The US National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has delayed a rule change that will permit student athletes to place bets on professional sports games.
Yesterday, the Division I board voted to delay this change in its sports betting legislation from November 1 to November 22.
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There is a current but rarely-used rule in place that allows each Division I school to vote to delay a proposal if that proposal is only adopted by less than 75% of the total Division I membership.
It has now been reported that Greg Sankey, commissioner of the powerful SEC collegiate body of schools, contacted NCAA president Charlie Baker to complain about the betting rule change.
The rule will still only apply to professional sports leagues, and not to college sports properties, with the NCAA having repeatedly emphasized it does not endorse sports betting for student athletes in any capacity.
Only last month, the NCAA banned a trio of men's college basketball players for betting on games they were involved in at the Fresno State and San Jose State colleges in California.
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By GlobalDataOn this incident, Baker said: "We run the largest integrity program in the world on sports betting across all the various games. Sadly, we discovered some student-athletes involved with some problematic activity."
The delay also comes less than a week after a coach and player in basketball's NBA were arrested on suspicion of leaking inside information about athletes as part of a sprawling gambling investigation in the UK. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier has been accused of exploiting private information about players to win bets on NBA games.
