NCAA president Charlie Baker wants regulators and sports leagues to remove most college player prop bets, arguing that the markets expose athletes to harassment and manipulation attempts.
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Baker has spent much of his NCAA tenure asking state regulators to ban wagers based on individual college athlete performance. Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio and Vermont have removed such markets since 2024, although more than half of the 39 legal sports betting states and Washington, D.C., still permit them in some form.
Player props cover outcomes such as passing touchdowns, points, rebounds or whether a pitch lands as a strike. Unlike a game result, one athlete can sometimes influence a player prop without deciding which team wins.
Baker said that creates an opening for bettors to contact athletes with specific requests.
“’I don’t want you to lose the game, but here’s all the other things I want you to do, so that I can make money,’” Baker said during an interview for “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
The concern goes beyond fixed bets. Players also receive direct abuse when their statistics fail to match betting lines.
“Go sit in the stands behind the bench at a big time college basketball game, and just listen to some of this stuff that’s being directed at the kids who are part of those teams,” Baker said.
NCAA research identified about 750 betting abuse incidents and match-fixing allegations during 2024 championship events. A later survey of 7,493 college athletes also found broad concern about the effect of gambling on competition.
However, enforcement and platform reporting have produced some results. Signify Group recorded a 23% annual drop in betting abuse during March Madness 2025, including a 66% reduction in harassment aimed at women.
Baker said the NCAA monitors betting activity and social media through what he called “the largest integrity program in the world.”
“(We monitor) all the traffic on social media and notify the authorities about the stuff we think is particularly bad when it comes to coaches, players, or officials to get those people X’d off the platforms for the rest of the tournament,” he said.
Professional leagues have also reviewed higher-risk prop markets. MLB has considered broader player prop limits, while the NFL has restricted certain wager types.
“This prop betting stuff is bad news. It’s bad news for our players, it’s bad news for their families,” Baker said.
“And my hope is that we, working together with our colleagues and the professional leagues, can dramatically limit, significantly reduce, and in my mind, at least at the collegiate level, get rid of all of the negative prop bets, and hopefully most of the prop bets,” he said.