Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, Nate Tice and Charles Robinson discuss the latest headlines involving players betting in baseball & basketball and what professional football may need to do to protect itself from similar scandals. Hear the full conversation on the “Zero Blitz” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video transcript
As a dabbler, let’s say in the art of gambling, if you want to call it that, uh, it was interesting to me because we’ve had a couple of big stories in sports right now and, uh, uh, Jay Porter was banned for life in April after purposefully limiting his own performance in a game in which he bet unders on prop bets related to himself like that.
We, that’s real like there’s nothing that takes this away.
We have baseball involved in this also as Padres infielder to Capita Marcano banned for life from MLB yesterday for placing bets on the Pittsburgh Pirates while he was on the Pirates il last year, he placed 387 baseball related bets over a 13 month stretch.
Only 14.3% of his wager.
It’s not very good at this.
So, and, and, and, you know, we’ve all listened to a summer full of showha speculation, right?
But you start looking at it and saying, hey, I mean, you see Rob, we were at the Super Bowl.
Uh, Roger Goodell was asked up up up front about this.
Shereen Williams asked about gambling in these games.
Like there has to be a level of the NFL that continues to be concerned with how many professional athletes and other sports right now are getting busted doing what they know they cannot do.
Yeah, especially prop bets.
And that’s the thing with the, with the porter situation.
What was interesting about this?
He had a couple of games where he removed himself early, right.
And, and basically what happened was Vegas noticed Vegas was like, wait a minute, like when we’re looking at a prop bets for this particular day, there, there’s this prop bet on, on porter that’s way outside the norm, you know, of what the, what the bets are.
And then it happened again.
And then at that point you’re like, ok, like this is, this is twice with the same guy in kind of a same similar situation where he removes himself from a game and thus falls under, right?
The prop bets.
And to me, I, I have said over and over, I think it is a half measure by any league and, and very much so by the NFL to ever allow any athlete while they are playing a professional sport to gamble, period.
I mean, Michael Jordan golfing at the craps table.
I mean, you know, betting on sports, whatever it is because you work in a profession in which people are gambling on you, they are gambling on your performance and you going out and gambling only opens a window for you to basically fall into a situation that’s being alleged, um, by the feds in terms of porter that you fall into gambling debt and then you are now vulnerable because you gotta pay back this gambling debt again allegedly.
And how do you do that if you don’t have the money?
Well, you have the opportunity to fix and that’s what it is like we can say whatever we want about.
Oh, well, he affected prop bets or whatever you are fixing something that’s happening.
That’s supposed to be unfixable.
Right?
When we watch live sports, you’re supposed to believe it’s real that these players aren’t doing something manufactured in order to affect a betting market.
If you do that, you are fixing a portion of a game and thus the game itself is in some way fixed.
And so in my mind, I know people argue, well, well, hey, athletes should be allowed to bet like anybody else.
I disagree.
You are in a different job than anybody else.
There are jobs that people hold where you’re not allowed to just go and do everything that everybody else is allowed to do in particular.
When you know, you work for the DEA, there’s certain things you can’t do when you work in, uh, professional sports, there’s, there’s things that we at Yahoo Sports aren’t allowed to do because we work for Yahoo, right?
We can’t go and take another job doing this or that.
I mean, there’s, there are workplace rules.
So in my mind, I think this porter situation is a very um glaring example of the worst case scenario for leagues is that a player fell into debt allegedly and then went out and did you know, fix a portion of a game allegedly to mitigate gambling debt that they had fallen into?
It’s, it’s, it’s wild to me that the NFL has not sat there and just said, look, we got to take a hardline stance on this.
Go ahead and bet the day after you’re out of league, you file your retirement papers, you’re good.
You know, you’re off of a team.
Um, you’re, you’re not in the league system, you’re not on any kind of a, of a squad fine.
You wanna gamble great, but you gotta make sure you’re done, you’re done with our league and then you can do whatever you want after that.
Yeah, I growing up, I mean, shoot it was, you don’t even talk about it.
You can’t even step, you couldn’t even step in a sports book.
Uh, uh, the old NFL rules.
Uh, my dad got fined for referencing a field goal at the end of the game and saying some people are going to be happy about that and got fined for that.
That, that’s how strict it used to be because NFL kind of, you know, if you ever look in the origins of the NFL, uh, uh, just look at how some of these owners acquired some of their teams.
Uh, they never wanted to bring that up, they never wanted to bring up like this is a real product.
These are like this is this, if you want to watch professional wrestling, watch it fixed, you know, or you want to watch, this is why the NFL want to be different than boxing back in the day and prize fighting back in the day because 5050 shot, this match will be fixed that we’re, you know, probably going to be trying to bet on, on, on, you know, on the black market and everything.
Um But to me it’s just the NFL, at least football harder to do with 22 people on the field and not everybody touching the ball.
But prop bets, prop bets and everything is, is a ridiculous thing.
To me, the rule I’ve always liked is just kind of what I grew up with was that if you are in a league, you can’t bet on sports, period.
Um, there always the loophole was horse, uh, horse wagering because it was permut.
Uh, again, look at the owners and of the NFL and how they acquire their money in horse racing.
So that’s why there was always a loophole for that, but in table games and everything, but that’s how I grew up.
And I still have kind of considered that even if they’ve changed it and they made it lax and I’m all about like you know, players having more power over their lives and not, you know, maybe Draconian rules over them.
But to me it’s kind of like, uh, don’t even bring questions to it.
Like when Jameson Williams got hit with the stuff last year, everyone’s like, man, that’s harsh.
He was betting on other stuff.
It’s like, no, but it’s a, it’s zero tolerance.
They get told this shit, you know, 20 times, like, do not bet on this because you’re bringing, you’re bringing a question mark to all our livelihoods.
I mean, like you because now people draw a question, all the rest fix.
They’re doing this.
I mean, just look what else is happening, right?
We, we, we fit, you’re gonna move to Vegas, you know, Nate, you live, you live in Vegas, right?
My entire life.
I will never forget the second Vegas Duke game, ok?
And the second running rebels, Larry Johnson, Stacy Augmon.
And I will never so hard my entire life.
I will never forget, hey, watch the turnovers early in that game.
Watch, you know, watch this, watch that, hey, remember the famous hot tub photo of Larry Johnson.
These guys in, in the hot tub with a gambler like, and, and to me that’s, that’s exactly what you don’t want and, and that was, that was like 1990.
Ok?
This is, this is 34 years later.
Now.
I I’m just telling you, it only takes one porter in the NFL to pull himself out of a game to get hurt to.
Hey.
Oh, I, I, I’m dinged, take me to the blue tent.
Fail a concussion test doesn’t come back or whatever.
It only takes one running back fumbling a couple of times.
That look a little weird.