Texas Longhorns make surprising admission amid sports betting issues that continue to rise around college sports
The world of sports betting continues to grow as more and more states fully legalize regulated various kinds of wagering each year. Back in 2018 sports book entities handled less than $7 billion dollars in the United States. In 2024 that number was up to nearly $150 billion dollars.
There’s some great fun to be had with sports wagering, but unfortunately several problems have emerged alongside the growth the industry. The latest problem? Yet another student athlete(s) scandal related to gambling. This time it was students and staff with the Texas Longhorns.
However, rather than hide the issue, the Texas Longhorns were surprisingly transparent as they self-reported five NCAA violations related to sports betting, as reported and confirmed by multiple sources on Thursday.
The five individuals involved apparently wagered somewhere around $15,000 on PrizePicks (a popular player props sports betting website). While it is legal in Texas to place bets on PrizePicks, athletes and staff on college sports teams are certainly not allowed to do so, according to the NCAA.
According to the Austin American-Statesman (who had this report first), there was somewhere around 150 separate sports betting violations committed by the same five individuals, two of which were football players for Texas.
Others reported to be involved were not directly associated with or confirmed to be linked to the football team, but one was an athletic department employee. It’s not a great look for the Longhorns on the surface, but the good news is the department went ahead and reported on themselves.
Texas (like many other universities in the sports betting era) utilized a sports wagering monitoring software calling “ProhiBet” to track down the individuals involved, and the school did not apparently delay in reporting the issues once confirmed.
One of the football players involved was required to back his wagers to the charity of his choosing. The other is no longer with the Texas program and has retired from football, so he did not face anything punitive from the university or the NCAA.
Hopefully Steve Sarkisian and his staff do not let this become any more of a significant or recurring issue within the Texas Longhorns football program. It doesn’t sound like that’s going to be the case at this point given all that the Longhorns have in place to monitor such issues now. But the NCAA will certainly have their eye on Texas (and several other schools where this has been an issue recently) now moving forward.
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