Mississippi State Catches Multiple Athletes Betting Illegally

Don’t look now, but the state of Mississippi is off to a roaring start in college football. The Bulldogs are 3-0, including a road win against conference foe South Carolina. This was the same day Ole Miss beat Lane Kiffin’s LSU and shot up the national rankings.

Both these games, especially the Kiffin return matchup, are surely drawing big college football betting. Which is funny because the players participating in the games can’t partake in the wagering at all.

This was once again brought to light when Mississippi State brought down the hammer on several student-athletes. Keep on reading, and we’ll tell you how they were caught red-handed!

Two Mississippi State Players Caught Illegally Betting

So what exactly happened? According to compliance documents, a pair of Mississippi State football players were caught sports betting back… all the way back in February. Their names were redacted, but we do know what they were wagering on.

One player placed bets on the Seahawks-Patriots Super Bowl. The other gambled during NBA All-Star weekend. Many athletes and fans wrongly believe players can’t wager on their own sport, but it’s a bigger blanket rule that that.

NCAA bylaw 10.3 prohibits student-athletes from wagering on sports altogether. Coaches, athletic department employees, and conference staffers are covered by the rule too — not just the players.

Luckily for the players, these weren’t exactly treated like the crime of the century. Both incidents were classified as Level III violations — the lowest level of NCAA infraction — and each player received only minor penalties. So don’t think they’re get booted off the team cause they didn’t.

And apparently Mississippi State’s compliance department is quite good at catching this stuff. Earlier this year, the school reported two similar violations, including an assistant football coach co-signing an apartment lease for a player and the track program providing meals to a recruit’s girlfriend.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering how the players were caught? Believe it or not, there’s an entire system, a sophisticated one at that, built to regulate this stuff, as well explain next.

How Mississippi State Caught Them

So how the heck did Mississippi State know? Enter ProhiBet, a compliance tool used by the NCAA to monitor whether prohibited bettors are placing wagers.

And this thing works with tip-top efficiency. ProhiBet alerted Mississippi State on Feb. 8 — the same day as the Super Bowl — that one of its players had placed a $50 bet on Seahawks-Patriots through Kalshi. This is surprising besides prediction markets have been harder to police than traditional sports betting apps (more on this soon).

Anyways, nine days after the alert, the player was sitting with compliance staff. He admitted to the wager, Mississippi State checked his Kalshi account, and confirmed it was the only bet he had placed.

The second player got caught almost identically. ProhiBet flagged him one week later after he placed two $10 bets during NBA All-Star weekend. One on the three-point contest actually won him a whopping $64. He met with compliance two days later, admitted to the bets, and was ordered to donate $66.47 to charity while also going through rules education. A slap on the wrist because, like we said, it was a Level III violation.

That’s probably the key takeaway here. These weren’t huge wagers, and neither player was betting on Mississippi State. However, the compliance systems are elite enough nowadays that even a random $10 or $50 bet can get flagged almost immediately. These guys at ProhiBet are like lockdown defenders!

Kalshi Adds Another Wrinkle

There’s one more thing worth mentioning here. One of these Mississippi State players was caught “betting” through Kalshi — not a traditional sportsbook. It’s an interesting catch (literally!) because prediction markets have long taken heat over whether they can properly police their own users.

The issue has come to light when story after story has come out about prediction markets being rampant with insider trading. From military-only info on U.S. military actions to Trump’s own speech teleprompter guy, the platforms have been caught in a series of bad headlines.

Kalshi has countered those worries by tightening its controls and working with integrity companies like ProhiBet. And in this case, at least, the system worked exactly how it was supposed to. A college football player placed a $50 wager, and Mississippi State basically knew about it immediately.

In Mississippi, traditional mobile sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel still can’t operate statewide. However, Kalshi is fully accessible for users age 18 and up because it operates under a completely different federal regulatory structure. That in itself is controversial, but that’s a story for a different article.

But you have to think this story is a small win for Kalshi. The company is fighting regulators and lawsuits all over the country, with critics constantly arguing prediction markets don’t have the same guardrails as traditional sportsbooks.

Well, in this case, the guardrails worked. That doesn’t solve every problem Kalshi has, but when you’re fighting for your right to keep offering “sports markets” nationwide, being able to point to a compliance system actually doing its job certainly doesn’t hurt.