SEC Takes Aim at Sports Gambling with Mandatory Education Push for Student-Athletes
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — The SEC is stepping up its fight against sports gambling, announcing Tuesday the launch of a mandatory educational video that every SEC student-athlete must complete before their team’s first regular season game in the 2026-2027 athletic year.
The move is the latest in a string of integrity measures the conference has rolled out as legal sports betting continues its rapid spread across the country. The SEC first partnered with monitoring firm IC360 — then operating as US Integrity — back in 2018.
Since then, it has steadily expanded its approach: adding real-time prohibited betting monitoring through IC360’s ProhiBet product in 2023, introducing student-athlete availability reporting across football, basketball and baseball in 2024, and earlier this year posting educational materials in locker rooms and standing up an anonymous tip line for reporting suspicious gambling activity.
The numbers driving the urgency are stark. Roughly 58 percent of 18-to-22-year-olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity, a figure that climbs to 67 percent among students living on college campuses.
Nearly a third of adults under 30 placed a sports bet in the past year. And during the 2025-26 academic year alone, an estimated $12 billion was wagered on games involving at least one SEC team — through both state-regulated operators and the fast-growing prediction markets.
“The rise in sports gambling, including some recent well-documented incidents among college and professional athletics, as well as developments around prediction markets, makes this a high-priority initiative for the Southeastern Conference.“
Commissioner Greg Sankey
The new video will be folded into each school’s existing compliance programming, walking athletes through how to recognize risks, what Conference and NCAA policies require, and how to report concerns.
Lee Ann Herring-Olvedo
Lee Ann serves as the Director of Recruiting for The Rebel Walk. She sees college football the way championship programs do—from inside the personnel room. Every evaluation, every roster move, every recruiting battle tells a bigger story about identity, culture, and how a program is built to win in December, not just July.
With more than 15 years covering the SEC and the national recruiting landscape, Herring-Olvedo has built a reputation as one of the sport’s most respected personnel-driven voices—blending film evaluation, roster construction, and long-term program vision through a true front-office lens. Her coverage of powerhouse brands like Ole Miss Rebels and Kentucky Wildcatshas consistently gone beyond headlines, focusing instead on the blueprint behind winning programs: development, fit, culture, and recruiting strategy.
That foundation was formed early at Brown University, where she worked in player personnel and recruiting while competing as a student-athlete. Inside those recruiting operations rooms, she learned how elite organizations are truly built—through relentless evaluation, relationship building, projection, and trust in the board. Those experiences shaped the way she studies the game today: part scout, part storyteller, part architect.
Her analysis and reporting have appeared across major platforms including ESPN, NFL coverage spaces, USA Today Sports, and Saturday Down South. She also brought her personnel-minded approach to the airwaves as an on-air analyst for the Wake Up 502 College Football Show on Big X Sports Radio 96.1, where she became known for combining film-room detail with a wider understanding of roster identity and program trajectory.
In 2025, covering the rise of Houston Cougars football under Willie Fritz reignited the part of the sport that first drew her into football—the culture, the edge, the belief that a roster can reshape an entire city. That inspiration led to the launch of Coogs 365 Sports, a platform built to cover Houston athletics through a true scouting and recruiting lens while connecting the emotion of the game to the heartbeat of H-Town.
Now, Herring-Olvedo returns to The Rebel Walk where with an even deeper perspective shaped by years inside recruiting circles, national SEC coverage, and hands-on evaluation experience. Her return brings a familiar voice back to Ole Miss coverage—but with an evolved lens rooted in roster architecture, player development, and the modern realities of building championship-caliber football in the NIL and portal era.
For Herring-Olvedo, recruiting has never been about stars beside a name. It is about identifying competitors, projecting growth, and building a locker room capable of sustaining success. Her philosophy mirrors the best front offices in football: stack traits, trust culture, and never stop building.
