Tennessee bill would criminalize harassment of student-athletes
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – In the month of March, individuals the world over tune in to observe the perfect groups in faculty basketball play for the NCAA championship. But many viewers aren’t simply watching the video games, they’re additionally betting on them.
Tennessee is one of the highest states within the nation for sports activities betting, and the NCAA says the rise in on-line sports activities gaming has additionally led to an increase in student-athlete harassment.
A November 2025 examine by the NCAA discovered greater than a 3rd of DI males’s basketball gamers reported experiencing social media abuse associated to sports activities betting. Twenty-nine p.c stated they’d interacted with a scholar on campus who had guess on their crew.
“We have to remember that these are ultimately children and young adults, you know, 18 to 22-year-old, for the most part, kids playing these games,” stated Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville. “It’s unfortunate that people who do choose to bet are taking their anger or their frustration about losing money out on these kids.”
So Clemmons (D-Nashville) launched a bill called “The Intercollegiate Student-Athlete Protection Act” that would make it against the law to harass a university athlete and would permit student-athletes to sue their abusers.
“There is a high bar here, legally speaking,” Clemmons stated. “Ultimately, it’s designed to protect these student-athletes from not just your average fan. This is beyond students yelling at someone on the free throw line. We’re talking about people on social media, people who are just following these students around and harassing them, even making them feel a threat of harm.”
The bill particularly defines harassment as somebody deliberately speaking a risk to an athlete or participating in sports-related bullying or cyber-bullying associated to the athletes efficiency of their sport.
The first violation would be a Class A misdemeanor, and a second or subsequent violation would be a Class E felony.
Clemmons says he bought the concept after seeing many tales from athletes about how harassment from followers and viewers impacted him.
He additionally says watching his teenage boys itching to position their very own bets on sports activities inspired him to attempt to make change.
“I’ve got a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old, and they already started asking me, can we bet on sports? Or how do we bet on sports? Or when can we bet on sports?” Clemmons stated. “That made me really aware of the fact that they are marketing to my children.”
Clemmons additionally launched a bill this 12 months that would have banned sports activities betting on faculty athletics altogether, however it failed after a celebration line vote.
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