As the saying I learned from our friend Big Cat goes, “Dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things.” The flip side is true as well; the non-dysfunctional teams do non-dysfunctional things.
Per the Baltimore Sun, via Sports Business Journal, Ravens G.M. Eric DeCosta opened the team’s mandatory minicamp last week by “laying out the details of the NFL’s prohibition against gambling and emphasizing the severity of potential penalties.”
It’s important for teams to provide their own education to players on gambling, because (frankly) the education from the league has been lacking.
“It does concern you that it’s not always too clear,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said, per the Sun. “The clearest thing would be just stay away from it, but guys are going to be on vacation, and they may play Blackjack or whatever; there’s nothing wrong with that, if they do that. But it is very clear in terms of sports gambling, in terms of where you can be during the season, those kinds of things, and in terms of not betting on football — period, end of story. That’s pretty darn clear.”
It would be more clear if the same rules applied to the players as apply to non-players. No betting on sports, ever. For reasons still not clear and at no point articulated by the NFL, the league has decided to allow players to bet on sports other than NFL football while not at work. For everyone else, there’s a one-strike, zero-tolerance policy.
The more the NFL avoids this obvious dichotomy, the more sensible the simple theory becomes that the sports books that are paying the NFL millions for sponsorships want young, rich players to be able to bet significant amounts of money — and to be able to lose it.
Think about it this way. Under the subtance-abuse policy, NFL players still can’t smoke marijuana in states where it’s legal. But they freely can bet on sports other than NFL football, as long as they don’t do it at work.
Why? Why would the league, which can set the terms of the gambling policy without union involvement, do the players a favor that it refuses to do for non-players? Common sense suggests that the favor is ultimately being done not for the players who will inevitably lose, but for the house that will always win.