Kirby Smart doubles down with Georgia players on sports gambling

Sports gambling has become a hot-button subject in college sports with a number of recent investigations and scandals hitting the sport of late. Speaking at the SEC spring meetings this week, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart hammered home the challenges of policing and educating players about the rules.

One challenge that Smart noted is handling the vast proliferation of sports gambling. A venture that was taboo in the United States for the most part is now a thriving business in dozens of states. And a collection of 18-to-24 year olds don’t necessarily get the gravity of the consequences they could face from one bet.

“I don’t know that they completely understand it. What’s happening now is it’s becoming much more prevalent and they have to — what you just said. I didn’t even understand the app. Because I don’t gamble, I don’t bet, I don’t have those apps. When you go start researching it and we were researching it really in the last year, it’s like these kids, they have it on — there’s like Chinese baseball games and stuff that people are gambling on. It’s like, what?” Smart said. “They’re betting on horse racing in another country. It’s literally crazy how easy it is and the access they have to it. And then the punishment, you have to ask yourself, ‘Oh my god, this guy could lose his entire eligibility forever for betting on a horse race in another country.'”

Smart noted there are stringent rules around gambling and for good reason. Any impropriety around the integrity of a game becomes a major problem for leagues and teams trying to sell true competition.

Further, in certain states, sports gambling is still not allowed. But that hasn’t deterred people from finding workarounds.

And Smart noted that it might take a few people being made examples of for the rest of the players and coaches to get the idea that sports gambling is not tolerated, no matter how much it’s being blasted to them.

“I can’t turn on the TV now without seeing something. And there’s a lot of debate out there about what’s right and what’s wrong, but the NCAA rule is pretty harsh for gambling relative to some other things. And it’s pretty obvious why,” Smart said. “Because they don’t want that to infiltrate. There’s been a lot of states, including ours, it’s been a great debate, whether to allow that to come into your state. And it’s more about revenue for the state. It’s more about protection for your schools. But these kids can do this regardless of what state. It’s easy access. When I turn on the TV for a sporting event, I see it everywhere. So we try our best to educate the players and sometimes it takes somebody have a pitfall to learn from their mistakes.”