Last summer, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a longstanding ruling that prevented individual states from deciding if they wanted to legally permit sports gambling. Following that decision, several states immediately permitted legal sports betting in their borders.

The first Southern state to pass the law was Mississippi and for the first time in SEC history, you could walk into a Mississippi casino or sportsbook and legally gamble on SEC football games. However, there is a stipulation in the state, you cannot place money on individual prop bets.

Why not? According to Ole Miss Athletic Director Ross Bjork, there was some level of concern regarding those types of wagers.

Bjork is currently attending the SportsBusiness Journal and Daily’s Intercollegiate Athletic Forum from New York City and offered up these thoughts on why prop bets are still not legally permitted in the state of Mississippi.

“Our biggest fear with the legalization of sports gambling in Mississippi was individual performance based outcome prop bets (e.g. kicking a ball out of bounds to start the game). Fortunately, the gaming commission listened to us and banned such bets,” Bjork said on Wednesday, according to Jason Belzer of Forbes.

The concern seems to be the fact that corruption and game fixing could come into play with these individual prop bets. While that doesn’t appear to be an issue at the professional level, that we know of, it’s interesting to see how an SEC school is dealing with this new law and taking steps to get out in front of potential issues before they occur on the field.