The NFL specializes in hypocrisy. Two years ago, the league partnered with DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars Entertainment to promote … gambling.
Yet the league forbids its players to open their FanDuel or DraftKings apps while they’re on franchise property and place bets. Not just bets on NFL teams — that’s understandable, obviously — but on any team or any other sport.
Oh, the horror! An adult is using their downtime at work to partake in a hobby that funnels gobs of cash to the league.
In other words, NFL owners are using their players as props in a worldwide gambling arrangement with its football-mad customers and then telling the players don’t hop on FanDuel while sitting on the company toilet.
Again, it’s reasonable that the league doesn’t want its players betting on NFL games. But why does it care where players bet on any other sport?
Are owners sincerely worried about a slippery slope? That plopping $100 on LSU-Alabama will turn into wagering a deed to the house? Like fathers in the 80s worried their kids would toss their joints aside for needles?
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Gateway bets, my tushy.
It’s about image, which means it’s about business, and while the league has every right to protect both, it must realize that aligning itself with the marquee names of Las Vegas Boulevard while penalizing players for joining the fun during lunch break makes it look like a hypocrite.
A giant one.
And yet …
… Jameson Williams did the Detroit Lions a disservice.
He had to have known the rules, as hypocritical and silly as they are. He had to have known about Calvin Ridley, who played receiver at Alabama, just like he did, and who missed more than a year because he bet on NFL teams.
Williams at least had the sense not to do that. Still, he broke the rules and that choice will affect his teammates and the franchise that traded up to get him in the first round.
Now he’ll miss six games. (Fellow receiver, Stanley Berryhill got six games, too; teammates Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore were suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games and subsequently released.)
Or more than enough time for him to place non-NFL wagers with FOX Bet, BetMGM, PointsBet and WynnBet, also partners of the NFL.
That’s a lot of “bets” for a group of billionaires who spent years trying to dissociate themselves from the gambling industry, all in the name of “integrity.” Give them this, though, when they went win in, they went in, inking papers with not only the biggest names in the sports bookie business but sought — and put — a team in Las Vegas.
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How’s that for a turnaround?
Surprising?
Hardly.
Partnering with DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars Entertainment could reportedly earn the league a billion dollars. So, yeah, business. And absolutely the league’s prerogative. And judging by the sports-book business ads that inundate every platform of the NFL’s products, smart.
We’re all capitalists, right?
Which means all the “integrity” noise was never more than cover for their business model anyway. When it became clear revenue streams could be had by straight gambling and its less edgy, more jovial cousin, fantasy football, well, I give you the Las Vegas Raiders, sponsored bookie apps and a fantasy league hosted by NFL.com.
It should be noted that this very newspaper does business with DraftKings, and that, for most, sports gambling falls somewhere between alcohol and weed on the vice spectrum, depending on your spectrum.
It’s part of life, the desire for risk, and there is nothing inherently wrong with the NFL or any sports league associating with gambling companies. Rather, it’s the idea that opening a league-sponsored gambling app on league property is grounds for a six-game suspension.
The same number of games, it turns out, the league deems a baseline for players who violate its personal code of conduct policy regarding assault, battery, domestic violence and sexual assault. Now, any of those offenses can lead to stiffer penalties.
But it’s telling that the NFL’s baseline suspension for off-the-field violence is the same as spending $50 on FanDuel while submerged in a cold tub.
Williams, to his credit, took responsibility — through a statement his agent released — for placing the bets, and he apologized to the NFL, his teammates and “fans and city of Detroit.”
The statement also said Williams “would never intentionally jeopardize the integrity of the game he loves so much and looks forward to getting back to his team as soon as possible.”
This distinction is important. Betting on a Tiger Woods birdie versus betting on your own team and, by extension, yourself are vastly different things. Here’s betting that Williams, foolish as he was to break the rules, knew the cost of going there.
Said Lions general manager Brad Holmes:
“We are disappointed by the decision making demonstrated by Stanley and Jameson and will work with both players to ensure they understand the severity of these violations and have clarity on the league rules moving forward.”
Williams is 22, old enough to take responsibility for the violation and young enough to learn from it. All that’s at stake is his future.
As for the future of the NFL? A big part of it is tied to gambling. There’s no escaping this. There is also nothing wrong with this, except for an excessively draconian rule aimed at some sense of taste and decorum that never existed in the first place.
Still, its hypocrisy shouldn’t let Williams off the hook.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.