Crossing Broad
We did a Wednesday story, titled Jordan Davis Touchdown Leads this Week’s Episode of “What the Hell is Mike Florio Talking About?”. The genesis is a Florio appearance on Dan Patrick’s show, in which he said the following about the Thicc Six:
“Jordan Davis, here’s the reality, this is the direct result of the NFL going from hating and shunning anything to do with gambling, to jumping right in bed and loading the pockets. They’re the guy where, you know the old game show when you go into the booth and money is flying everywhere, they’re grabbing as many dollars as they can while they’re there, but yeah, we’re all aware now of the point spread. We’re all aware of the ramification. And how many millions of dollars changed hands because Jordan Davis decided to do, not the smart thing. The smart thing – the game’s over, just fall down, you got the win. In theory somebody comes up from behind and does the Don Beebe / Leon Lett thing, the ball comes out the Rams take it the other way. The smart thing to do is to go down. He runs it in for a touchdown, the Eagles cover. Uh oh! It was perfectly legitimate. But when you open Pandora’s Box, this is the kind of stuff that flies out. And people are aware of this. It’s just part of the stuff the NFL needs to be concerned about, and sometimes I wonder, Dan, are they as concerned as they should be.”
Florio then came out to criticize the response, saying that “media people” are “deliberately distorting” the conversation:
The message was as clear as can be? Well let’s look at the second half of the video clip and see if it adds anything at all to the context:
(follow up question, what changed about the NFL’s stance on gambling)
“Well, they were holding the rope as tightly as they could against gambling. When different states were trying to change the federal law from 1992, that basically said no states other than the states that currently have it, Nevada, can have sports wagering. That became different levels and types of legal challenges until New Jersey finally won. But back in the days when the NFL was fighting it, that’s when the commissioner would actually say, paraphrasing, ‘if legalized gambling is widespread, normal incidents of the game will be suspected to have been influenced by other things.’ Whether it’s a bad call, or a guy not going down when basic football expectations would be you’ve won the game, go down. But the normal instances of the game become fodder for ‘the fix is in.’ Once they recognized, I believe, how much money could be made – and the thing that never gets talked about is the fact that owners are separately allowed to own up to 5% of a company that owns a sportsbook, and they won’t tell you who owns what, but they’re allowed to...
