Greg Sankey reveals SEC’s stance on banning prop betting in legalized gambling

Greg Sankey toed the fine line with college sports betting, especially in terms of prop bets. The SEC Commissioner said they haven’t had too much conversation regarding any sort of ban.

Basically, you have to be aware of sports gambling, legal and “unsanctioned,” as Sankey put it. Getting it under control? Well, what’s control?

And where do you exactly start if you’re Sankey? He spoke about it during the SEC Spring Meetings.

“Just recognizing that it’s out there,” Sankey said. “We had a conversation here last year about it with our student athletes, so we attach the mental health conversation to sports gambling to the pressures that we are learning about. It is a conversation that is taking place at a superficial level. There’s a depth to it to come. Obviously, Charlie Baker’s been clear about the need for some change, getting away from the open ended nature of things. 

“Also, we’re talking about legalized sports gambling, and I saw some numbers that I didn’t study up yesterday, reading a report. There’s still staggering numbers of I guess, unsanctioned sports betting that takes place so yeah, it’s a conversation but we haven’t gone deep and we have started writing letters on the issue.”

Whether the question about college sports prop betting directly tied to recent betting scandals in athletics is a moot point. Even if it’s legal in certain states, it’s still illegal for the athletes to do it themselves.

All of a sudden, you get into messy territory. But as of now, it doesn’t seem to be high on the priority list for Sankey.

Speaking at the SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Ala, Sankey said the picture regarding college football will likely get clearer over the coming months.

After the conferences and NCAA voted to approve the settlement, the next step will be for Judge Claudia Wilken to certify it in what could be a months-long process. Sankey said while everything is in the hands of the judicial system, he thinks “clarity” will come within the year about what lies ahead.

“As I understand – so, I’m not in charge of everything, despite what some people will say,” Sankey said on SEC Now. “Not in the next couple of months. The next couple of months will be that process – the ability to walk through the legal system, the court system, a longer-form agreement. Decisions that can be made, then, at the conference level about certain structural issues, some national policy changes that need to take place. And then, it goes through the legal process that takes months upon months.

“I look out, probably a year from now when we’ll have – we have a level of clarity now. But we’ll have more clarity as we walk through these next 12 months.”