NCAA President Charlie Baker is urging state lawmakers in legal betting states to ban prop bets.
He says betting on collegiate athletes is "continuing to threaten the integrity of competition and leading to student athletes getting harassed."
With recent scandals throughout professional sports leagues and the number of wagers increasing on college sports for the sixth straight year, the NCAA fears that the risk of scandals will increase.
One professor who has studied sports economics and gaming feels that the NCAA should find more ways to pay college players.
"If you have top college athletes who aren't making money, that makes them more vulnerable to betting scams than other folks. In some ways the more we professionalize college athletics, the more they are actually protected from corruption," said Dr. Victor Matheson, economics and accounting professor at College of the Holy Cross.
Both professors we interviewed believe that some states could be reluctant to ban prop bets as casinos are a big source of income for states such as Nevada.
One professor believes that the proposed ban is long overdue.
"Gambling regulators have known for a long time that these bets are a bad idea, and they maybe even should have banned them from the beginning when the laws were passed by states to allow sports betting in those states," said Dr. Brad Humphreys, professor of economics at West Virginia University.
We also spoke with Jeff Benson who is the director of operations for Circa Sports in Las Vegas.
He fears that banning prop bets in Nevada will promote illegal betting activity that will create a larger unregulated market.
Several states have moved to prohibit individual prop bets on college sports and at this point, Nevada has no restrictions on college sports betting.
