college sports excluded from sports betting, which lawmakers have included in expanded gambling bills for the upcoming session. Ohio Inter-University Council of Ohio President Bruce Johnson said, “People who run athletics departments across the state feel very strongly that student athletes don’t need to be confronted with additional challenge of having gambling right down the street on their athletic events.”
