College athletes shouldn't bet on sports

The popular response to every new player gambling scandal — brought to you by DraftKings! — is infantilizing and wrong

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OK, I know what you’re thinking: That’s an obvious headline. Guilty. You got me. Of course college basketball players shouldn’t bet on college sports. More specifically, they really, really, really shouldn’t bet on themselves playing college sports. The reasons are so straightforward as to be self-evident. This argument should not require a whole column to hammer home.

And yet.

On Wednesday afternoon, the NCAA released the findings of an enforcement investigation that found three men’s college basketball players — Fresno State’s Mykell Robinson and Jalen Weaver, and San Jose State’s Steven Vasquez, the latter of whom used to play at Fresno — had been been placing bets on themselves and telling each other to do the same:

As part of a coordinated effort, the student-athletes bet on their own games, one another's games and/or provided information that enabled others to do so during the 2024-25 regular season. Two of the student-athletes then manipulated their performances to ensure that certain bets were won. […]

Robinson and Vasquez had been roommates at Fresno State during the 2023-24 season. In January 2025, Robinson and Vasquez — who was then competing for San Jose State — discussed over text message that Robinson planned to underperform in several statistical categories during one regular-season game. Robinson, Vasquez and a third party bet a combined $2,200 on Robinson for his under-line performance in those categories. As a result of Robinson's underperformance, a $15,950 payout was redistributed among those who had bet.

In at least one case, Vasquez’s, the tape of the SJSU-Fresno game in question is hilariously damning — a rapid-fire slew of unpressured turnovers committed with roughly the same affect as a dad in the driveway taking it easy on his kids. Matthew Winick clocked it as soon as the news broke: “Steven Vasquez had 4 turnovers in 5 minutes against Fresno St last year. He had 1 other career turnover in his other 153 minutes.” Vasquez was a walk-on level player whose feigned ineptitude may not have raised many eyebrows in a barely populated arena that night, but betting companies and the outside organizations that track these things aren’t thick. A $2,200 player prop, on that game, was bound to raise eyebrows.

So, hey, there’s one good reason college basketball players shouldn’t bet on themselves: They’re extremely likely to get caught. It’s super dumb! Sports books don’t like losing money, guys. It’s not part of the business plan. They will catch you, they will report you and, at best, your career will be over. The end.

But that is just the practical reason. The most important reason college athletes shouldn’t bet on themselves — and really probably should just stay away from any type of sports betting at all while they’re a member of a Division I basketball program, just to be safe — is because it’s morally wrong. It’s cheating. It ruins the integrity of the sport. It corrodes everything competition is supposed to be about. It’s never OK. There’s no excuse.

Again: You would think this argument wouldn’t need to be made. But the reaction to this story Wednesday followed a similar rhetorical trajectory as every major player-gambling-scandal story in both college and professional sports in the past few years. Lots of people immediately blamed everyone but the players — hammering home the argument with a punchline so obvious that “brought to you by DraftKings” has become an easily searchable meme: