Brian Krylowicz, director of Springfield College’s counseling center, calls the Massachusetts institution a “sweatpants campus.” He’s referring to Springfield’s sporty culture, buttressed by its reputation as the “birthplace of basketball” and by a student body that is 30 percent Division III athletes.
“Our walls don’t have ivy,” he says. “Our walls have a basketball hoop.”
But in 2023, when mobile and in-person sports betting became legal in Massachusetts, Krylowicz could foresee how a passion for sports could have a dark side. That students could now legally wager large sums of money on their phones, outside of public view, alarmed him.
He started meeting with student groups and asking about their relationships with sports betting.
