The National Football League acted quickly, decisively, and forcefully in lowering the boom on Calvin Ridley. No doubt, the NFL believes it acted out of extreme moral clarity, too, when it suspended the Atlanta Falcons wide receiver for a full season after discovering he gambled on league games.
“Your actions put the integrity of the game at risk, threatened to damage public confidence in professional football, and potentially undermined the reputations of your fellow players throughout the NFL,” commissioner Roger Goodell said in a letter to Ridley.
The league slammed Ridley in both word and deed, and then, of course, it patted itself on the back for stating the obvious: Gambling has no place in professional sports. It ruins everything because it eats away our trust. Ridley has to know that. Every professional athlete from here to Pete Rose has to know it.
Except, of course, for the fact that gambling has invaded every corner of professional sports, and nowhere as insidiously as in the NFL. This is not some occupying force, but an equal, invited partner. There are league-sponsored fantasy leagues, betting apps, and a barrage of ads reminding us that if the action on the field isn’t enough to keep you interested, you should spice it up with your own action off it.
Please. This is the NFL reminding us once again it is the world’s leader in irony, delivering yet another verdict on its own hypocrisy and greed, standing up for something in public only after it has done everything behind the scenes to tear it down. Of course Calvin Ridley should never have bet on football games, and absolutely he must pay a price, a hefty one.
But if the NFL can’t look in the mirror and see this incident for what it is — a logical continuation of its own practices — as well as for what it can be — the first of many more such incidents — then it might want to print up a couple hundred more of those haughty, condescending letters and load up on stamps. Because there are going to be plenty more lambs to sacrifice at the altar of the mighty NFL.
“This is a ‘welcome to the new era’ moment for the NFL,” says Declan Hill, a University of New Haven professor and leading expert on the sports betting industry.
“Even without going into the specifics of this case, the headline in my quotes is that there is a silent plague going on and the silent plague is the number of professional athletes across all professional sports who are addicted to gambling and computer gaming.
“The addiction guys who used to work in drugs and drinking for professional athletes say that in the last 5-10 years, they have shifted to gambling and gaming. These athletes are just obsessed about it.
“I’m not saying Calvin Ridley is in that boat, but these guys betting on sports and betting on their own sports is a really significant issue.”
In the NFL’s eyes, as evidenced by its suspension metrics, it is an issue that is more significant than anything else. More significant than workplace harassment, than PSI of footballs, than domestic violence accusations or marijuana usage.
Why else did the league act so quickly, so decisively, so forcefully? Why else did it lay on such a thick layer of moral outrage? Because it is also acting out of fear, from a place of sheer terror over the threat gambling poses to the heart, soul, and integrity of its product, the type of threat that fans have proven many times over issues off the field don’t pose.
Fans will return even after Tyreek Hill gets arrested, and will still buy tickets no matter how many times Dan Snyder gets exposed. But mess with the action itself and you could lose them forever.
“It’s not necessarily that the NFL has a problem, it’s that if enough fans believe the NFL has a problem, that specific play, that huge drive, that play at the goal line to a force turnover, if enough fans start going, ‘I don’t know if that’s true or not,’ that’s death to a sports league,” Declan Hill said.
That’s why Ridley had no shot at the soft-glove treatment, no chance of mitigation for getting caught while taking a break from the Falcons to deal with mental health issues, no sympathy for betting “only” $1,500, as he claimed in a series of post-suspension tweets.
Because there is nothing in NFL policy that can mitigate being a lowly, expendable, mere individual player rather than, say, an influential billionaire owner. Remember, this is the same league office that nearly burned its keyboard to get a statement to dismiss “without merit” Brian Flores’s claim that his former boss Stephen Ross offered to pay him to tank games.
This is the same league that put a franchise in Las Vegas, that pops gambling ads up on its own website, that completely erased the blurring line over the ethics of being in bed with legalized sports betting. Of course it had to punish Ridley. But it also should look in the mirror.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.