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This week’s Glass Half Empty podcast guest is David Purdum, who reports on gambling for ESPN. We spent much of the time discussing Tony Romo, who was irate at the way in which the NFL put the kibosh on a fantasy football convention in Las Vegas that he’d been organizing, and tried to figure out where exactly the NFL draws the line in terms of gambling and casino affiliations.
I also asked my friend Justin Fielkow, who is a practicing attorney and has written on NFL Labor issues and the legality of fantasy sports, about this distinction, asking him to try and discern where the league was coming from here. “The history of professional sports is replete with gambling-related scandals involving players or officials, whether it be the Black Sox, Pete Rose, various NCAA point shaving plots, or even former official Tim Donaghy using insider information to place bets on NBA games,” he said. “The list goes on. Each of these instances threatens the integrity of and the public’s confidence in professional sports. By prohibiting players from affiliating with casinos, the NFL is attempting to insulate itself from possible gambling-related issues.”
“It very well may be hypocritical for the NFL to forbid players from affiliating with casinos while permitting teams to create similar alliances, but it appears the league is drawing a distinction related to the degrees of separation from potential scandal,” Fielkow continued. “For example, while a player tied up in a gambling scheme could have a large effect on the outcome of an event (e.g. a quarterback purposefully throwing a game), a team executive would have a harder time creating a similar effect. That’s not to say, however, that the NFL’s policy or distinction is necessarily on point, nor anything regarding the NFL’s inconsistent enforcement of the policy as it relates to its own players. Though it won’t say so, the Romo saga appears to be where the NFL has drawn its (admittedly arbitrary) line in the sand.”
Romo’s was not the only fantasy football convention that was affected. The Fantasy Sports Combine (FSC) takes place the weekend of July 17th at the Wynn in Las Vegas. While the conference is still scheduled to go on, current players like Von Miller and Brandon Marshall had to pull out. Marshall seemed upset, but wouldn’t go into much detail. “I have some strong feelings on it, personally,” he said Wednesday, via NJ.com. “But I’m going to keep those to myself right now. I just got here, so I’m going to wait a couple more months before I rock the boat.”
Read the rest: http://thebiglead.com/2015/06/11/to...and-the-nfls-bizarre-hypocrisies-on-gambling/
I also asked my friend Justin Fielkow, who is a practicing attorney and has written on NFL Labor issues and the legality of fantasy sports, about this distinction, asking him to try and discern where the league was coming from here. “The history of professional sports is replete with gambling-related scandals involving players or officials, whether it be the Black Sox, Pete Rose, various NCAA point shaving plots, or even former official Tim Donaghy using insider information to place bets on NBA games,” he said. “The list goes on. Each of these instances threatens the integrity of and the public’s confidence in professional sports. By prohibiting players from affiliating with casinos, the NFL is attempting to insulate itself from possible gambling-related issues.”
“It very well may be hypocritical for the NFL to forbid players from affiliating with casinos while permitting teams to create similar alliances, but it appears the league is drawing a distinction related to the degrees of separation from potential scandal,” Fielkow continued. “For example, while a player tied up in a gambling scheme could have a large effect on the outcome of an event (e.g. a quarterback purposefully throwing a game), a team executive would have a harder time creating a similar effect. That’s not to say, however, that the NFL’s policy or distinction is necessarily on point, nor anything regarding the NFL’s inconsistent enforcement of the policy as it relates to its own players. Though it won’t say so, the Romo saga appears to be where the NFL has drawn its (admittedly arbitrary) line in the sand.”
Romo’s was not the only fantasy football convention that was affected. The Fantasy Sports Combine (FSC) takes place the weekend of July 17th at the Wynn in Las Vegas. While the conference is still scheduled to go on, current players like Von Miller and Brandon Marshall had to pull out. Marshall seemed upset, but wouldn’t go into much detail. “I have some strong feelings on it, personally,” he said Wednesday, via NJ.com. “But I’m going to keep those to myself right now. I just got here, so I’m going to wait a couple more months before I rock the boat.”
Read the rest: http://thebiglead.com/2015/06/11/to...and-the-nfls-bizarre-hypocrisies-on-gambling/