SmashMouth

The NFL did a billion-dollar about-face on gambling, once the Supreme Court threw open the floodgates to legalized wagering in 2018. The man who previously ran the NFL remains unnerved about what it could mean to pro football.

“I still worry about some young guy . . . and someone says to him, ‘Take the money,'” former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue told Jarrett Bell of USA Today.

Tagliabue said that he played in a college basketball game that was fixed, when Georgetown beat NYU in 1961.

“I played in a college basketball game that was fixed,” Tagliabue told Bell. “We beat the hell out of NYU. It was the biggest victory in my three years of basketball at Georgetown. Turns out that guys at NYU were taking money to shave points.”

Tagliabue thinks there’s less of a risk of point shaving in football, unless gamblers get to one specific person.

“Football, if you get the quarterback in football, presumably you can affect the outcome of the game,” Tagliabue said. “But if it’s not the quarterback and you get one or two guys, it may not affect the outcome of the game, which is why people explain there’s [been] point-shaving in basketball but not football.”

He’s right. There hasn’t been. Which perhaps means it remains unlikely going forward. From the NYU example to Henry Hill (yes, the same Henry Hill) and Boston College to Tim Donagy, basketball has had multiple gambling scandals. Football hasn’t. The legalization of gambling doesn’t introduce the possibility. Potentially, it magnifies it.

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stickman

This article seems to talk mainly about players. What about the refs? They could do so much more than any player on the field. Especially if you have a couple of them in your pocket.

Boston Saint

Yeah, it’s not like one call made or not made by one ref could say, help an underdog big-market team into the Super Bowl over a smaller, favored team or anything. No money interest there !

MatthewT

The guy with the most ability to throw a game is the QB, with the money they make I doubt they could be paid off enough. Most other position players would simply be benched if playing bad. In other words a CB is not likely to give up 5 TD's in a game, or a running back fumble 5 times. The only player that I would have concerns about is the kicker, he could miss several FG attempts before teams would start going for it on 4th down every time. The refs, now that is where the greatest concern would come from and that may have happened many times already.

vpheughan

the kicker, he could miss several FG attempts before teams would start going for it on 4th down

Only so many times then he's replaced.