Josh Heupel says gambling conversation drew most dialogue from SEC coaches

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel recently said that, for SEC coaches, no topic of conversation has drawn more dialogue than gambling.

This comes as online sports gambling has become a larger and larger concern in sports at both the professional and college level. In the NFL, there have been several high-profile suspensions for gambling, like Calvin Ridley, with the league investigating more players now. Then, there was the Alabama baseball scandal that led to head coach Brad Bohannon being fired.

“Gambling was one of the ones that probably had as much dialogue and probably as many questions from the coaches to the people that were presenting into the conference,” Josh Heupel said. “On things that we can do to protect our players, protect our program.”

Josh Heupel went on to point out that gambling is ingrained into more than just sports, but the culture of American society. Now, with sports gambling only being made easier, more needs to be done to protect student-athletes. He also said that he doesn’t want to go in the direction of letting players bet on certain things, like sports that they don’t play.

The biggest issue with gambling comes down to preserving the integrity of the game. If someone has money on a game, it will affect how the game is played by a player. Then, how can results be entirely trusted?

Of course, issues with gambling have always existed in sports. Baseball saw the Chicago Black Sox scandal in 1919. College sports have seen tons of scandals too, like the Boston College point-shaving scandal in the 1970s. The problem is that legal sports gambling on your phone is so easy and accessible now that gambling on games is becoming more common.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey explained the concern over gambling

During the SEC spring meetings, Commissioner Greg Sankey explained why there is so much concern about gambling now.

“Well there are 38 states that have legalized gambling. And I think separate from — and I’ll come back to Eli’s observation — 38 states,” Sankey said.

“Since what, May of 2018, have adopted legalized gambling. I guess 36 because New Jersey and Nevada had legalized gambling. So, what’s causing it is there’s much more access. It has become inculturated. I think you can go back to some of my comments since then and I warned about the inculturation of gambling and people will behave differently. And that is what we’re seeing.”