Florida Star Allowed To Lose As Much Money As He Wants

As the hit movie Blue Chips illustrated for us, gambling in the world of collegiate sports is a serious issue. This is why whenever a player or coach is caught doing nefarious things with money - like, say, running a Death Pool* - they're dealt with swiftly and with little mercy. So it's surprising that the University of Florida is looking the other way while Nick Calathes, their star player and above-pictured three-point-stance expert, allegedly admits to racking up $600 in online poker debt.

"The only thing I'm going to say about any of that stuff is the unfortunate part in all this is nobody on our team has done anything wrong," Donovan said. "It's amazing to me that stories can actually be written or talked about when someone's done nothing wrong. "We heard the rumors and we reacted to the rumors, responded to them, talked to Nick, talked to the team ... handled the whole situation. To me, it's not even a story. There's no story. Nobody did anything wrong."

Don't get me wrong, Calathes should be allowed to give away as much of his funds as he wants - this is America, after all - but if the NCAA is going to have such a strict stance on gambling, seems kind of like a double-standard to let this one slide by because, oh I don't know, he's "the best player in the SEC"? Obviously, all of this news means nothing unless we can get his most likely hilarious online poker handle. Tipsters? *Our sleeper pick for next year: Elizabeth Banks, who has to be exhausted from acting in every movie this year. Florida probes possible gambling [Yahoo! Sports]