The National Collegiate Athletic Association is the governing body of American college sport, presiding over a labyrinth of leagues, divisions and conferences. For decades it enforced a rulebook rooted in the principle of amateurism, barring universities from paying athletes directly.
The NCAA proved to be a poor enforcer of its own rules. It was unable to police systemic abuse but obsessed over trivial infractions—such as a head coach buying a recruit a burger. In June 2025 a federal judge approved a $2.8bn settlement between the NCAA and a coalition of current and former college athletes, effectively ending the amateur order.
As online sports betting has ballooned since 2018, the NCAA has built a sprawling enforcement operation to police the integrity of games and stem harassment of student-athletes by gamblers. This requires working with gambling operators, who can identify suspicious wagers and reveal who placed them. On November 7th 2025 the NCAA announced it had uncovered three separate betting scandals in men's basketball in which athletes intentionally played poorly in games on which they or a friend had placed wagers. In 2025 the NCAA recorded 740 instances of harassment directly attributed to sports gambling, with thousands more suspected cases. Charlie Baker, the NCAA's president and former Republican governor of Massachusetts, has lobbied state governments to ban prop bets on student athletes.
Thirteen at a table is unlucky only when the hostess has only twelve chops.