NCAA Basketball
Photo: NCAA

Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a non-profit organisation which aims at monitoring and regulating athletes from various North American institutions.

Besides these, it also organizes athletic campaigns and programs in various universities in the United States and Canada.

Did you know?

NCAA Basketball, which is popularly known as World League Basketball, is a basketball video game developed by Sculptured Software.

This was indeed the first basketball game for a console to utilise a 3D perspective. The game uses the Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 to create a 3D players’ perspective that later became the standard for other basketball video games.

According to Flux magazine, which originated in the United States, this video game was declared to be the 75th best video game of all time.

Background

Four iterations of the year 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 were examined and surveyed in order to gauge the attitude and behaviour of the student-athletes across the NCAA divisions. This approximately summed up to more than 84,000 students in total.

As per the surveys, which were undertaken by the respective campus faculty representatives, it was observed that 60% and above NCAA member schools participated.

The analysis and scrutiny were done for 22 sports and a well-equipped and high-data standard was utilised in order to create accurate and unbiased national aggregates of all the 22 sports.

Result

The study made from the iterations revealed that the overall rate of gaming among the NCAA men decreased considerably.

Taking into account the entire population, it was observed that women gambled comparatively lesser than men and the overall student participation in gambling reduced despite the coming of the online casinos.

Nevertheless, one of the major highlights is that although the participation of the players in both the casino as well as live dealer games seem low, the samples reveal that the players have shown great involvement in sports games.

Among the student-athletes who have ever wagered on sports, only 21% of men and 5% of women reported losing more than $50 in a day.

This being the case, the sports wagering behaviour of the players can result in problem gambling.

The 2016 survey reveals that four per cent of men who had gambled in the past year reported one-day gambling losses of $500 or more which is quite huge and this can indeed be one of the major concerns with respect to gambling in the years to come.

Well, on the other hand, fantasy sports also seem to be extremely popular and well-liked among the student crowd. Twenty per cent of men and 3% of women in the 2016 study reported having participated in the fantasy leagues organised by the gambling houses.

Furthermore, with the rapid development seen in the technological sector, it becomes obvious that the gambling sector is and will be subjected to changes in the future be it in its game variety offered, the gameplay design and the wagering enhancements.

The wagering enhancements will doubt offer the players with numerous opportunities by way of contests and a number of international sports leagues.

Dwelling Deep Into the Changing Attitudes of the Student-athletes

Most of the student-athletes strongly feel that gambling houses should stop advertising about their services at the college sporting events and college sports telecasts.

It is also important to have continued developments and innovations in educational programming in order to protect the well-being of the student-athletes.

With the passage of time, the gambling opportunities and technologies are sure to grow and evolve and laws regulating the industry are liable to change. Hence, constant evaluation and training of the student-athletes, coaches and athletics administrators are necessary.

And this to be effective, the program formulated must cover everything pertaining to gamble and wager, keeping in focus the strict nature of gambling and sports wagering in our society.

The program should also help all the college athletics in recognizing the risks connected with problem gambling and provide up-to-date information on the science and technology of gambling and sports wagering.