Sorry, I thought you saying that was in reference to something else. My point is that, since there isn't currently active monitoring, the situation right now is exactly the same as it would be if you expanded the sports that athletes could bet on, just a difference in which sports can be bet on. Right now, an NCAA investigation requires a report, then it requires looking at an athletes bets to see what they bet on. The only difference under my preferred scenario would be which sports an investigator would check.
I don't think the can of worms is as massive as you think it is. Professional athletes know a lot of people and there are a lot of ways that inside information could be passed along to any number of people, yet we don't use that as a reason to ban everyone from betting on sports. And athletes still have those possible connections to professional sports, yet laws don't outright ban retired athletes from betting on sports. Just as in the Alabama baseball coach situation, sportsbooks and gaming commissions have their own ways or contract with companies who have their own ways of identifying such situations where someone has insider information. They're pretty good at it, because they want to make money. I'm fine with letting those companies do what they're good at and keeping the NCAA out of trying to prevent insider info flowing between levels. Even if we do want restrictions on things like that, it's a lot more reasonable to ban a college athlete from betting on their own sport at the professional level than it is banning them from betting on completely unrelated sports.
For me at least, the reason this is just coming up now is because I had no idea what the NCAA rule was. If you would have asked me before this weekend, I would have guessed that athletes at minimum could bet on professional sports. Ultimately, it doesn't really impact my daily life--it's just another thing to argue about on message boards (although that's really a lot of what sports is, especially in the offseason). But also, my default is that people should have the freedom to do what they want unless there's a good reason for them to not. In this case, I don't think there's a good enough reason to prohibit college athletes specifically from most all sports betting, while allowing just a little bit. Either ban it all and create the regulatory structure to enforce that, or make the restrictions more reasonable, so a swimmer is allowed to bet on the Super Bowl if they want to.
