The Josh Innes Show - College Athletes May Be Allowed To Bet On Pro Sports

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

This is actually very interesting. The NCAA may allow athletes to bet on professional sports. I'm intrigued by the difference things that could happen here. Could it be really bad? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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drug. You hear that a lot from people right like marijuana. It's a gateway drug. You start smoking pot and then you can't get high anymore and you start doing pills and you start doing crack. You start doing coke and then before you know it, you're heroin and you're dead, right? It's a gateway drug and that's what you heard forever. I feel like opening up the it's an interesting it's actually an interesting debate though.

Because on one hand, like these are adult people like a college football player is an adult person. A college football player can go to a casino, right? A college football player can drink alcohol, right? Assuming you're of age in all these cases, right? Like, you can do a lot of shit. You're an adult person, right? You just so happen to play college sports. So why shouldn't you be able to get the Draft Kings app or get the FanDuel app and bet on the Saints game on Sunday, right? Now, you might... Here's the thing though. Boy, there's a lot of elements to

this that I think are interesting. Let's play a couple commercials and let's get into these. So the first thought is like there's no direct way for you to be able to impact a game betting on it, right? So if you're a college athlete, let's say you're a college football player. like, well, let's go back to what's his name? Who was the wide receiver? Was it boot? It was Kaishan Booty, who was the receiver at LSU who like blew a ton of money betting on on college games and different

betting shit. But he also bet on himself in some instances as well. Like, first off, there are so many elements here, like I don't even know where to start. There are so many elements here. Like I don't even know where to start. There are so many elements. But obviously there's no direct way for a player to impact a pro game if he is not playing in the pro game. Might he be able to get some inside information that others can't get? That's quite possible, but that's just cool because you have access.

It's like it's not illegal. It's not illegal for you to make a bet on something because you have inside information. Now if someone goes out and throws the game on purpose for you to win a bet, that's a different scenario. But if you're talking with someone and you know you have a buddy that you went to college with and that buddy's in the locker room and he's playing for the I don't know he's playing for the

Vikings and he knows that Justin Jefferson isn't going to play like he's pretty confident like Justin Jefferson is on crutches and he's not gonna be able to be impactful yet he's gonna try to play on Sunday and you have this inside information about him perhaps you know you could win and it's possible that some guy who's still in college as buddies with someone who's in his first or second year in the NFL and he could pass that information to him on whether he knows his buddy is betting on

it or not but his buddy might text me man what's up with Jets is he all right like what's the deal and he's like dude I don't think this dude's gonna be able to go I'll be shocked if he's 100% he's barely 50% but he's gonna try to go so then you can go out there maybe take the under on Justin Jefferson yards and catch it you can take the other team to cover so like you would have some sort of inside information. That's not illegal, right? To have that kind of to have a source. It's just it's frowned upon, I would imagine. But it's part of the game, right? Like you go and you get the scoop from guys, and you know what kind of stuff they have. So cool. Where I think you open up a gateway here is like, so let's say a college player does that

exact thing and loses that bet and now he's down. He's down a couple thousand dollars, whatever. He didn't know where he's going to find this money. What is stopping that college player from somehow getting himself tangled up with someone where like he owes money here there. Now granted if you're doing this online you have to pay the money so it's not like you have a bookie that you owe. And I gotta read the details of the story I don't know if it would just be limited to online sports betting or what now it's a lot harder to trace shit when it's not online so if I'm a player I wouldn't use fan duel or draft kings inings in that instance, I

would get a buddy of mine and I'd give him the cash and I would send him to a an actual sports book or give somebody the money and go to a sports book. If I were in that instance, I would probably do that instead of leaving some sort of paper trail. There's far less of a paper trail. If you find some guy on the campus or somebody of yours and he's got a couple grand or you give him a couple grand and he goes to make these bets. You're not going to find yourself in a position more than likely where it's old school dudes out to

break your legs if you don't throw the game in the college game to help him out right like you're probably not going to run into that this isn't the 1970s. This isn't you know the Boston College betting scandal or something so or Arizona State scandal. So you're probably not going to run into that kind of shit. However, let's say you do get down, even on your own, like let's say you're down and you've lost five grand or whatever betting on pro teams.

Well you know a way to get that back. You're in control of what you do on the field. A lot of states have prop bets for college athletes. For instance, Illinois does have you can bet on prop bets for players. I think Louisiana you can't I'm trying to think of the states that I've been in where you can I think maybe in Michigan you can. I'm trying to think of other places where you can bet on prop bets for college athletes, maybe Pennsylvania you can bet on prop bets for college athletes. So in theory, you could then go out to try to get your own

money back and just bet the under on yourself to have six catches and you go out and you have five and you drop a ball on purpose. Now there'd be a paper trail because you can't bet on those games because they'll be able to find you. Well, that's where you find a buddy that's also got an account. And you could have some plausible deniability there, right? Because if you're allowed to have an at that point, you're allowed to have a draft Kings or a fan duel account. So there's deniability that your buddies also got one and he just so happened to bet on you. And

if it's an over if you take the over, it's you know, even less noticeable, the unders which are easier to control the unders you could maybe have it traced back to you, but I think you're going to start running into more situations like that when you open the door for these guys to have these accounts in any way, but let me read the actual story and see if that's where they're going. A top NCAA policymaking group on Tuesday voted to propose that the Association change its rules to

allow Division one athletes and athletic staff members to bet on professional sports events, the association announced. The move by the NCAA Division I Council will not become final until the group concludes meetings on June 25th and will not take effect unless similar governance groups representing Division II and Division III approve the move later this summer. In addition, it will require formal adoption by the Council in October. This past April, the Division III Management Council took action to support in concept, non-controversial legislation regulating or deregulating betting on

professional sports. This was nearly identical to the Stans, blah, blah, blah. Now give me the details on what this would entail. At the time, let's see, to adopt legislation to deregulate the prohibition on wagering on professional sports and directed the NCAA staff to develop concepts for the appropriate committees to consider regarding a safe harbor, limited immunity, or reduced penalties for student athletes who engage in sports wagering but seek help for problem gambling. Current NCAA Division I rules say athletes, coaches, and administrators cannot knowingly participate in sports wagering activities or provide information to individuals involved in or associated with any type of sports wagering

activities concerning intercollegiate, amateur, or professional athletics competition. 25 athletes from Ohio, Iowa State and Iowa were arrested for illegal sports betting in 2023. Some of those athletes were alleged to have bet on college games. Many of the criminal charges were based on injury blah blah blah blah. So there's not a ton of details about this. There's a lot of verbiage in here. But I'd be curious. Like I'd like to know what the regulations and what the rules would actually be. Can you have a draft Kings account? Like, can you have a

fan duel account? Do you have to make these bets in person? What kind of stuff would be involved in that? Like, I think once you start getting young people involved in betting, right, and that's one of the biggest criticisms of sports betting and this kind of stuff is you're getting people who are 17, 18, 19 years of age who really don't know any better, right, and you're putting them in the situation to make these bets and they're going to get themselves into a giant hole potentially and then don't know how to get out of that giant hole. The benefit, I guess, the benefit of a fan duel or draft Kings

or an online betting is it's not like you can bet with credit I did once and it was it set me back a gigantic amount of money. I forgot which site it was one of the overseas ones right because there was no fan duel or draft Kings to use at the time. It was one of these overseas betting ones that I was using forgot what it was. It may have been my bookie or one of them. And they allowed you to use credit cards for that. This is when we were in Nashville. And I would just go out, I'd use my credit card and I'd put, you know, 300, 500,000, whatever.

And before I knew it, this card that had a $10,000 limit was like, and I'm like, holy shit, Josh, what the fuck were you thinking? Like, that's how easy it is to do that. When you're doing shit on credit. The perk of a fan duel or a DraftKings for the most part is, is a lot of the credit cards don't let you pay or put in money via credit. Like it's almost like you have to put in cash. So at least the money you're losing is all you're going to lose. It's not going to be like, oh, I now owe $10,000 to credit cards that I won't be able to pay off. And

soon collections is going to come and they're going to take all my shit like it's at least not like that. But I am of the belief that once you start getting more of these college dudes who are highly competitive people betting on baseball, basketball, football, like you heard the K Sean Butte story, this dude was gambling at all hours of the day. He was a regular Josh Ennis. He's out here like table tennis, Ukrainian table tennis, soccer. Like it sounded like this dude was just

betting non fucking stop. Like the number of bets this dude made put me to shame. I'm like, holy shit, and then started betting on himself, which is an easy thing to get caught up in. Or as I said earlier, which I think is a true advantage for people is you can go out and talk to your buddy who plays for the Chiefs, the Vikings, the Rams and ask about the quarterback and how healthy he actually is and you can get legit inside information or at the like at the high end of it. You could compromise the

outcome of an NFL game potentially because you have direct access to guys who are playing in it, right like the average person in theory could have direct access. But a former player or a current college player would no doubt know somebody who is on a roster in the NFL and can get some sort of inside information. Right? And could that impact how that game goes? Right? Or could the NFL which an NFL guy more than likely wouldn't risk this, right? But like, would an NFL player more than likely wouldn't risk this right but like would an NFL

player go hey you got a buddy like he's talking to do in the locker room his buddy whatever he's like so your buddy has an account right on FanDuel how about this they got me at five and a half catches take the under and let's you know split this thing right now once now the other risk is once you start putting in huge bets they flag you. So it's one thing to bet 500 bucks, 250 bucks, like small little amounts that aren't going to draw attention. Once you would get money, like basically the money that would have to be involved for something like that to be beneficial to somebody, like a four like a player, like for a player in the NFL to get

involved in it and talk to his buddy in the locker room whose buddy is in college and blah, blah, blah. Like, obviously, there are guys in college athletics right now who have direct pipelines to NFL locker rooms and can talk to players and coaches because they know them. That's totally real. For it to be worth it for an NFL player who's making six figures mid to high six figures at the lowest and millions at the most, it would have to have a lot of money on the line. It couldn't

be like, oh, here's a $500 bet, they're not going to risk their livelihood of getting caught for 500 bucks. So if you're going to put in, you know, 50 grand, well, they're gonna flag that almost immediately and go, hmm, let's see where this is coming from. And then they'll piece it all together. And it's somehow going to get back to you. So it's not really worth the risk for a lot of these guys. It's not worth the risk enough for many people to try it for it to become an epidemic. So big picture. I don't think it's going to become a big issue

for the NFL or for college athletics. I do think for individuals as someone who's now been sports betting for seemingly forever now and has lost a lot of money doing it and has found myself in some dark places because of it. I wouldn't tell you to not do it because I do enjoy doing it. And I found ways to kind of just, you know, not be as fucking stupid with it as I used to be. But as someone who's done it, it's very easy for a 17 1819 year old dude, to be like, you know, in college, not much to do other than play ball. And before you know it, you don't realize that you're losing money. And then before you know it, you've

lost 100 you want to get that back. So you double it up and now you've lost 3400. And before you know it, you don't realize that you're losing money. And then before you know it, you've lost 100, you want to get that back. So you double it up and now you've lost 3400. And before you know it, you're down a couple grand and you don't know the fuck to do. That is real. I just don't think there's enough that's going to happen. The risk is far too great for what the potential reward is if you really cover all your bases. So for a guy in the NFL to risk throwing an NFL game or taking an under like we saw with the dude who was the dude, the former Missouri basketball player who

did it in the in the NBA and was taken like unders and shit. Like it is you're going to get caught. Especially if you're involving any amount of money that is legitimate enough to make your nipples hard 50 bucks, you're probably not going to get caught. And it's not worth it for 50 bucks to take the risk. To make it worth the risk, it might take 50 Gs and they're going to flag that and see you later. So a big picture. I don't have a huge issue with these guys doing this. They're adults for the most part. Let them gamble. If they ruin their own lives, they ruin their own fucking

lives.