Jaguars receiver Calvin Ridley has applied for reinstatement, following a one-year suspension for betting $1,500 on football while away from the Falcons during the 2021 season. Barring evidence of further violations during the suspension, Ridley should be immediately reinstated.
The league has made its point, with a swift, strong, and stringent suspension that shows the league’s willingness to protect the integrity of the game. It’s the periodic piece of low-hanging fruit that the league will pluck and squash with both feet in order to persuade casual observers that the NFL is doing everything it can to protect Big Shield.
The zeal with which the league hammers obvious culprits obscures the fact that the league could be, and should be, doing much more. I listed plenty of examples in Playmakers. There’s another example that someone in the know raised with PFT following the news that Jets receivers coach Miles Austin also was given the minimum one-year suspension for betting on basketball via one of the sports books that pour cash into the owners’ pockets via a sponsorship deal.
League employees (including most if not all employees of NFL.com and NFL Network) cannot bet on football, or participate in fantasy-football leagues with full-season prizes in excess of $250. They can’t even enter a free NCAA bracket contest that pays out as little as $100 for the winner.
So here’s the question. How aggressively is the league policing the employees of the league? It’s one thing for one of the sports books to alert 345 Park Avenue that Calvin Ridley or Miles Austin used the app on their phone to place an impermissible bet. It’s quite another to affirmatively explore the potential maze of rabbit holes with league employees potentially participating in high-stakes fantasy football leagues or participating in NCAA bracket contests with cash prizes.
If the policies are being aggressively and properly enforced as to league employee, are there violations? Are they being hidden? Should there be the same transparency that applies when someone like Ridley or Austin are exiled for at least a year?
These are fair questions to ask. Whether the NFL would ever answer them is a different issue altogether.
