Boardroom chats with ESPN’s senior NFL insider to learn his thoughts on how the league is responding to recent betting scandals across pro sports.
The NFL sent a memo to team officials on Thursday, highlighting several prohibited categories of prop bets in light of a wave of betting-related arrests across pro sports. In the NBA, Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier were arrested on allegations of providing inside information to sports gamblers. In MLB, Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were charged with conspiring with gamblers to intentionally throw balls out of the strike zone.
The NFL’s memo re-emphasized that it has worked with sportsbooks, regulators, and state lawmakers to bar bets that are designed to be derogatory or inflammatory. This includes player injuries, bets based on officiating like penalties or replays, plays determinable by one person, like a made/missed field goal or a complete/incomplete pass, and pre-determined outcomes like whether a quarterback will start in a given week or whether a team’s first play will be a run or a pass. The threats gambling poses to the integrity of leagues like the NFL have been known for a long period of time, but recent events seem to rightfully have pro football on edge about the next gambling scandal, hypothetical illicit activities among its players and teams.
“These are the unfortunate byproducts of the world that we’re living in,” Adam Schefter, ESPN‘s senior NFL insider, told Boardroom last Wednesday at an event at The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. “Gambling is so prevalent that it’s inevitable that you’re going to encounter situations like this at various points in time, and you’d like to be the people to be smart enough to avoid it. But inevitably, the underworld sucks in some people every now and then. It’s really unfortunate. People have to be more vigilant than ever before.”
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A major NFL gambling scandal hit the league in 1963, when Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame running back Paul Hornung and Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras were each suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games, though both were reinstated a year later. Wide receiver Calvin Ridley was suspended for the entire 2022 season for gambling on NFL games in 2021, and 10 other players were suspended prior to the 2023 season, including Detroit Lions wide receiver Jameson Williams and Minnesota Vikings cornerback Isaiah Rodgers. The league has not levied any player betting suspensions in 2024 or 2025 to date.
While Schefter doesn’t think gamblers can influence point spreads in games, with too many people involved in altering or manipulating results, there’s one aspect he believes puts the NFL, and any league, at risk.
“For any sport, where it gets interesting is the player prop bets,” he said. “If there’s a running back where the over/under on him is 43 yards and he knows that he can control that, that’s different. That’s where I think there could be issues.”
To be clear, Schefter is not aware of any current examples of player wrongdoing or malfeasance; however, the modern sports gambling era has leagues that are open to liability when it comes to player props. This is why there have been calls across sports to limit or even eliminate player props altogether.
The NFL has avoided being in the spotlight on this issue of late, but if we’ve learned anything in the sports world this fall, it’s that the next bombshell betting story could be looming just around the corner.
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