The NFL’s betting penalties challenge the ideal of “integrity.”
When the NFL announced on Thursday that three players had been caught betting on football, the penalties amounted to signature harshness: indefinite suspensions that cannot be appealed until after a full season.
It was the second such series of off-season betting fines after the league invoked the same suspension in April against three players who bet on NFL games.
The suspensions, punitive in nature, were also a warning to other pros tempted by the ubiquitous opportunities to bet on football. But, critics say, the harsh punishment is inconsistent with the league’s business partnerships with gambling companies, which brought the league more than $1 billion in 2022.
On Thursday, the NFL suspended Isaiah Rodgers and Rashod Berry of the Indianapolis Colts and free agent Demetrius Taylor for at least the 2023 season for betting on NFL games. Shortly after the announcement, the Colts released Rodgers and Berry.
“The integrity of the game is of the utmost importance,” Chris Ballard, the team’s general manager, said of the decision.
His language echoed that of Jeff Miller, the league’s executive vice president for communications, public affairs and policy, who told reporters in the wake of the suspensions in April, “The integrity of the game must be at such a high level be held that there is no tolerance for that kind of behaviour.”
The NFL began to embrace sports gambling after the Supreme Court in 2018 imposed a ban that kept gambling out of most states. Since then, sports betting has emerged as a lucrative source of income for the league, as has the proliferation of gambling. In 2021, the NFL partnered with DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars Entertainment on agreements reportedly close to $1 billion combined.
After a long time avoiding Las Vegas and its casinos and sports betting, the Super Bowl will be held there in February, nearly seven years after team owners approved the Raiders’ move there.
The recent suspensions show the league’s struggle to draw a line in its acceptance of gambling, said Bob Boland, a sports law professor at Seton Hall and a former athletic integrity officer at Penn State.
“The idea of sports betting being part of our product we advertise in our broadcasts and where it was once something we used to shy away from, it’s now something we kind of embrace, but not for you as a player,” Boland said in a statement. interview. “That’s the complicated question and it sends mixed messages.”
While the league’s gambling policies are detailed in Appendix A of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement — and are included in every player’s contract — players have recently expressed doubts about the bans.
“I understand rules are rules, but I can risk my life for my team to win, but I can’t risk for my team to win,” said Patriots cornerback Jonathan Jones wrote in a Twitter postreferring to the suspensions.
When Lions receiver Jameson Williams received a six-game suspension for betting on other sports while at a team facility, claimed he was unaware of NFL policy.
The league has said it will make policy a point of focus by visiting teams to highlight the finer points of the gambling rules and requiring rookies to attend information sessions. But the imposition of strict discipline has been football’s most visible effort to ensure competition on the pitch is fair and unbiased, a key to maintaining consumer confidence.
“You want to create interest so that the last shot, the last kick, the last pass is always subject to chance and human endeavor. That’s why we love them to some degree,” Boland said. “The fact that they would be resolved or that the outcome would be created would take away interest right away.”
But by allowing football betting players to return to service, the NFL abandoned the zero-tolerance policy that has been the foundation of Major League Baseball since the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, when the Chicago White Sox sued. were accused of throwing the World Series.
Instead, the NFL’s indefinite suspensions, with the possibility of return, serve as an effective ban on fringe players, while leaving the door open for stars who bet on football to return to play.
Calvin Ridley, who was suspended for the 2022 season for gambling on the sport, may return once he has served his suspension. But for less influential contributors like Rodgers and Berry, a path back to football is less clear.
Indefinite suspensions are not a recent fix in the NFL In 1947, Commissioner Bert Bell suspended Frank Filchock and Merle Hapes of the New York Giants indefinitely for “acts prejudicial to the NFL and professional football” after allegedly bribing them to solve the problems of that year. championship game, though neither player accepted. Filchock’s suspension was lifted in 1950 and he only played in one more game. Hapes’ suspension was lifted after seven years and he never played a down again.
That scandal forced Bell to expand the NFL’s gambling oversight, including hiring former FBI investigators to keep tabs on league officials and gamblers alike. Team owners also gave him the unilateral power to ban anyone involved in gambling in sports for life. In 1963 Commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended two players for 11 months for betting, despite there being no evidence that they attempted to influence the outcome of a game.
The next player punishment for betting on football came in 2019, when Arizona Cardinals cornerback Josh Shaw was suspended for betting on NFL games until the end of the 2020 season. (Shaw was reinstated in 2021, but hasn’t played in an NFL game since.)
The recent spate of gambling violations could eventually force the league to consider tougher penalties, a result that would need to be agreed upon by the NFL’s players’ union. The volume and star status of player gamblers, LeRoy said, could give both sides an incentive to move forward to protect confidence in football games.
“Let’s hypothetically say the league really digs into this kind of research and they find out that 100 or more players are gambling,” he said, “so you’d have a massive disruption to team rosters. That’s the kind of thing that , I think, would get the parties to come to the table and negotiate this.