re: A handful of NFL players are expected to receive season-long suspensions for gambling

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Also NFL: except you players. To you it's a vice that compromises the integrity of the game.

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Ok so don’t be an nfl player if you want to gamble?

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I think it stands to more reason that it’s more likely to have an end of the roster player take this risk given the shorter career span, lesser earning, and unguaranteed money that’s involved

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This is a good point that I was going to make. People make the mistake of lumping in the NFL with the other major sports leagues of MLB and the NBA, but forget that those sports have much fewer roster spots, with much longer average careers, and guaranteed contracts. Aaron Rodgers isn’t gonna risk $60 million dollars to win a couple grand. But the back end of the roster guys making $500k who are one bad game or one injury away from being unemployed are much more likely to be tempted.

But the NFL knew this was going to happen. Gambling was already a big part of the sport’s interest. But it grew with the popularity of fantasy football 10-20 years ago, because it got the casual fan or the fan of just the hometown team more invested in all the games. Then they moved a team to Vegas, married themselves to all these online betting companies, lobbied to get state laws changed to make it not just legal, but incredibly convenient to place bets before and during games. Then added all the prop bets and parleys to make it even more enticing, and depended on all of this to grow the game exponentially.

And they knew that no matter the rules in place, there would be guys like we mentioned that would be too tempted to follow them. And not only did they expect it, they WANTED it. They needed these sacrificial lambs to be made examples of to at least give off the perception of the integrity of the game.

A multibillion dollar industry run by 30 multi billionaires didn’t just get blindsided by this. They anticipated it was coming, but took educated gambles that it would be nobody’s that wouldn’t hurt the product and hoped that that would be enough to scare off the stars from doing something stupid. Do they look like hypocrites? Of course. ARE they hypocrites? Absolutely. Do they give the tiniest bit of a shite? frick no. The money is worth it.

Just look at how much the valuation of professional sports teams has exponentially risen recently. Buy a team for $100 million in 1985, convince the community how valuable having a pro franchise is to that community’s economy, threaten to leave and extort them into raising taxes to subsidize the building of hundreds of millions of dollars cathedrals, and now that $100 million investment is worth $5 billion.

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NFL: gambling is a fun and enjoyable pastime. We're proud to join with our sports book partners in promoting it to the fans.

Also NFL: except you players. To you it's a vice that compromises the integrity of the game.

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You really don’t see the difference?

LINK

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The largest wager placed on the account Isaiah Rodgers was using was a $1,000 bet on the over/under for rush yards for a Colts player. It won.

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Ahhh, betting on his own team.

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They can’t bet on college games?

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you lost.
2. double up next time.
3 you lost.
either loop to 2 for the 20th time or borrow from loan shark.
the day comes.

people lose focus.

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I don’t see it this way and don’t see how the players were incentivized to bet on their sport any more than players were 20 years ago.

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Yeah, I don’t see the correlation between the NFL accepting advertising money from gambling sites and players betting on games.

The NFL had a choice. Bury their head in the sand and pretend that the proliferation of legalized gambling wasn’t happening, or jump on the bandwagon and partner with the gambling industry.

How are these players being caught? Part of the NFL’s agreements with the gambling industry is to cross reference names, phone numbers and geolocation to track active NFL players placing bets.

It’s a win-win for the NFL. They make money off of a growing industry, while maintaining some control and regulation over that industry.

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Strannix

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Is that you Adam Schefter?