From ESPN:
“Isaiah Rodgers and Rashod Berry of the Indianapolis Colts and free agent Demetrius Taylor were suspended indefinitely — through at least the 2023 season — for betting on NFL games last season. In addition, Tennessee Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere was suspended six games for betting on other sports at the workplace. The four suspensions were announced Thursday by the NFL. The Colts subsequently announced that both Rodgers and Berry have been waived as a consequence of their suspensions. “The integrity of the game is of the utmost importance,” general manager Chris Ballard said in a statement. “As an organization we will continue to educate our players, coaches, and staff on the policies in place and the significant consequences that may occur with violations.”
Meanwhile, while watching the Boston Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays yesterday, I noticed that about 75% of the commercials were promoting on-line betting on baseball games, including that baseball game. At one point the Red Sox play-by-play announcer read the over-under odds on the game’s total runs and other odds. Several of the gambling ads featured David Ortiz, the Red Sox icon who is about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Other commercials advertised apps that could monitor a fan’s betting, and they all urged viewers to “bet responsibly.” The NFL, NBA, the NHL, even pro golf are all similarly raking in money through partnerships with the major online sports gambling companies. Punishing players for gambling themselves is like a liquor company requiring their employees to be teetotalers.
The theory is that players make so much money that they won’t be tempted to engage in the addictive activity their own teams are promoting with the general public. It is a stupid, naive and ignorant theory. Rich gamblers don’t gamble for the money. Athletes, moreover, are not generally known for their intellectual acumen, ability to resist temptation, or skill at navigating mixed and contradictory messages.
Sports leagues can’t have it both ways. They can’t make millions off of gambling, and simultaneously insist that players gambling threatens the integrity of the game. If the team owners really cared about the integrity of the game and wanted to avoid the betting and game-fixing scandals that surely are coming (baseball will have a team in Las Vegas next year, and Moe Green is licking his metaphorical chops), it would stick to the policy that sports and gambling is a volatile mixture that must be avoided.
This will not end well. You can bet on it.
Ethics Alarms 
The owners just couldn’t help themselves. They were pissed legal and illegal bookmakers were making the vig at no cost to them on all those bets on the entertainment the OWNERS were providing at THEIR expense. Now, they’re in bed with the bookmakers and getting at least half the vig.
Of course, there will be all sorts of fixing going on. There are so many bets on offer, it will be easy. “Who makes the first three pointer this quarter.” What a joke. No wonder a small market team like the Phoenix Suns went from being worth 600 million to selling for four billion in fifteen or twenty years. It’s like owning a casino that operates all over the world.
I don’t see the hypocrisy.
“ Punishing players for gambling themselves is like a liquor company requiring their employees to be teetotalers.”
Well no. It would be like a liquor company requiring their employees to not drink while at work. Or a Wall Street employee to not engage in insider trading.
NFL players are allowed to gamble, just not on NFL games since it ruins the integrity of the game since the players can have a direct influence on the outcome of the game.
An NFL player playing blackjack or betting on a horse race doesn’t ruin the integrity of football games in the NFL.
Are you arguing the rules should be no players can gamble at all and that the NFL shouldn’t support sports betting in anyway? Even by fans?
Because it may be abused by some?
Well no. It would be like a liquor company requiring their employees to not drink while at work. Or a Wall Street employee to not engage in insider trading.
Well, no! The players aren’t gambling while they are at work, as in playing the game they are payed to play. They placed bets in their private time.
Well yes because the players are allowed to gamble, just not on NFL games since they can affect the outcome. Also, the one player was suspended for gambling at an NFL facility.
Just like you’re allowed to trade stocks if you work on Wall Street, but you can’t trade stocks you have insider information on.
They’re not banned from trading, just only in certain circumstances. Like the players here are still allowed to gamble, just not in certain circumstances…so your analogy doesn’t make any sense.
Someone who works for a liquor company is required to be sober…but only in certain circumstances, like at work.
“Just like you’re allowed to trade stocks if you work on Wall Street, but you can’t trade stocks you have insider information on.”
Once again, you’re moving the goal posts. Clever! And the executives and an employee in the company can buy or sell stock in that company. They just can’t do it if they know something everyone else doesn’t, meaning they are cheating, and breaking the law. But that’s not what the NFL is doing. There is no evidence that the players they suspended were cheating. They aren’t allowed to bet on NFL games, period. That’s not “in certain circumstances.” The analogy to insider trading would be betting on their own team’s games, but only one of the suspended players did that.
Liquor companies sell liquor and promote people using it, all people, because they tell us the proudct is good, and using it is good. The NFL’s product is football, and once sold it for watching, which , they said, is good and entertaining and innocent. Now they are selling gambling on those games: now the NFL says gambling is fun, innocent and good. But it is also saying that its own player can’t gamble themselves on those games, even when they have no more of an edge than any schmuck on the corner. Pete Rose lost millions gambling on baseball, but when he was suspended, baseball treated gambling on the game as wrong, and it was largely illegal. The analogy with liquor company employees isn’t getting drunk on the job, exactly as I said: the liquor companies aren’t telling the public to get drunk on their jobs. They are saying that drinking is a good and desirable thing and promoting the conduct—and it would be hypocritical to punish employees for doing what the company promotes.
The analogy to getting intoxicated would be gambling excessively. But the NFL isn’t punishing that. It’s punishing gambling itself.
“ now the NFL says gambling is fun, innocent and good”
Like I said earlier, the players CAN STILL GAMBLE, just not on NFL games. They can play blackjack, bet on baseball, basketball, horse racing…
Just like liquor employees CAN STILL DRINK, just not at work.
You would maybe have a point that it’s hypocritical if NFL players couldn’t gamble at all, but even still don’t really think you do.
It’s a conditional rule for employees. That’s not hypocritical.
Employees often have conditions on their employment where they can’t engage in the behavior they’re promoting. That’s not hypocritical.
It’s like the Catholic Church requiring Priests to be celibate and not get married, but they promote marriage. Doesn’t mean the church is saying one or the other is bad or good. It’s just conditional.
Or like two people who work at the same dating app company like Tinder, but then they matched on Tinder. If the company has a no dating policy for employees, the company wouldn’t be hypocrites would they?
The NFL doesn’t require it’s employees to not gamble because it’s bad to gamble, it’s just a condition of their employment since their players gambling on the games they play in ruin the integrity of the game.
Yeah. You’re ignoring the point, or unable to see it. I know what the NFL’s theory is, but the fact of life and ethics is that if an authority encourages conduct in any way, it can’t legitimately simultaneously punish people for doing what it encourages. This is why needle distributing for drug addicts is terrible policy. An authority has to say “yes” or “no”, not “it depends.”
You don’t get it—fine. Move on to another topic.
But the NFL isn’t promoting MLB players gambling on MLB games, they’re promoting gambling in general, which their players ARE allowed to do.
It comes down to this…
The NFL doesn’t think gambling is wrong or bad, they think NFL players gambling on NFL-only games is wrong and bad.
They allow NFL players to gamble on everything else, just not NFL games, because they’re employees. There’s no hypocrisy there.
As I said, fine. I’m through quibbling with you.
And yes, Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Period. End of story.
This problem has been literally decades in the making. My father, a professional football coach, made himself unpopular with League representatives during the annual anti-gambling presentation that took place at training camps in the 1960s and 70s. When CBS started putting Jimmy the Greek on each week to discuss point spreads, almost certainly at the behest of gambling promoter Brent Musburger, my father began asking some obvious questions of the NFL representatives. Things like, “ How come you guys are threatening us with permanent bans from coaching when the League is working to promote temptation every week in cahoots with its television sponsors?” My father played in Philadelphia at a time when there actually were mob-connected players in the league. He was under no illusions about the power of gambling syndicates to pull in players who needed money or were just high-risk types.
When fantasy football, which is essentially gambling in a more complex format, proved to be the financial savior of the NFL, it was pretty clear that the League was willing to undermine some of its most basic principles in return for television eyeballs and internet clicks. Combine that with incompetent state governments looking to subsidize their inefficient operations with easy gambling revenue (and drug tax revenue) and you have an almost irresistible pull on players and, more importantly, on the people around them.
The individual clubs reach out to agents and ask us to try to police our clients with respect to the gambling people they were hanging with. I worked with the security from one NFL team to try to keep one of my players away from some of his posse who were actively milking him for information about injuries, teammates’ capabilities, and anything else they could get their hands on to get an edge on their next bet. Players are under constant pressure to help out a friend and if it isn’t in the form of a direct contribution, then providing information to help the friend make a fast buck on the sports books is almost as good.
Oh, and the idea that players are paid well enough so that they don’t need money? Players always need money. Or at least, a significant percentage of them do.
Look at Phil Mickelson and Charles Barkeley. Lots and lots of income and net worth doesn’t mean guys who like to gamble won’t gamble. They’ll just bet bigger. They’re addicted to the adrenaline rush. They don’t do it for the money.
77Zoomie,
The ethics of fantasy sports and the gambling angle might make for an interesting Open Forum discussion (if it hasn’t already been covered). I played Fantasy Football for a few years, and never gave a moment to the thought that it was gambling in disguise, even in leagues where I paid a fee to play. Interesting…
The “free” gambling/game websites, etc. are entry vehicles into gambling. Fantasy football was nothing be a prelude to betting on games. Got everybody’s juices flowing. Not everyone, but certainly the gambling oriented body types out there.
Joel, a number of states considered limiting fantasy sports because of the gambling angle. The gaming aspect was obvious with some of the more high-stakes leagues, but federal law in 2006 categorically stated that fantasy sports reflect more skill than chance in the outcome, and so are not gambling. I think the distinction reflects more lobbying than logic, and there are several states that prohibited so-called “daily fantasy sports” betting, e.g., Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, and North Dakota. The relative ease of access to DFS sites such as Fan Duel and Draft Kings makes the issue mostly moot.
I’ve noticed this as well, listening to Rangers broadcasts. I think it was most jarring last year when it did seem like every third commercial was related to betting.
This year they’ve got a couple new things in the advertising rotation. Early in the season they ran a commercial touting the new rule changes. I think the pitch was ‘You asked, MLB delivered, fan requested and tested in the minors now we have these slick new shiny things right over there.” I sure didn’t request these changes. It’s more annoying because these are the same people who blackmailed Bob Crane into moving the Astros from the NL to the AL, no matter what the team and fans wanted.
And it is also the same league who still uses the Mickey Mouse zombie runners for extra innings — and they expect us to take them seriously?
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The other ad I’ve been hearing more recently this season is from Planned Parenthood — abortion saved my life, abortion is such a great thing, you know the drill. Ick. Can’t change the channel so all I can do is turn the sound down and hope I remember to turn it back up before the start of the next inning.
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The worm has finally started to turn, though. The Rangers are about 10 games ahead of where they were last year (the Astros are about 10 behind), and have been leading the division almost the whole season, despite losing their top off-season acquisition (Jacob DeGrom) for the season. It’s a long season, though — last year they were nearly at .500 the last week of June and ended up with 90 losses. But it is their best start since the two World Series years.
I am, however belatedly, astonished at the amount of support shown here for organized gambling on sports. Please, show me a real example of how organized gambling was just innocent or harmless fun. Show me how organized betting on baseball is not akin to the hundreds of thousands of slot machines that dupe the ignorant and stupid every year. Are you really saying that sports fans are smarter and than the average slot machine junky? I don’t think you can make that case. It’s all about money — not the sponsorship of every molecule of baseball games (sponsors can afford it) — but taking more money from the ignorant, poor, and stupid. I thought the state lotteries would be the worst example of this, but no… Shame on major league baseball. Shame. Shame.