College football bowl season is about to get underway, and a lot of drama is sure to come with it. This includes the fate of college prop betting in the United States.
Ever since the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act in 2018, the legal prop market has grown more and more lucrative each year. While this is not specific to any one sport, the best college football betting sites join the top NFL betting sites in leaning heavier into prop lines than other leagues.
The NCAA is…not happy about this.
President Charlie Baker has repeatedly said he wants more restrictions on college wagering at large. Now, though, he and the rest of the NCAA governing body are attempting to ban it altogether.
Why the NCAA Want to Ban College Props
As Baker has noted on plenty of occasions, the NCAA’s stance is predominantly a safety issue.
The internet is littered with anecdotes of student-athletes being harassed online or in-person due to the outcome of an aggrieved bettor’s wager. In fact, a recent study from the NCAA found that over one third of Division 1 men’s basketball players have incurred harassment as a direct result of sports betting.
Though this survey does not touch upon college football, we imagine the data is similar. It is perhaps a little lower, since it’s harder for one player to impact the game as much—unless they play quarterback. But to pretend harassment isn’t an issue, in either collegiate or professional sports, would be something worse than ignorant.
Proponents of sports betting will point out that the verbal attacks will not suddenly subside just because individual-player bets are banned. Gamblers will still get mad when they miss out on macro-level wagers, whether it’s the point spread, moneyline, over/under, the certain leg of a parlay, etc.
Still, Baker and the rest of the NCAA believe removing the individuality of props will protect more athletes against direct vitriol. And they are taking steps in hopes of making it happen.
The NCAA is Already Limiting the Flow of Information to Push Its Prop Bet Agenda
According to a report earlier this year from The Athletic’s Ralph D. Russo, the NCAA is restricting available player data, across all sports, to companies with ties to sports betting. As Russo writes:
“As part of its ongoing push to ban player-based prop bets in college sports, the NCAA announced Friday the renewal of an agreement with Genius Sports that will require bookmakers to drop wagering on individual performances if they want access to real-time statistics from March Madness and other championship events. Genius Sports is a company that sells data to sportsbooks. The deal extends through the 2031-32 NCAA championships. The NCAA’s current agreement with Genius covers the development and support of live stats by the company and licensing the data to third parties, but prohibits licensing to sportsbooks. The new deal lifts that prohibition.”
This is absolutely going to impact prop betting during the college football bowl season. While sportsbooks will still have access to publicly available data, they will be harder-pressed to cull the type of stats that are paramount to shaping prop-betting lines.
To what extent this will be an issue remains to be seen. The deal between the NCAA and Genius Sports was struck this past April. This will be the first college football bowl season in which it’s active.
Are College Football Prop Bets on the Verge of Being Banned?
If we had to guess, the legal college prop betting market isn’t going anywhere. The NCAA is definitely doing its darnedest to ensure it might, but it’s tough to repeal something at this large of a scale when it’s already mainstream.
Sportsbooks are also making too much money to acquiesce without a fight—or surrender at all. Back in 2024, Citizens JMP Securities estimated that prop bets make up 50 percent of the transactions at certain wagering sites. Around the same time, when the NCAA called for a ban on college player props, JMP estimated that implementing one would cost sportsbooks around $200 million per year in annual revenue.
This all speaks to the popularity of college prop betting. And unless individual states with legal sports betting at large start adopting a college sports prop betting ban on a wider-spread basis, these wager types most likely aren’t going anywhere.
Of course, this does not mean they are indefinitely safe. States have yet to back the NCAA’s stance in high volume, but higher-profile supporters are emerging. Senator John Keenan of Massachusetts is sponsoring a bill that would not only band prop bets for college sports, but for all sports. Perhaps his attempt is successful. Most do not believe it will be. Even if it isn’t, it will only take a state or two before a potential pattern emerges. And in that case, college prop betting would absolutely be at risk of a domestic ban.
All of which is to say: Enjoy college football prop betting if you’re so inclined. It may not be around forever.