Former NCAA athlete details betting, bookmaking, addiction

John Barr, ESPN

Last spring, an NCAA survey of 18- to 22-year-olds found that 67% of college students living on campus had placed bets on sports. More than a third of those used a student bookmaker. ESPN’s Outside the Lines spoke with “Jack,” a former college athlete who said he became an agent for a bookmaker and took bets from about 55 to 60 people, including more than a dozen athletes. Two of them, he said, went on to play professional basketball and football. “Jack,” who spoke on condition of anonymity, was a practice squad player for a Division I basketball program in a Power 5 conference from 2017 to 2019.

Here is his story in his own words.

I was introduced to betting my freshman year of college. I thought being an athlete, I had knowledge about sports, I had knowledge about personnel. I started betting on football, basketball, baseball.

I started small, $20, $40. I bet illegally online through a bookie. I had grown up with him. He was at a different school, also a former athlete. You get a credit line, which is like monopoly money, and you bet it. At the end of the week, it becomes real money. Whatever your balance is what you owe or what you get paid. In the early days, it was never a problem. I usually lost between $100 to $200 max.

I started winning money, so I figured, oh man, this is easy. I can do this. Then it kind of snowballs on you. Before you know it, you’re waking up, what are we taking? What’s live right now? Going to breakfast, going to a workout, watching a game, having a game on my phone just to stimulate me. I had parlays going even in classes. It’s almost like surviving a car accident. You’re in the car and your heart’s beating, and your body’s in shock. That’s kind of to a miniature scale, the state of gambling. And I happen to like that feeling.

I started asking for more credit, anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 at the beginning of my sophomore year. It’s like consuming any drug. You build a tolerance. It wasn’t getting me high enough with the little amounts of money anymore.

My sophomore or junior year, one of the guys I knew reached out to me and said, “Do you want to do this? Get guys on board.” My role as an agent was to get people on my sheet and then collect money from them or pay them out. I was probably the lowest on the chain for the operation. That’s how it works. These big guys get agents who can get a lot of people to get on their sheet, then they give them a percentage and they fund the book. I don’t even really know the true head guy.

I probably had 55-60 people on my sheet: students, athletes and parents of students. I took a lot of football bets from football players. They bet on their own team, other teams, basketball, football, you name it. I never took a bet on their own team to lose. A starter on the basketball team bet on the team once or twice, once on the over, another time on his team to win. He said, “I heard you’re the guy to go to. I had a guy in high school.”

My junior year and senior year I bet on the team. They were spread bets, moneyline bets.

I started taking my own money and putting it on the opposite gains of what people gave me to bet. I was definitely growing my addiction.

Rest is here…