Vegas spurs love-hate relationship with NFL
Commissioner Roger Goodell and his underlings at the National Football League main office are no strangers to looking foolish. Whether it’s their funny-if-it-weren’t-so-sad mishandling of domestic violence incidents involving NFL players or the years spent denying a link between football and long-term brain damage, the league usually can be counted on to do the wrong thing.
The latest example comes to us courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which reported earlier this week that the league might very well be levying fines against Steelers linebacker James Harrison and center Maurkice Pouncey because of their involvement in a charity arm wrestling event in Las Vegas over the weekend.
The two Steelers and more than two dozen other current and former NFL players took part in the Pro Football Arm Wrestling Championship at the MGM Grand Casino, and that appears to have violated a league rule barring players from taking part in promotional events at gambling dens, the Post-Gazette reported.
“Had we been asked in advance if this was acceptable, we would have indicated that it was in direct violation of the gambling policy,” said NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart, in an interview with USA Today.
But wait, you might say, isn’t this the same NFL that now has a whole team headed to Vegas? You would be correct. Just a couple of weeks back, the NFL owners voted nearly unanimously to allow the Oakland Raiders to move to “Sin City.”
This also is the same league, according to an ESPN report last year, that “became a part owner of newly formed Sportradar US, the subsidiary of a Swiss company that provides real-time statistics, scores and odds to bookmakers, including, according to gambling industry sources, multiple offshore sportsbooks that offer illegal betting in the U.S.” In addition, ESPN said, nearly all NFL teams have sponsorship deals with either FanDuel or Draft Kings, the quasi-gambling daily fantasy sports operations.
And whether or not the league wants to admit it, a significant share of its popularity – and hence, massive wealth – stems from gambling on NFL games. Such gambling on the NFL is, of course, legal in Las Vegas.
It seems to us that this is a clear case of “do as we say, not as we do.”