Geno Auriemma Laments Explosion of Sports Gambling
Geno Auriemma is concerned that women’s college basketball may eventually be hit with a sports gambling scandal.
In an interview with Front Office Sports Tonight, Auriemma, the coach of UConn’s women’s basketball program, lamented the rise of sports betting, stating concerns that it may impact the game as it has in men’s college and pro basketball.
“It’s only a matter of time, if we’re not careful, where these people start to think: ‘This is just normal behavior, man,’” Auriemma told Matt Iseman, shaking his head. “And it’s going to start affecting the game because the players playing it are going to get wrapped up in this, as we’ve seen already in the NBA a couple times, [and] as we saw years ago, players in college getting caught up in the gambling thing.”
“It’s only a matter of time, if we’re not careful, where these people start to think: ‘This is just normal behavior.’”
Geno Auriemma rips the growing influence of gambling and prediction markets on women’s hoops.
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In recent years, several men’s college players have lost their eligibility after they were found to be betting on games or fixing matches. Fresno State and San Jose State players even face felony charges related to match fixing. NBA players, including Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier, have been banned or suspended for betting on and manipulating games.
Auriemma, who has been coaching for nearly 50 years, acknowledged that sports betting has been around in some capacity for a while, but described how predatory it could be in the smartphone era.
“I have a problem with a kid who really doesn’t understand what they’re doing, using a phone to bet on each play while they’re watching a game,” Auriemma said. “Now, when I was a kid, when I was in high school and college, you had to go find a bookie, and you needed to bet through a bookie. And he wasn’t taking a credit card. He wanted cash.”
The 12-time national champion coach said his players are aware of the risk of sports betting, saying all athletics departments take sports betting “as seriously and as thoroughly as anything else.”
“If you know that as a college athlete you are found gambling, whether it’s your team or somebody else’s team, that’s the fastest way to to to be banned from playing college athletics,” Auriemma said.
The NCAA prohibits student-athletes from betting on college or professional sports. Last year, a rule nearly passed to allow college athletes to bet on pro sports without penalty, but more than two-thirds of Division I schools rescinded the rule, a vote that came just weeks after news of the NBA betting scandal.
But the rules haven’t stopped college athletes from placing bets, with some admitting to FOS that they took the risk during their college eligibility. The volume of athletes makes it difficult for institutions to police.
“Everybody knows the kids are doing some sort of sports wagering. But it’s hard to prove that,” Ryan Qualls, Columbia’s associate athletic director for compliance told FOS earlier this year.
Sports betting has also led women’s basketball players to ring the alarm about increased vitriol stemming from angry sports bettors. A study published by the NCAA last week found that sports betting was linked to nearly 12% of all verified abuse, and women’s basketball players received approximately three times more threats than men.
However, professional sports leagues have built partnerships with sportsbooks, with many beginning to expand to prediction markets. The NBA named Kalshi and Polymarket its “preferred prediction market partners” last week, while the WNBA told FOS on Friday that it’s open to prediction markets.
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