A House subcommittee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the rise of sports gambling on college campuses, as policymakers confront athlete harassment, betting-related integrity risks and the exposure of students to gambling promotion.
The House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development has scheduled “The Rise of Sports Gambling on College Campuses” for 10:15 a.m. in Room 2175 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Rep. Burgess Owens will chair the session.
The hearing is expected to examine whether existing safeguards adequately address harassment of athletes, match fixing and gambling promotion among students, according to iGaming.org. A detailed public agenda had not been released.
Four witnesses are listed on the committee calendar: Dr. Lindsey Mortenson, the University of Michigan’s chief mental health officer and executive director of University Health & Counseling; University of Mississippi associate professor Dr. Daniel Durkin; Massachusetts Gaming Commission Chair Jordan Maynard; and Cindy Clouner, managing director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery at Ohio State.
The hearing comes as college player proposition bets remain regulated differently across the country. Such bets concern an athlete’s individual performance rather than a game’s final result. The NCAA has said they are prohibited in some legal betting states but available in a majority of jurisdictions; more than half of the 39 states with legal sports wagering, along with Washington, D.C., permit individual college props in some form.
The association has pressed state gambling commissions to eliminate individual player props and other high-risk markets, including first-half unders. It has also sought tougher accountability for bettors who harass student-athletes and a formal role for the NCAA and other leagues before certain bets are offered.
The NCAA said its enforcement staff had opened investigations involving about 40 student-athletes at 20 schools over the prior year for potential game manipulation. Eleven athletes from seven schools had already been found to have bet on their own performance, shared information with known bettors or engaged in manipulation to collect on wagers.
Harassment is a central concern. In an NCAA survey reported in March, one in three men’s basketball players said they had experienced online, verbal or physical abuse tied to sports betting, while one in four reported such harassment in person. An analysis by the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found nearly 21,000 individual-athlete betting opportunities during the 2026 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, averaging more than 300 per game.
States have responded unevenly. Gaming commissions in Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio and Vermont have banned individual college-athlete props since 2024, while two state legislatures were considering legislation to codify such bans this year. Rep. Michael Baumgartner’s PROTECT Student Athletes Act, introduced in February 2025, would ban college player props nationwide while preserving betting on college games where state law allows it.
The hearing will be open to the public and livestreamed on the Committee on Education and Workforce website.
