The odds are bringing little favor to school athletes, who’re facing more pressure over their performance from bettors.
South Carolina’s defeat of Iowa for the ladies’s NCAA championship on Sunday drew record-breaking betting numbers. BetMGM announced that the sport had drawn essentially the most bets of any women’s sporting event ever.
Last yr, bettors placed greater than $15 billion in bets on the boys’s college basketball tournament, in keeping with the American Gaming Association. A significant weight on players are prop bets, which are often bets on details of a person’s performance—just like the variety of rebounds from Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark.
The NCAA estimates that a 3rd of student athletes have been harassed by bettors. It has raised alarms and now’s examining how betting and social media more broadly affect student athletes’ wellbeing.
“Indirectly, I believe players notice that. They may hear it from a fan walking off the court,” said Roger Lipe, who ministers to school coaches and players through Nations of Coaches and is chaplain for the Southern Illinois University men’s basketball team. Lipe was on the Final Four women’s games over the weekend and the concurrent coach’s conference in Cleveland, Ohio.
In his 30 years of ministry, a conversation on gambling was often a component of preseason meetings. Betting on sports has been happening for a very long time, legal or not, Lipe identified.
But the legalization of mobile sports betting in states across the country implies that it’s much easier for fans to bet, and fewer taboo. Chaplains must adapt, Lipe said.
In his work, Lipe does book studies with coaching staff, goes to practices, and prays with anyone before or after a game. He notices that student athletes are feeling more like commodities, and said those in ministry can counter that feeling with trusting relationships.
“When I’m talking with players on the ground, I’m almost never talking with them about results,” Lipe said. “Performance, yep, that’s a part of who you’re. But you’re greater than that. What form of friend are you? … What form of pressure are you coping with this week?”
March Madness drew some attention to the harassment that college athletes have experienced, especially in regard to prop bets. Purdue center Zach Edey told The Athletic that individuals asked him to send them money on Venmo for his or her lost bets on him.
In the midst of the tournament, the NCAA announced that it could be lobbying states across the country to ban prop bets “to guard student-athletes from harassment and … to guard the integrity of the sport.” Louisiana state officials announced a ban on prop bets throughout the tournament.
“You wish to say you’re mature enough and it doesn’t hassle you,” Duke basketball player Ryan Young told The News & Observer in March. “But that stuff gets to you.”
Some athletes have been charged with betting on games themselves. But mental health experts told CT that only a small percentage of athletes have problems with gambling. The larger issue is the psychological burden that betting adds to student athletes focused on their performance.
“It’s one among those invisible weights they carry … whether or not they’re actively eager about it or not,” said Brian Smith, who works with the nationwide sports ministry Athletes in Action.
Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist and the codirector of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program, would really like to see more chaplains and churches be involved in supporting athletes through these pressures. He also sees from his work that athletes are feeling more like “a stock, a commodity.”
Fong said athletes may be more willing to discuss their problems with a trusted spiritual leader than with a medical provider like him. For that reason, he urges chaplains to “educate themselves concerning the world of gambling, what impact it could actually have on [students’] bodies, brains, and minds.”
“When you begin asking, then they begin talking about it,” Fong said. “If you didn’t ask, they don’t bring it up. … They may not understand it’s resulting in their depression, anxiety, and burnout.”
Fong has seen the vitriol toward athletes over lost bets within the chat section of 1 sports app he checks for scores, and he’s heard about it from student athletes who come to him for care.
“It sometimes gets pretty nasty,” said Fong. “The athletes I work with … they are saying, ‘It just sits inside me.’”
Smith from Athletes in Action wants sports ministry staff to concentrate on teaching students their value as image bearers of God—the other of a commodity. LSU star Angel Reese brought that to mind when she said about getting harassed online, “I’m still a human.” Smith suggests some form of “made within the image of God” campaign.
He also said Christian athletes can look out for his or her teammates, who could also be experiencing pressure over their performances and prop betting.
There’s “a biblical ethic to look out for people who find themselves being treated poorly,” he said.
One issue with chaplains constructing deep relationships and trust with players is that there may be more turnover on teams than there was once. NCAA changes in the previous few years mean athletes can now enter the “transfer portal” and change programs without the penalty of sitting out a season or more. That means top teams are made up of plenty of transfer students poached from lesser programs.
As a results of student athletes moving schools more often, chaplains could have less time with them. Linsey Smith, staff care director for Athletes in Action and a chaplain to a women’s pro volleyball team herself, thinks that college chaplains should learn more from pro sports chaplains who’re at all times working with athletes who might leave at any moment.
“The time you get to develop an athlete, instill your team values in them, and shape the culture of your team is now so truncated,” she said. “If [athletes are] unsatisfied, they put themselves within the transfer portal they usually’re gone,” which is hard if a coach is “attempting to create a norm.”
Student athletes now even have the choice of pulling in name, image, likeness money on their personal brand, a reason many transfer to larger and higher programs. But that usually means having an enormous social media presence to construct their brand, which exposes them to more harassment. Fong has seen some athletes opt out of social media altogether for their very own sanity.
Lipe, the longtime chaplain to athletes and coaches, thinks harassment of scholars from gambling is just one among several challenges for faculty sports right away. He heard little from coaches on the Final Four about sports betting because they’ve accepted it as a component of the sport they will’t control.
“It’s one thing for us in sports ministry to bark at it if we have now an ethical issue with gambling,” he said. “That’s the environment we’re given. So we have now to serve well in light of that environment.”
