The NCAA has a third-party company that’s providing social media surveillance to help curb the harassment of student-athletes, coaches, and officials.
“If they see anything they think is inappropriate, they notify the platform and ask them to shut those people down for the rest of the tournament,” NCAA president Charlie Baker told reporters at Monday’s men’s basketball championship game. “And if they see stuff that they're really worried about, they notify the authorities. And that's happened in a few instances.”
This is in response to Baker’s concern about the “enormous challenge” of protecting game participants from harmful backlash because of sports betting.
“That is, in many respects, one of the most challenging issues I’ve heard student-athletes talk to me about,” Baker told the USA Today at Sunday’s women’s championship game. “It puts enormous pressure on them socially on their campuses and generally. I think everything we can do to get that out of the college game would be a terrific advancement for them and for the schools. But sports betting, we’re in the top of the first inning on this one, and it’s going to be an enormous challenge for everybody going forward.”
Stops to the props
Baker is currently waging a campaign against college player prop bets due to bettors going after parties involved in NCAA games. He released a statement challenging U.S. legal sports betting states to join Ohio and Maryland in prohibiting sportsbooks from offering bets on individual college players.
North Carolina’s Armando Bacot said earlier this month that he received “probably 100" messages from disgruntled sports fans after he failed to record enough rebounds in a game.
“Did any of you notice how much time is spent on cable TV about Caitlin Clark’s prop performance in the first game, and leading into the second game?” Baker asked reporters Monday. “Is that really what we should be talking about in the middle of a women’s Final Four?”
Still going to Vegas
However, Baker’s not completely against gambling, although he questioned if college students should be doing it all not long after Iowa and Iowa State student-athletes were caught illegally placing wagers.
After all, the NCAA Final Four is scheduled to be in Las Vegas, the center of the sports betting universe, in 2028.
“For me, it’s less about where your events take place and a lot more about what you can do with technology and partners to policies — hopefully, laws in some cases — to provide protection and support student-athletes,” Baker said. “They’re the ones who get sort of mashed by a lot of this.”
NCAA blunder
The NCAA women’s tournament received record ratings and historical wagering at U.S. sportsbooks following South Carolina’s win over Iowa, and the men’s side saw history made with UConn winning back-to-back titles with a triumph over Purdue on Monday
But it wasn’t a controversial-less March Madness for Baker and his cohorts.
Earlier this month, one of the 3-point lines at the Portland Regional was measured nine inches short, and the mistake wasn’t discovered until right before an Elite Eight game.
On top of that, the NCAA had to remove an official from a women’s game at halftime due to the official having a degree from one of the schools playing, which is against NCAA policy.
“We use the same folks to put the courts together at the men’s and women’s sites and we use the same folks to do the analytics around the officials who serve in the tournament,” Baker said. “Those things shouldn’t happen and we gotta make sure they don’t happen going forward. They are in some respects a reminder to us that this tournament is special and because it’s special, we need to be special.”
