![\"Kansas](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/QV2XMV2XSBAE7A27CIYK5DBWJQ.jpg\")
Kansas guard Zeke Mayo (5) drives around Texas Tech forward JT Toppin (15) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lawrence, Kan., Saturday, March 1, 2025. (AP Photo\/Reed Hoffmann)(Reed Hoffmann | AP)<\/p>\n
Usually, Mayo said he would meet up with his family after games or go see them at home. This loss, Kansas\u2019 third of the year at Allen Fieldhouse, broke Mayo\u2019s routine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went straight home and like locked myself in a room for a very long time,\u201d Mayo said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to speak to anybody. I turned my phone off. It was a very difficult day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days later, Mayo and the Jayhawks went on the road to No. 3 Houston, but his mind wasn\u2019t focused, posting his third straight single-digit scoring game in a year in which he averaged 14.6 points per game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t too worried about the game itself. I was worried about my mental capacity and where I was at,\u201d Mayo said. \u201cAs a young kid just trying to live out his dream, you can\u2019t be perfect all the time… but those messages hurt my feelings a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayo\u2019s experience isn\u2019t uncommon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing more harassment of student-athletes, coaches, and officials from people who have a betting interest,\u201d said Clint Hangebrauck, the NCAA\u2019s Managing Director of Enterprise Risk Management.”<\/p>\n
![\"Zeke](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Q7ALZGJO2ZBEREZQM5BKASHEGA.png\")
Zeke Mayo (center) pictured with former KU star Andrew Wiggins (left) and his childhood friend Devin Neal (right). Mayo’s dream of playing at KU was realized in 2024-25, but came with it nightmares from angry bettors.(Courtesy @Dev_Neal23\/Twitter)<\/p>\n
A recent NCAA study says more than one in three Division I men\u2019s basketball players experienced betting-related abuse in the last year. <\/p>\n
In many states, including Kansas and now Missouri, gamblers can bet on specific player actions with prop bets. Those can include how many points, rebounds or rebounds they grab on the basketball court, and how many yards, catches or touchdowns they score on the football field.<\/p>\n
In Lawrence, those prop bets occasionally resulted in some in-person praise for Mayo and his teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a handful of guys come up to me and say, \u2018Hey, you won me some money tonight,\u2019\u201d said Mayo. \u201cThey were never on my tail (in person) about losing them anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
But online, it was largely a different story.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat really puts a target on the back of student-athletes to receive abuse and harassment from angry bettors,\u201d said Hangebrauck.”<\/p>\n
Missouri\u2019s new law does differentiate between Kansas in one way. Prop bets will not be offered for games involving Missouri schools, according to the Missouri Gaming Commission\u2019s regulations. Several other states, like Colorado and Arizona, don\u2019t allow player props on any college games.<\/p>\n
Authorities are fighting back against angry bettors. The NCAA says it\u2019s now using artificial intelligence to spot online abuse and alert police. The governing body of college athletics has also partnered with Venmo, with some angry bettors have made a habit of sending requests for money to student-athletes who have fallen short of their expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my hope that any student athlete, if they are being threatened or harassed, would bring that to someone\u2019s attention because there are law enforcement remedies for those kinds of things,\u201d said Jan Zimmerman, the chairman of the Missouri Betting Commission.<\/p>\n
Still, many athletes suffer in silence. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m being honest, I didn\u2019t really reach out to anyone,\u201d Mayo said, despite acknowledging he was aware KU and its athletic department offered specialized mental health support. \u201cI just kind of dealt with it on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Kansas guard Zeke Mayo shared his experiences with abuse and online harassment from angry sports bettors.<\/p>\n
For the first three seasons of Mayo\u2019s college career, the Lawrence High School Product was a standout at South Dakota State University. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt the mid-major level, no one pays attention to your games at all,\u201d said Mayo, who was a two-time All-Summit League selection and the 2023-24 Summit League Player of the Year. <\/p>\n
But at bigger schools with nationally-televised games happening frequently, the dream Mayo thought he\u2019d live out came with a danger he\u2019d never imagined.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the biggest thing is just realizing who\u2019s on the other side of a lot of these bets,\u201d said Hangebrauck.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being a young kid who hasn\u2019t really experienced life yet, it\u2019s not really something you can just — you can\u2019t just put your phone down and be OK.\u201dMissouri is the 39th state to legalize sports betting. As more states continue, the impact on athletes –at both the college and pro level — continues to grow. <\/p>\n
\u201cMore than anything to me, it gets weird sometimes when you have fans talking about it,\u201d Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said recently about interactions with sports betting. \u201cYou\u2019re just trying to go out there and live your life and play the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd sometimes they get really attached, even more than the regular fan, because they have money on the line… It\u2019s a crazy world we live in these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
In January, the NCAA will release its next study on the impact of social media abuse on student-athletes. KCTV will share those results once they are released.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 KCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This story contains mentions of racist messages and suicide. KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – Before he\u2019d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":433515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[57670,210,8797,35607,517,201069,8805,1317,201068,201070,8930,67,132,68,201067],"class_list":{"0":"post-433514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-college-athletes","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-kansas-jayhawks","11":"tag-kansas-state-wildcats","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-missouri-legal-sports-betting","14":"tag-missouri-tigers","15":"tag-ncaa","16":"tag-online-abuse","17":"tag-prop-bets-banned-missouri","18":"tag-sports-betting","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-zeke-mayo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115684640898773345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}