SEC Media Days: what Commissioner Greg Sankey is saying about legalized sports gambling

DALLAS — Sports gambling has become a hot-button issue in all of athletics, but its impact on the world of college athletics is coming to the forefront for the Southeastern Conference.

Just five months before Commissioner Greg Sankey opened up SEC Media Days in Dallas on Monday, the conference still was dealing with a major gambling scandal that saw Alabama’s baseball coach fired and sanctioned with a 15-year show-cause order.

With sports gambling legal to some degree in half of the states that house an SEC school, Sankey emphasized the importance of regulation coming alongside legalization of sports betting.

“It’s not good enough for states just to allow legalized sports gambling. They owe protection to the participants, and the online and direct pressures that come from those who aren’t successful in their gambling decisions affect our participants in every state,” Sankey said during prepared remarks. “Legalized sports gambling needs to put in place clearly stated laws that protect participants from hostile behavior.”

Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas are states that allow no sports betting, but the other six states with SEC schools allow it to at least some extent.

In order for Texas to legalize sports betting, it would require an amendment to the state Constitution, needing two-thirds approval in both the state Senate and state House to pass. Despite lobbying from many of the big names in Texas sports like Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban, there has not been enough movement in the Legislature to legalize sports betting.

Every sports league in the country has different standards when it comes to player punishment for taking part in sports gambling — particularly if they wager on games their team is part of.

An infamous betting scandal among the Iowa and Iowa State athletic departments in 2023 saw 15 athletes across a handful of sports charged with falsifying records amid a probe into players placing bets. Many of the players who pleaded guilty faced brief suspensions and fines and most athletes eventually transferred.

But in late 2023, the NCAA adopted some eased-back standards, making the punishment a one-year suspension and a lost year of eligibility for players found to be betting on other NCAA sports at their university. Previously a player could lose all eligibility for gambling on any NCAA sport.

The line between colleges and sports betting also has blurred significantly in recent years. In 2021, LSU became the first SEC school to partner with a gambling company after making a multiyear sponsorship agreement with Caesars Sportsbook.

Sankey called on Congress to aid schools and conferences in addressing sports gambling, among other issues college athletics is facing right now.

“We’re going to continue our dialogue with Congress. Again, we’re going to have to make decisions on our own. We have to do those with the right legal counsel,” Sankey said. “But Congress is a place that can help set national standards and address the issues our student-athletes have raised.”