SEC Monitoring Catches Texas Athletes’ Surreptitious $15K DFS Play

DFS 2.0, meet college athletes making bad decisions.

Two football players at the University of Texas — along with a non-student athlete affiliated with the women’s tennis team, a student assistant, and an athletic department employee — put nearly $15,000 in play on PrizePicks, according to a report by the Austin American Statesman.

The daily fantasy picks were self-reported by the Texas athletics department, and the picks were made between July 11 and Nov. 4 of last year, according to the paper, which acquired the information via public records request. The names of the people involved were redacted.

PrizePicks and DraftKings are operational in Texas, though not explicitly legal, while traditional sports betting remains illegal.

But according to NCAA bylaws, players, coaches, and staff are not allowed to play on the otherwise-legal sites.

According to the report, the NCAA told the Statesman that there were over 100 similar self-reported violations in 2024.

In the case of the Texas Five, the university found out about the DFS play from ProhiBet, an integrity platform that monitors betting activity. 

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The SEC has mandated that each member school use the ProhiBet program to help find instances of athletes and staff placing bets or playing DFS.

“The administrator on the collegiate property side, in this circumstance, gets access to the information of the compliance professional at the sportsbook platform,” Scott Sadin, COO for IC360, which owns ProhiBet, told the Statesman. “So, they’ll get an email of the person to then contact on the (sportsbook) platform side, and the person on the platform side gets the same information.” 

At that point, the university and the platform team up to try and suss out if anything against NCAA bylaws occurred.

As a result of these particular instances, the student assistant was fired from their job, and the other two non-student-athletes were issued warnings and went through an education seminar.

One of the football players was suspended, but later reinstated, and as punishment was forced to donate his winnings to a charity.

The other football player has already left the program, though he did note he had a “problem” with sports wagering.

“The implementation of monitoring technology has been instrumental in helping us identify and prevent the behaviors,” Lori Hammond, Texas senior associate athletic director for risk management and compliance services, told the paper. “Prior to its implementation we solely relied on educational efforts as there was no means to monitor. Now the information we gain from monitoring has expanded our knowledge and significantly enhanced our educational content and also broadened the populations we educate.”