With the advent of legal sports gambling, there have been a pair of notable suspensions for NFL players who chose to participate in it against the league’s rules.
After wide receiver Calvin Ridley received a season-long suspension last year, there were five current players — Detroit Lions’ Jameson Williams, CJ Moore, Stanley Berryhill and Quintez Cephus, as well as the Washington Commanders’ Shaka Toney — who received varying forms of punishment last week for their gambling violations last season.
The league clearly takes gambling seriously, doing nothing to risk the integrity of the game and how it is perceived on the outside. And according to WFAN radio host Boomer Esiason, who played decades before gambling on games was legal, that’s been true for a long time.
“They would send a league security personnel and he would come and he would talk to us about two things: one was gambling, and about the people that hang around the teams and want inside information, and you have to be very, very aware of that,” Boomer said on his show Monday. “Teams know who the local gamblers are, believe it or not; back then, they knew who everybody was, and teams would hire private detectives and they would follow you and they would make sure that whatever you were doing, you weren’t breaking any sort of gambling rules.”
In the digital age, the manner in which the league tracks its players’ potential gambling activity is a bit more sophisticated, per Esiason:
“The interesting thing is that the NFL uses a company called Genius Sports and this is how Calvin Ridley got caught. They’re a third party and they’re the ones that are monitoring all the gambling that’s going on. I’m sure that they have every single name of every player, every coach, every employee within the NFL, because all the employees in the NFL, including Roger Goodell, all fall under the same discipline and rules they all have to follow.
“Each year, the league does inform personnel of policies that prohibit them from placing or facilitating bets on any NFL game, practice, or other events, such as the draft. Players are allowed, however, to bet on other sports, but they may not gamble in the workplace or while working, which includes traveling to games, or while making promotional appearances on the league’s behalf as well.”
Williams and Berryhill are suspended for six games, while Moore, Cephus and Toney — a former star at Penn State — are suspended indefinitely, but for at least one year.
Want to bet on the NFL?
See the best NJ Sports Betting sites
Those suspended indefinitely were found to be betting on NFL games, while those suspended for six games placed bets on college football games while inside their team’s facilities, which is against the league’s policy.
The Lions released Cephus and Moore shortly after the news was released.
MORE NFL:
– How NFL is planning for Jets to acquire Aaron Rodgers from Packers
Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.
Brian Fonseca may be reached at [email protected].
©2023 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit nj.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.