Local Congressman Discusses Sports Bettingwith Siena College Athletes
Pictured: U.S. Congressman Paul Tonko, Siena College President Charles Seifert, Siena College Research Institute Director Dr. Don Levy, Vice President and Director of Athletics John D’Argenio, Head Men’s Basketball Coach Gerry McNamara, Head Women’s Basketball Coach Terry Primm, Men’s Basketball Student-Athletes Brendan Coyle and Major Freeman, Women’s Basketball Student-Athletes Valencia Fontenelle-Posson and Ahniysha Jackson, and Cross-Country and Track & Field Athlete Jennifer McClintock. Photo provided by Siena College.
LOUDONVILLE — Congressman Paul Tonko hosted a roundtable discussion last Thursday at Siena College to solicit feedback from student-athletes and coaches on the impact of sports betting. Gerry McNamara, Siena’s new head men’s basketball coach, attended the event, along with other coaches, student-athletes, and school administrators.
Although the roundtable was meant to promote Tonko’s recently introduced SAFE Bet Act, the discussion turned more towards the issues of mental health and online harassment of college athletes.
“Personally, I have had some [direct messages], and it could be related to sports betting now that I see the bigger picture, but I’ve had a lot of friends on men’s teams who get hate mail and death threats, which is crazy because all athletes are just human at the end of the day,” said Valencia Fontenelle-Posson, a graduate student and guard on the women’s basketball team.
Jennifer McClintock, a cross-country and track runner, said a friend of hers had to turn off his social media accounts because he was receiving so many messages from sports betters putting additional pressure on him to play well.
Brendan Coyle, a forward on the men’s basketball team, said that college athletes are especially vulnerable because they live on campuses, where they can be easily tracked down. Coyle said he’d been approached a number of times by strangers, resulting in both positive and negative exchanges.
“A pro athlete, they go home to their own place where nobody really knows where it’s at,” Coyle said. “We’re on a college campus, people know where we are.”
Earlier this month, the NCAA released the findings of a pilot study that examined online harassment of college athletes. It found that 12% of all abusive online messages were related to sports betting. As betting markets increased, so did the prevalence of harassment, with 19% rates in men’s basketball and football.
Tonko’s SAFE Bet Act includes a nationwide ban on proposition bets that involve college athletes. The ban aims to curb online abuse targeting student-athletes.
“To me, the mental health aspect of this is the most important thing because it impacts [student-athletes] directly,” said McNamara. “Protecting mental health has always been a key issue for student-athletes, now this component has taken on even greater importance.”
Women’s Head Basketball Coach Terry Primm said that gambling’s impact on online harassment “has incentivized me to add this component to athlete education.”
In addition to prohibiting all proposition bets featuring college athletes, Tonko’s SAFE Bet Act would, among other things, prohibit sports betting advertising during live sporting events; prohibit reckless or purposeful targeting of problem gamblers, individuals suffering from gambling disorder, or individuals ineligible to place a bet; prohibit operators from accepting more than 5 deposits from a customer in a 24-hour period; and prohibit the use of artificial intelligence to track individual player’s gambling habits.