Georgia reports NCAA gambling infraction by member of football staff

DALLAS — A member of the Georgia Bulldogs’ football staff was betting on sports in 2020.

The Bulldogs did not discover and process the NCAA violation until 2023, and the school did not report it on its annual compliance summary until it was updated this week. UGA did not identify the individual involved but told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that person is no longer employed at the university. The compliance report lists the date of infraction as August 1, 2020.

“We don’t have a comment beyond the report,” Will Lawler, UGA’s executive athletic director for compliance, told the AJC via text message. “… The violations were not discovered, reviewed and processed until last year.”

Lawler added that while there was only a single violation report, there was “more than one wager.”

The NCAA determined the infraction to be a Level III violation, which is the most minor on the governing body’s enforcement scale.

The gambling infraction was one among five violations involving the football program included on UGA Athletics’ 2023-24 compliance summary. Others included impermissible promotional activity, impermissible coaching activity and impermissible telephone communication.

In all, the school reported 23 violations by 10 sports programs. All of them were Level III.

In the case of the gambling offense, the action that NCAA enforcement required was rules education for the individual as well as the entire football staff.

According to Georgia’s compliance report: “If the staff member is hired by another SEC institution in the future, (he/she) is required to complete a sports gambling education program/session and the hiring institution is required to submit a written plan to the conference office for monitoring the staff member to assure he does not commit similar violations in the future.”

Georgia also reported a Level III gambling violation in 2022 that was determined to be isolated in nature.

Gambling is a growing issue in college sports. An increasing number of states have legalized gambling, and the activity is much more accessible via the Internet and smart phones.

“We’ve had issues with that in the past, too,” Georgia football coach Kirby Smart said in May. “It’s more prevalent. I can’t turn the TV on now without seeing something. 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. It’s pretty obvious why: They don’t want that infiltrating teams.”

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