In suspending Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley for a season, the NFL on Monday did what it always does: thumped its chest with the equivalent of a low-hanging-fruit arrest to pretend it is tough on gambling, while allowing the league’s owners to operate in the gray area with complete impunity.
Ridley did not play in the team’s final 11 games last season, after announcing he was stepping away to focus on his mental health. He then gambled on games while he was away from the Falcons on the nonfootball injury list, according to The MMQB’s Albert Breer and other media reports. Ridley said himself on Twitter that he wagered a sum of $1,500. The investigation did not find any inside information being used on any bets, nor did it find any other coaches or players were involved. The league often burns sensitive documents by the barrel, though its official statement made sure to include the verbose, personal finger-wagging commissioner Roger Goodell provided to Ridley in his suspension letter. How nice of everyone.
The news was released to the masses amid a stream of facepalm emojis, with the most distant from reality among us pretending this is a modern version of Pete Rose or Shoeless Joe Jackson—the kind of scandal that could shake the integrity of the game. Of course, the rest of us laughed. The NFL has made sure that betting is available at the tip of our fingers at every living second. The league is formulating the next generation of brain-warped addicts peeing their spare change away. The NFL is cashing in on the influx of a Wild West sportsbook market and fortifying its bulletproof yachts with it. And the league is upset that one of its players, while on leave, decided to flick through an app on his phone and have a good time on an island the league itself helped create?
