It’s one thing to place yourself at a sportsbook in a casino or using a mobile account by phone. It’s another to engage one of your parents to help cover up what you are doing.
Say hello to the world of Hunter Dekkers, Iowa State University’s (ISU) backup-turned-starter quarterback—Dekkers got on the wrong side of the NCAA and the administration of ISU where he is (or was) a pivotal figure on the highest-grossing team on campus.
Dekkers now faces a criminal complaint in Story County where he was accused of placing 26 bets on ISU competitions, including a football game. In all, Dekkers placed approximately 366 sports wagers through his DraftKings account that totaled “over $2,799.”
The story gets more interesting from there, if not weird. According to the complaint, Dekkers’ parents “engaged in a scheme” with him to disguise his identity and make it seem like the bets he was placing were coming from his mom. Any mom would do that much for their kid.
Dekkers “routinely and consistently” placed bets on his personal phone on campus, and 297 of the 366 total bets were placed while the quarterback was still underage.
He faces charges of tampering with records related to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s probe into sports gambling. That offense allegedly unfolded November 7, 2021.
For all of the shenanigans heaped upon the young man and many of his teammates, Dekkers denied the allegations made against him in a statement through his attorney on August 1.
“This charge attempts to criminalize a daily fact of American life. Millions of people share online accounts of all kinds every day,” his attorneys said. “This prosecution interferes with and politicizes what is the business of Iowa State University and the NCAA. The investigation at the Iowa universities is the tip of an iceberg. Thousands and thousands of college athletes place bets—usually very small ones—with shared accounts. That is for the schools and the NCAA to police … So he can focus on his studies and on the defense of this criminal charge, Hunter has informed the University and the coaching staff that he cannot participate in fall football camp.”
Even if he wasn’t necessarily breaking records, Dekkers has still had a decent career thus far on the field by Division I standards. A backup in 2021, he threw for 3,044 yards and 19 touchdowns with 14 interceptions last season while leading the Cyclones to a 4-8 record.
Dekkers’ lawyers also said the following:
“Hunter Dekkers denies the criminal charge brought against him. He will plead not guilty to that charge because he is in fact not guilty of that charge. This charge attempts to criminalize a daily fact of American life. Millions of people share online accounts of all kinds every day.
This prosecution interferes with and politicizes what is the business of Iowa State University and the NCAA. The investigation at the Iowa universities is the tip of an iceberg. Thousands and thousands of college athletes place bets—usually very small ones—with shared accounts. That is for the schools and the NCAA to police.”
In addition to Dekkers, sophomore wrestler Paniro Johnson and sophomore offensive lineman Dodge Sauser also faced charges on August 1. Sauser allegedly bet on 12 ISU football games and wagered more than $3,000 on DraftKings, per the Des Moines Register. Sauser has not appeared in a single game. Johnson, who won a Big 12 title last season, is accused of placing almost 1,300 bets worth more than $45,600 including 25 on ISU events.
Both Iowa and ISU announced in May that athletes at both schools had allegedly made online sports bets. Iowa said 26 athletes had allegedly placed online sports bets, including from the football and men’s basketball teams. ISU said at the time that “approximately 15” active athletes were allegedly involved, and one football player was among that group—both numbers appear to be short now. ISU coach Matt Campbell was asked specifically about Dekkers at Big 12 media day last month but did not address it.
“We’ll kind of learn what happened in that situation here shortly, and how do you respond from that,” Campbell told reporters. “Once it’s time to have clarity to that and then respond to that the right way, I know our football team and certainly the young men in our team will do a great job of that.”
A former Iowa baseball player was accused of gambling in a similar “scheme” with his mother. Gehrig Christensen allegedly placed 559 underage wagers, including 23 on Iowa sporting events, according to the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
So what’s next?
Journalist Dustin Gouker said it could have been worse. There are no allegations of trying to fix outcomes out of games. He also wasn’t betting lots of money; it was thousands of dollars of small bets averaging just more than $7 a wager.
One likely outcome is increased calls to implement bans on betting on college sports altogether, or at least on in-state colleges.
“We are going to see lawmakers get on soapboxes in the wake of this and tell us we need to ban college betting for the integrity of the game, to protect college students from themselves, blah blah blah, etc etc,” Gouker wrote on his Substack August 2. “But overreacting by banning college betting entirely would be a mistake.
Why?
“Again, sports betting didn’t start in the United States five years ago,” Gouker continued. “It’s been a part of our culture for more than a century and easily available online for decades. If you pretend that all of this is happening just because of the expansion of legal betting, you are putting your head in the sand. Yes, it might be more in athletes’ faces, but it’s just a matter of scale, not a binary choice of if it was happening or not.”
