The NCAA held its convention in Phoenix this week, ahead of the Valley hosting the 2024 Men’s Basketball Final Four in April. Here are four things we learned from the event.
Athletes face vitriol on social media
The growing abuse athletes, coaches and officials face on social media related to betting has put the NCAA on high alert, an issue addressed this week during the organization’s convention in Phoenix. The NCAA is partnering with a data science company to identify threats.
“Basically tracks ugly, nasty stuff that’s being directed at people … and it can shut it down or basically block it,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said. “And in some cases even track where it came from.”
Over the last five years, sports betting has grown into one of the largest revenue-generating mediums in the country. In Arizona alone, there are 17 sports betting operators that are accessible from a mobile device. Bet Arizona reported that this led to nearly $6 billion in betting handled in 2022 and $285 million in revenue.
In a study from the ethical data science company Signify Group, it was reported that in 2022, one out of four players in Grand Slam tennis tournaments received targeted verbal abuse from social media. The most common abuse was taunts of match-fixing at 30%, with violent and racist remarks each in 9% of posts.
College athletes are facing similar attacks, and a threat made to a team in a championship last year was so concerning that it led to police protection, Baker said.
Partnering with Kindbridge and the Signify Group, the NCAA is preparing the launch of its new campaign to battle sports betting with its new “Draw the Line” initiative.
The campaign’s targeted launch is Selection Sunday for Men’s March Madness – the second-most bet on sporting events in the world, only behind the Super Bowl. This replaces the “Don’t Bet on It” campaign and will line up with Problem Gambling Awareness Month.
NIL deals, companies registry
The NCAA approved a package of rules that call for creation of a database of NIL deals that could be accessed by athletes and universities, and a registry of companies that want to work with athletes, the Associated Press reported.
The move was inspired by the need for more transparency and clarity.
Collegiate athletes are reaping the benefits of name, image and likeness deals, but it is still a fickle subject due to laws and bills continually being passed. Initially, in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission implemented regulations for social media influencers.
Some of those regulations include making honest statements about the brand or product of service. The athlete must have personally used the endorsed product and they must disclose the relationship with the product to social media that they are posting a paid advertisement. These are only a handful of the requirements made by the FTC.
NCAA president is making his mark
Baker is making his mark within the NIL space for college athletes. The former Massachusetts governor notices some striking similarities between his former job and his current position as the president of the NCAA. Despite the pushback on decisions by conferences and other parties, Baker remains optimistic about what the conference can achieve for athletes and the conferences as a whole.
“I think the biggest thing that’s similar is when you’re a governor, not everybody’s going to like every decision you make,” Baker said. “I fully expect that not everybody is going to like every decision I make in this job. You just have to focus on the fact that at the end of the day, you want to make it better for as many as you possibly can over time.
“This whole issue of getting to equilibrium, to some place where everybody doesn’t feel like the ground is constantly shifting underneath them, whether you’re a coach or an A.D., or a student or a family, that’s where you got to go.”
the NCAA is on the cusp of sweeping changes to its policies on cannabis use by its athletes, including removing it from a list of band substances.
Changing stance on cannabis
In a session at the NCAA Convention on Thursday, a group of panelists discussed the recent cannabinoid policy updates and the work that remains to incorporate these changes on campus.
The three panelists are all members of the Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports (CSMAS), which recommended in September 2023 that each NCAA division introduce and adopt legislation to remove cannabinoids — the chemicals found in the cannabis plant — from the association’s banned list.
The basis for the recommendation stems from the December 2022 Summit on Cannabinoids in College Athletics, which featured “the consensus opinion that cannabis is not a performance-enhancing drug and that a harm reduction approach to cannabis is best implemented at the school level,” the NCAA posted in a June release.
“One of the things we know about college students specifically is that treatment and education strategies work better than penalties,” said CSMAS member Nadine Mastroleo, an associate professor in the department of psychology and faculty athletics representative at New York’s Binghamton University. “The last piece of this is really testing within a campus or at the local level. That is the best approach to using and finding individuals who actually might have a problem and could really use some support to reduce their use and to recover from whatever problems they may be having from that.”