The NFL has always had a very weird relationship with gambling. For ages they wouldn’t even acknowledge that Vegas existed, Vegas couldn’t put its tourist ads during NFL games, and NBC couldn’t even advertise their show Vegas. Meanwhile one of the first things discussed on the NFL network after the conference round is done is the Vegas Line. Heck used to be each of the pre-game shows talked about the Vegas Line every week. So actually this move to Vegas makes the situation less weird, at least they now admit the city exists.
And take Oxy instead of smoking weed.
The NFL loves to deny the influence of gambling on its product. But it is exactly why they keep tweaking things like instant replay. You don’t want to upset the gamblers.
I had an idea for a league that would create true rivalries and could eventually overtake the NFL. The league would divide itself into territories. If you want 16 teams, there are 16 territories. To play on the team in a territory, you have to have graduated from high school in that territory. To be fair, territories are divided based on the number of football playing kids who graduate from high school annually in that territory. Now you are talking, when you have Southern California take on Alabama/Mississippi region in Birmingham. Think you can't get 100,000 for that? Think that won't get a HUGE tv contract from one of the networks?
In a few years, such a league would overtake the NFL and make the franchise value of Dean Spanos and Mark Davis next to nothing. The NFL can go down the drain, and I would be ecstatic.
Obviously, there are all kinds of arcane rules you'd have to come up with about people who move around while in HS and people from other countries, etc. but the concept would be region vs. region. Instead of rooting for a jersey and a team only because 52 people from elsewhere play there games there, you would actually be rooting for your HOME team. It would make football GREAT again.
Oh, this is hypocritical!!!
The National Football League’s feigned indignation about gambling is a joke. A conservative estimate is that $80 billion to $100 billion is wagered on NFL games each year, only a fraction legally. People place their bets through bookies, office pools, fantasy football, and the like. This gambling clearly boosts attendance and TV revenue, the mother’s milk of the sport. When you have money in a game, your interest is intensified.
The National Football League’s actions belie its supposed contempt for gambling. For example, the league requires teams to state before games what players may have to sit out because of injury and what players are questionable. That information only benefits gamblers. And does the league complain that newspapers run the point spreads on the games? Of course not.
In the early 1920s, one George Halas turned to Charles Bidwill, a bootlegger, gambler, racetrack owner, and associate of Chicago’s Al (Scarface) Capone’s mob, to finance the Chicago Bears. The Bidwill family now owns the Arizona Cardinals.
In 1925, bookie Tim Mara bought the New York Giants. His heirs still have half the team.
Notorious gambler Art Rooney took over the Pittsburgh Steelers. His family still controls the team; the Rooney empire is purportedly breaking up so that the racetracks and casinos won’t be mixed with the football team.
The Cleveland Browns were owned by crime syndicate bookmaker Arthur (Mickey) McBride, head of the Continental Racing Wire, the mob’s gambling news service. In 1961, the team was sold to Art Modell, who, among many things, was a partner in a horse-racing stable with one Morris (Mushy) Wexler, whom the Kefauver Committee named one of the “leading hoodlums” in McBride’s wire service.
The late Carroll Rosenbloom, a high roller with a major interest in a mobbed-up Bahamian casino, owned the Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams at different times.
His second wife and widow, entertainer Georgia Frontiere — who had been married five times before latching on to Rosenbloom — inherited control of the Rams and moved them to St. Louis when she got a stadium 96 percent funded by taxpayers. And there is still a real question as to how Carroll R. drowned when witness say they saw two men in wet suits holding him under the surf.
The Youngstown DeBartolo family, long involved in casinos and racetracks, owns the San Francisco 49ers. In the late 1990s, Edward DeBartolo Jr., then head of the 49ers, paid a Louisiana governor $400,000 to get a riverboat casino license.
The late Pete Rozelle, Rancho Santa Fe resident and onetime head of the NFL, deftly tiptoed around team owners’ mob/gambling ties. Rozelle stepped on players suspected of consorting with gamblers (but never told them not to associate with their mobbed-up team owners).
The San Diego Chargers were founded by longtime gambler Barron Hilton, who had both a business and personal relationship with Los Angeles attorney Sidney Korshak, who was described by law enforcement officials as “the link between the legitimate business world and organized crime.” A later owner was Eugene Klein, another Korshak friend with mob and gambling associations.
The late Al Davis, a former Chargers coach who wound up owning the Oakland Raiders, was a business associate of San Diego casino owner Allen Glick. Davis’s survivors still control the Raiders. Several Chargers players got into deals with Glick.
So this love affair with gambling and organized crime and the NFL has been going on since the league was created and before. And I’m getting tired of writing about it. There’s a lot more. And the NFL’s approach is really hypocritical!!!!!
red
Las Vegas now have the NHL and the NFL... Ok when will MLB and the NBA join them? I doubt the NHL will succeed in Vegas...Phoenix is having trouble making money...
The only thing that keeps NFL ratings afloat is Fantasy Football and people watching to see how their Fantasy Players are doing.
There are going to be more Raiders fans in Los Angeles than in Las Vegas, and the Raiders will still be the most popular team in LA, over the Rams and Chargers.
It’s going to be real funny watching a Chargers’ “Home Game” when 90% of the fans in the stadium are rooting for the visiting team.