The NFL’s New Rising Problem
I’ve generally been in favor of sports betting getting legalized despite never being a gambler myself. Sports betting is one of those things that’s just going to happen anyway regardless of legality, like sex work, so it’ll be better to legalize it and regulate it, create an industry around it, than to decry it and have all that shit happen anyway with none of the positives.
This does of course cause its own share of issues, like how goddamn many sportsbook app commercials we get now being just one extremely irritating side effect. It’s jarring to see two or three per ad break, outnumbering the Whopper ads and sometimes even the car ads. But commercials are an annoyance. The real problem the NFL has to figure out now, along with the other sports leagues, is how to control players and related personnel gambling on the games themselves. Calvin Ridley got sent into purgatory for a year for betting on a few games he wasn’t even a part of. Several players this season are also getting the full suspension. Just this week it came out that Isaiah Rodgers from the Colts got busted for it.
This is going to be a problem. I fully agree you absolutely cannot have players betting on games. Not on their own games, not on games they aren’t involved in, maybe not even games in other leagues since many of these guys are all friends. The instant betting was accepted and partnered with the NFL, scrutiny on outcomes immediately comes into more question. We could have accusations of point-shaving cropping up soon, if not already. Certain fans already act like assholes when a player doesn’t perform as expected for a fantasy team, now imagine how those people are going to act when gambling and big money is involved.
Besides that, players are going to want to gamble. 99% of players are sports fans just like us, who watch games just like us. Who probably already made bets just like us. Several players caught didn’t even seem to realize the way they did it was violating the policy. But this is simply a conflict of interest. Players can control how they play the game and if they have money on the line, giving up a TD you could have stopped late in garbage time might pay off for some DB. Players will know things about other teams that the general public does not. It’s like sports insider trading. You can’t have it, and the NFL has to make sure this cannot happen because it threatens the integrity of the sport. They already have enough things threatening that.
Of course, how strict is too strict? Pretty much everyone agreed that Calvin Ridley getting a full year suspension while serial predator Deshaun Watson got 11 games from a league throwing Ceasers Sportsbook commercials at us every possible second was outrageous. The league absolutely has to stop these players and make it absolutely clear that it is not allowed but there is a limit to sensible punishments. The League has already eaten some PR shit with their inconsistent punishments. I don’t think a year off is fair (not for a first offense at least), but 6 games might be just fine. It might also have to depend on what the player bet on. Their own team? That’s a paddl’n of a full season. Another game they had nothing to do with? Lesser paddl’n. Another thing I wish the league, or broadcast rules in general should do, is make marketing the gambling during games illegal. I selfishly want the ads off my TV but we don’t advertise cigarettes anymore for a reason. Sports betting should be legal, but it should be careful about it because gambling is still a potential addiction and life ruiner and shouldn’t be advertised to kids.
I’m genuinely curious to see how all of this gets handled going forward.
You would think with this much money involved, they could have a filter in the app specifically for players that says, “Only show me things it’s okay for me to bet on.”
But nothing is really okay for players to bet on
Me: “Joe Burrow has energized this town just like Pete Rose did.”
TV: “BREAKING NEWS from the NFL World about a Gambling Suspension.”
Me: “DON’TBEBURROWDON’TBEBURROWDON’TBEBURROWDON’TBEBURROWDON’TBEBURROW”
For me, the issue is the amounts this guy bet. I saw reports of “Mostly $25-50 bets with one low four figure bet” To an athlete, even a bottom-rung-er, that’s chump change. That’s not even worth citing a conflict of interest over. I think it would be fine to have bets actually in the rules that you can do it as long as it’s like that. Just small bets that are more on bragging rights than anything monetarily substantial for a professional athlete. But the bet history this guy is reported to have, there’s 0 chance he was doing anything unscrupulous in order to sway games.
I think one of the issues with gambling is this: granted, I don’t have any hard data on this, more just the edges of my thinking being put into the comments.
I think that the “it’s going to happen anyway, so you might as well legalize it” line of logic is faulty. Granted, the comparison I’m about to make is like comparing apples to a pumpkin, but theft and murder will happen regardless of whether or not it is legal – we still prohibit it because we understand that, at the very minimum, those things are bad for society and you cannot build a community around a culture that permits them.
Gambling is not theft or murder – but it can still be predacious; my Dad makes a point that I think had some merit worth considering, that when he was a kid, there were laws that protected the poor against their worst impulses, no gambling, you can’t buy alcohol on Sunday, a social stigma against drug use, etc. I neither agree nor disagree with that line of logic but I understand that it has some merit.
I think that we need to balance out the idea of getting rid of “stigmas” and creating regulations and industries with an equal amount of asking “why is there a stigma here in the first place, and might it be a bad idea to normalize this thing?” I take your example of Prostitution as a case study: would not the legalization, expansion, and creation of an industry focused around random guys paying random women for sex not simply lead to an increase of female objectification? After all, They’re literally being paid to be used as sex objects.
Which leads me back to the legalization of sports betting and its ease of access. I think that we need to really look before we leap with regards to this (granted, we’ve already leapt), and ask ourselves honestly what the downside of having easily accessible gambling is. It makes me nervous. it’s one thing to go to Vegas or Atlantic City, but another to have infinite gambling at your fingertips from literally wherever you are, and I fear that a lot of people who are not vigilantly responsible are going to find themselves out of a lot of money.
The difference between murder/theft and gambling/prostitution is consent between parties. Murder is not consensual. Theft is not consensual. Prostitution is (or should be), and is the world’s oldest profession, and I’d rather the people who perform it (for whatever reason they do) are at least protected to some degree. Gambling is also consensual, the gambler is consenting to risk their money and most of the risk is placed upon themselves.
I don’t disagree that these things have their own problems and stigmas that need to be examined but that comparison simply isn’t fair at all. A better comparison might be alcohol. Widely available, marketed constantly, and also definitely straight up bad for you but drinking it is your choice and responsibility. Causes addiction and drunk driving, all kinds of bad shit. We also already tried to make it illegal and the result was arguably worse, so we instituted regulations around it. Weed is currently undergoing the same thing. Nothing is perfect, but i’m generally more fond of legal regulation where the general situation can at least be better monitored.
I do think it’s going to be rough up front since we did leap before we looked but it should level out after a few years when the effects of the decision have become clear. We are all going to unfortunately figure this out in real time.
My big issue, and this might just fall under the regulations/monitoring that you mention, Dave, is that while it is technically the person’s choice to gamble, there are a LOT of people who are either addicted, mentally unfit to resist, or children who haven’t developed the ability to understand it, and it can blur the line of consensuality. Yes, alcohol can lead to alcoholism, but it’s a lot easier to make sure people buying alcohol are REALLY of the proper age, and there are rules around where and when it can be advertised.
Gambling is just thrown in everyone’s faces, everywhere and all the time, damn whoever sees it. I NEVER thought I would need to have a conversation with my 8 year old about why I don’t want her playing X mobile game because it’s trying to force her to spend money on loot boxes or some other gambling-based bullhonky.
To The Calzone’s point, one of my friends from high school… before he was born, his dad was an alcoholic, addicted to gambling, smoking, you name it. We went to the Big E, a really big local fair for those not living in the area. My friend played the game with the milk bottles in a grid, and you have to pitch a softball and get it to land on one of them… he wouldn’t stop playing until he spent all $40 in his pocket and then asked me if he could borrow my money. And the kicker is, he didn’t even really WANT the prize. It was a really sobering moment for him, as until that point he’d never really been hit by that kind of compulsiveness, and even today, he goes out of his way to avoid mobile games or anything that’s built to prey on that kind of weakness. He doesn’t trust himself much with alcohol, either.
All this to say, screw EA and their “surprise mechanics,” gambling is a really serious issue, and before we even consider whether to make it legal for players, I think we need to consider how it’s being marketed and pushed across our entire landscape. Given how many susceptible people there are, I don’t think we can chalk up the commercials as just an annoyance. I don’t even wholly blame the NFL players who engage in it, because they may just be compulsive obsessives or people with a family history of addiction that can’t reign themselves in after being BOMBARDED by ads. If my 8 year old is watching football with me, they’re throwing gambling ads at her. It’s in video games, it’s all over. I’m fine making it legal for players with rails, but only if we treat it more the way we treat smoking or drinking ads… limit where and when they can pop up.
Make no mistake, I am against the marketing of this shit even if I’m okay with it being legal and regulated. Gambling has serious problems for a lot of people like the ones you mentioned and it’s disgusting to see these apps being shoved in our faces like this. I’m thankful I’m not the compulsive type because the video game shit is insidious.
Vaguely warm take: The only bet a player should not be allowed to make is against his own team. If anything, betting for your own team to win might make a guy play a little harder. That’s it, all players are required to place a bet on their own team to win. Betting on completely different sports? C’mon, that’s a gimme. Disallowing players from betting at all sounds like a serious affront to personal freedom. Even if it’ll never affect me personally I cannot stand for that.
Do you not see the conflict of interest inherent in players betting on games they are in, especially with regards to point spreads
It turns every single game into possibly being tainted by ulterior motives. There’s already a large subset of people convinced the sport is rigged, this will make it much worse
So make betting the spread off limits on games you’re in?
Honestly I think what actually happens is more important than what the public thinks happens. People will not stop watching football even if they think it’s rigged. From that standpoint, what anon says is true imo, that betting on your own team or games unrelated to your own doesn’t inherently cause a person to become less invested in winning, which is the main issue we want to avoid: guys trying to lose. This doesn’t cause that.
The only conflict of interest from betting on games (as long as it’s not against your own) is the perceived rigging, not any actual rigging. I don’t care about that and I don’t think the league would suffer if that became more commonplace. Football is too ingrained, people while gripe and moan but at the end of the day they won’t stop watching. They can’t.
Reading over the comic again, you do have a fair point about insider trading stuff, but I think the context for any given case is important because it’s not exactly like the stock market. As I mentioned in a previous post, this dude was betting incredibly small amounts; stuff that wouldn’t affect any player in the NFL in any meaningful way to convince them to alter the game in some way. Ridley bet on games while he was out and also in incredibly small amounts for someone of his caliber.
There needs to be some sort of system that just flags concerning betting activity rather than ruling it all out. Exorbitant amounts, or guys who don’t make a lot of money who actually have monetary reason to bet on games then try to affect them are the only things I care about. All the rest, it’s painfully obvious that they are just doing it for sport and don’t care about the money that much, compared to your average joe trading stocks explicitly trying to make money. The NFL would live just fine if .1% more of people were like OMG RIGGED than currently do anytime their team doesn’t win the super bowl.
Well I didn’t have a problem with Ridley getting a year because that’s been the rule since the 1950s. My problem with the Watson punishment was that he didn’t get at least a year.
My biggest disappointment with the Watson punishment is that they didn’t drag it out until the next season, where a suspension would have cost him $3 million per game instead of $60 thousand per game.
I disagree. Weed definitely helps me perform better when playing sports. It clears my head and I don’t overthink things.