NCAA Sports Wagering and Tampering Risks May Not Easily Lend Themselves to Traditional Auditing Practices
By Josh Lens
College athletics constituents, casual observers, and the national media decry the current college athletics landscape as lacking rules or effective enforcement of them. As of this writing, however, the judge and jury of the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s (NCAA) rules enforcement system – the Committee on Infractions (COI) – has processed nearly 50 infractions cases since January 1, 2025. This is on par with the most cases the COI has ever processed in a similar time span.
Two of the NCAA rules frequently at issue in these cases are the NCAA’s sports wagering ban and what is colloquially known as its tampering prohibition. The risks that accompany a COI adjudication that a violation of either rule occurred are significant:
- Dozens of collegiate athletes have lost their collegiate competition eligibility for their involvement in illicit sports wagering in 2025 and 2026.
- Numerous athletics staff members and coaches have been suspended or terminated from their positions due to sports wagering or tampering violations.
- These penalties on involved individuals are in addition to the significant resources that universities must expend when going through the NCAA’s rules enforcement process.
This article describes trends in recent NCAA infractions cases, specifically the relatively high number of cases involving violations of the NCAA’s sports wagering and tampering prohibitions, as well as the penalties and effects that universities generally encounter when their constituents violate these rules. Finally, the article suggests that auditors may need to be creative when providing assurance or advisory support in these areas, as traditional auditing practices may not easily apply to them.
Sports Wagering
Nearly half of the 50 infractions cases the COI has processed in 2025 and 2026 involve a student-athlete, athletics administrator, and/or coach violating the NCAA’s prohibition on sports wagering. Despite widespread legalization of sports betting by state legislatures, the NCAA has maintained its long-held position that collegiate athletes, coaches, and athletics administrators should largely refrain from wagering on sports. Specifically, throughout its three divisions, the NCAA sports wagering rule prohibits these individuals – and non-athletics department staff members with responsibilities within or over the athletics department (e.g., president or chancellor, faculty athletics representative) – from knowingly participating in sports wagering or providing information to individuals involved in or associated with sports wagering.
The NCAA’s definition of sports wagering includes placing a wager on any intercollegiate, amateur, or professional team or contest in which the NCAA conducts championships. Thus, these individuals may not bet on professional sporting events like regular season NFL games or the Super Bowl or college games like those during men’s or women’s March Madness. The NCAA’s sport wagering ban generally extends to prop bets on collegiate and professional athletes and games and many fantasy sports leagues and contests.
When caught violating the rule, athletes often lose their collegiate competition eligibility. Coaches and administrators can face lengthy suspensions and jeopardize their employment. The ease with which individuals can bet (e.g., through their smartphones), the increasing societal acceptance and legalization of sport wagering, and the presumption that they will not be caught may lead some to disregard or risk the potentially harsh consequences.
Many violations of the NCAA’s sports wagering prohibition come to light as a result of the NCAA’s integrity monitoring system, which it touts as the world’s largest. The system monitors tens of thousands of collegiate athletics competitions for suspicious betting and playing activity. Some universities and athletics conferences, including the Southeastern Conference, utilize additional integrity monitoring programs for sports wagering activities.
Given the ease with which individuals can place bets on their personal devices and the existence of these integrity monitoring systems, traditional auditing practices may not easily apply to sports wagering in university athletics departments. However, given the significant risk and frequency with which student-athletes, coaches, and administrators have been ensnared in illicit sports wagering, auditors may have a role in assessing related education and monitoring activities.
One area in which auditors could engage is examining whether athletics department staff members – likely the individual(s) with compliance responsibilities – have provided sufficient education on the NCAA’s sports wagering prohibition to student-athletes, athletics staff, and coaches. At a minimum, this should include general rules education at the beginning and end of academic years and at certain times of the year when constituents may be tempted to wager on sports, like around the Super Bowl or March Madness. When doing so, individuals with compliance responsibilities can point to recent instances where individuals ranging from high-profile college coaches to student managers working in football equipment rooms lost their jobs, and dozens of men’s basketball student-athletes lost their competition eligibility due to illicit sport wagering. When processing cases involving coaches’ and athletics staff members’ sport wagering violations, the COI has examined whether the involved individuals received such education from the athletics department. A failure to satisfy this inquiry could lead to additional violations and/or penalties for a university.
Tampering
NCAA rules prohibit coaches, athletics staff, and boosters at Division I and II universities from engaging in what the national media and college athletics constituents commonly refer to as “tampering.” In this context, tampering means communicating with a student-athlete enrolled at another four-year university before that individual’s information is entered in the transfer portal. The rule for Division III athletics staff and boosters differs but generally prohibits contact with individuals enrolled at another four-year university prior to receiving written permission to communicate with them if their university does not utilize the transfer portal (portal usage is currently optional in Division III but becomes mandatory on August 1, 2026). The rules go so far as to prohibit indirect communication with individuals associated with the student-athlete (e.g., family members, high school coaches, advisors) before the appropriate time.
Coaches and the national media describe tampering as widespread, and the rules prohibiting it as generally unenforced. In reality, however, the COI has processed numerous cases since January 1, 2025, that included a tampering violation. These cases include high-profile coaches and/or sport programs at Oklahoma State University, UCLA, Virginia Tech University, and the University of Iowa.
In the latter case, the COI explained that the NCAA’s tampering prohibition “…is clear, and there is no gray area. … The student-athlete must enter the transfer portal for any contact to be permissible.” These comments were on the heels of the COI’s statement in the UCLA case that “tampering conduct is relatively straightforward and uncomplicated.”
The risk of getting caught tampering is significant. Not only do these violations often result in fines of tens of thousands of dollars, but coaches are also often suspended, among other penalties. These consequences are in addition to the significant resources that universities expend throughout the NCAA’s infractions process.
Though NCAA rules prohibiting tampering are “straightforward,” monitoring compliance with them is not. Illicit tampering like indirect contact between sport staff members and student-athletes enrolled at other four-year universities – perhaps through their agents – occurs frequently and is difficult for athletics administrators, including compliance directors, to monitor. Compliance directors can attempt to cover their bases from a monitoring standpoint by doing things like:
- Having sport staff members sign a form annually in which they confirm that they did not engage in pre-portal contact with student-athletes enrolled at other four-year universities.
- Having incoming student-athletes review and sign a form acknowledging that they did not engage in, and are unaware of, pre-portal contact with coaches at the university.
- Refusing to conduct academic evaluations of potential transfers until the athlete’s information is entered into the transfer portal.
- Reviewing sport staff members’ phone call logs to ensure pre-portal communication has not occurred.
Given the significant risk and frequency with which tampering occurs, auditors may be able to help support compliance by evaluating related education and monitoring processes. First steps could include becoming familiar with the education that sports staff members receive regarding tampering and the processes that athletics staff with compliance responsibilities utilize to monitor for tampering. Auditors could perform targeted testing by, for example, analyzing a subset of coaches’ phone records to ensure that compliance administrators did not overlook any instances of pre-portal communication when performing their monitoring.
Conclusion
The NCAA’s rules prohibiting sports wagering and tampering are straightforward and carry significant risk when violated. However, recent data shows they are among the NCAA’s most often violated rules. While traditional auditing practices may not easily apply, auditors can help ensure that athletics administrators provide appropriate education regarding these rules and utilize effective monitoring systems to look for – and deter – instances of noncompliance.
