Iowa and Iowa State are now also wrapped up in college athletics’ gambling activity

Turns out Alabama firing baseball coach Brad Bohannon for being allegedly connected with betting on the Crimson Tide’s games might be the tip of the iceberg of gambling by current athletes and coaches in college athletics. As if the NCAA needed more problems to tackle because it’s doing swimmingly with the current landscape of collegiate sportsball. We head to the Midwest, where Iowa announced Monday that 26 athletes in five different sports, and one full-time athletic-department employee, are suspected of wagering on sports, a violation of NCAA rules. Rival Iowa State self-reported blood on its hands as well, with 15 athletes across three programs also suspected of gambling on sports.

NCAA rules prohibit any athlete or coach from betting on any amateur, college, or professional sporting event that the body has a varsity sport in, even if the state’s laws allow for sports betting. That’s a fun way of saying every sport is off-limits unless you want to bet on tag or underwater basket weaving. Let’s pick on West Virginia because it hasn’t fired Bob Huggins yet for letting anti-LGBT slurs fly on the radio on Monday. If a member of the Mountaineers men’s soccer team bet on the upcoming Women’s World Cup, that would count as a violation even though no one on the Big 12 team is directly involved in the event.

Iowa announced it “has received information about 111 individuals” because that’s a small number to glance over. Hawkeyes from both revenue sports, football, and men’s basketball, as well as baseball, men’s wrestling, and men’s track and field, are wrapped up in the wrongdoing. Iowa also states that no current or former coaches are involved in the gambling party. Suck it, Alabama! The 15 Cyclones are from football, wrestling and track, and field. Some crossover in the home of Field of Dreams, eh? The director of Iowa’s gaming commission, Brian Ohorilko, told Action Network no fixing of games or suspicious betting activity existed in the cases with Iowa. With cases at three Division-I schools popping up within several days of each other, it’s likely we haven’t heard the last of gambling by college athletes and staffers.