Are you a college athlete that wants to make a little extra cash by playing any college daily fantasy sports? Well, I’ve got bad news for you – the NCAA is preparing to come down hard on any college athletes caught playing daily fantasy games. At least according to Mississippi State AD Scott Stricklin…
Listening to NCAA’s Oliver Luck speak this morning in Dallas. He reminds that …
— Scott Stricklin (@ScottStricklin) September 22, 2015
… any athlete found to be gambling on college sports (includes daily fantasy such as Draft Kings) automatically loses a year of eligibility.
— Scott Stricklin (@ScottStricklin) September 22, 2015
This isn’t the first time that someone with substantial power in college sports has spoken out against daily fantasy – Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott had some harsh words for DFS sites over the weekend, asking them to discontinue their college games and also revealing that the Pac-12 Network wouldn’t be running any DFS ads.
ESPN also came under fire for tying gambling to college football with a “cover alert”, which they announced had been discontinued after blowback from the NCAA.
However, I’m sure the NCAA is perfectly fine with the daily fantasy ad barrage during games – they have NFL games too! It’s not just college football!
I wonder what a legal challenge could look like here. The government (for now) doesn’t consider DFS games as gambling, but the NCAA does. I realize that the NCAA can (and does) essentially pick and choose how they implement their own rules and guidelines, but could an athlete that loses eligibility take the NCAA to court because the government doesn’t consider DFS gambling? Furthermore, if a challenge would ever get to court, could the NCAA’s argument end up forcing the government to classify DFS as gambling and cause all hell to break loose?
It’ll be interesting to see what happens down the road with this when an athlete eventually loses eligibility, and whether or not the NCAA’s disapproval towards letting its athletes play college football DFS has any effect on advertising during games. The NCAA’s stance reeks of hypocrisy, but that’s the NCAA in a nutshell at this point.
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