Posted on: March 25, 2026, 12:28h.
Last updated on: March 24, 2026, 01:29h.
- Ole Miss has announced the Center on Collegiate Gambling
- The center will help better understand college students’ gambling behaviors
- Sports betting is reportedly fueling an increase in problem gambling among young people
The University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, won’t stand idle as the problem gambling rate among student populations continues to climb.
In what’s the first of its kind in the nation, the University of Mississippi has announced its Center on Collegiate Gambling. The Ole Miss department was recently approved by the public research university’s trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning.
A release from the school says the center will focus on better understanding college student gambling behaviors, ranging from card games and sports betting to prediction markets, through academic research. The center will promote “evidence-based policies and programs” tailored to preempt gambling harms, support students’ well-being, and initiatives to protect the integrity of college sports.
Mississippi is home to 25 commercial casinos and four tribal casinos. The state additionally regulates in-person sports betting at casinos.
Escalating Concerns
Daniel Durkin, an associate professor of social work at Ole Miss, said an expert on problem gambling spoke at the university in 2024. The presentation raised alarms about the mainstreaming of sports gambling in the US.
“We were seeing a developing gambling problem, and not a whole lot of people were actually doing anything about it,” said Durkin.
Durkin formed an informal task force to analyze gambling behaviors and associated problems among college-aged people.
When we started going to national gambling conferences and that’s where we realized that more direct efforts were needed in the collegiate gambling space,” Durkin explained. “There was a need for a center focused specifically on collegiate gambling.”
Durkin’s group conducted research that found almost four in 10 Mississippi college students participate in some form of gambling each year. About 6% of the Mississippi student population met the criteria to be classified as a problem gambler.
While placing a legal sports bet online in Mississippi isn’t possible, the rise of prediction markets, federally regulated wagering exchanges that have ventured into sports contract trading, has essentially brought sports gambling to the state. Many Mississippians are also betting on sports on offshore, unregulated online sportsbook platforms.
Young People Gambling
A 2025 study conducted by Sienna University in New York found that about half of all men aged 18 to 49 in the United States have an active online sports betting account. Such wagering is leading to many financial problems, strained relationships, and other social costs.
Finance guru Dave Ramsey has labeled online sports gambling as a “portal to hell,” and the “fastest-growing addiction that is destroying young men.”
For yet another legislative year, a bill to expand legal sports betting to the internet was introduced in the Mississippi Legislature. The statute died in committee on concerns that online sportsbooks would hurt in-person casinos and that internet betting could lead to more problem gambling.
