In early October the NCAA released a pilot study powered by AI with their partner Signify Group to investigate online harassment in college sports. The algorithm flagged over 72,000 messages from a dataset of 1.3 million posts and comments targeting athletes, coaches and officials. The end result was over 5,000 posts containing abusive, discriminatory or threatening content. All of these messages were reported to the social media platforms. Here are some of the details:

• 18% of all abuse was sexual, it was the most prevalent form of abuse used to target both male and female athletes.

• 12% was related to sports betting, with 19% rates in men’s basketball and football. As the popularity of sports betting increases, this category may grow rapidly.

• 10% of abuse was racist

• 9% of abuse was homophobic/transphobic

• 6% of abuse was violent

• 80% of the abuse in the study was directed at March Madness athletes, and women’s basketball athletes received three times more threats than men’s basketball.

You can read the entire study by clicking on the link below:

D1 Council Approves Rule Change for Men’s Hockey, Skiing

On November 7th the D1 council approved changes to the pre-enrollment activities for men’s ice hockey and skiing to allow athletes to participate in Major Junior Hockey or professional teams, as long as the compensation they receive is not more than the actual and necessary expenses of that participation. For more details on the process click on the link below to the FAQ document from NCAA.org:

Emerging Sports for Women Program Generating New Opportunities

Acrobatics and tumbling, Triathlon and Stunt are on the verge of being recommended to become an NCAA Championship sport. Women’s wrestling is in the final stages, while Flag Football has applied to become an emerging NCAA sport.

In 2023-24 emerging sports accounted for over 5,000 participation opportunities for women, a 30% increase over the previous year. Read the entire article here: