The Calvin Ridley Suspension
When this news broke on Monday I was so happy. Finally, important news broke at a reasonable timeframe for me to make a comic about it. Anyway, this is why now we have to talk about this instead of the news everyone actually cares about until at least Friday. Please sign my petition to make news breaking on Tuesdays and Thursdays illegal.
So Calvin Ridley got suspended indefinitely for gambling on football games. I want to say upfront I understand why they had to do that. You have to prevent that. Once the game itself is compromised in such a way, outcomes become untrustworthy. No, Calvin wasn’t playing football during the time when he placed bets, but players are privvy to insider information that the rest of people do not have. They know the state of their team better than we do. The integrity of the game is pretty much at stake when the players involved have money involved that isn’t just their own contracts. So I’m actually perfectly okay with Ridley getting punished.
What seems baffling is the level of punishment. A full year? Possibly more? Maybe less after some negotiations? That seems extreme, right? Maybe a few games. 4? 6? Half a season at most seems fair. Ridley wasn’t betting on games while he was active with the Falcons, it was during his break, and it wasn’t a ton of money (for him anyway). It seemed like he acted on his own, just placing some bucks on a few games the same way most people would. As far as bets go from insiders, this feels about as safe as it could possibly get. I feel like there might be more to this we don’t know about or the NFL is freaking out over a problem they have effectively nurtured.
This news comes after several years of the NFL and sports leagues in general beginning to adopt sports betting. I don’t have much of an opinion on sports betting. I don’t do it myself, and I don’t really have an issue with the people who do. I do understand it’s probably a bad thing for addicts to now have easy, legal access to these sorts of betting apps but the money was already flowing illegally before this and some law regulation might help. But we’ve spent the past year being bombarded with those stupid Caesers Sportsbook ads and several years of Fanduel/Draftkings ads and now the very economy the NFL has nutured to make money is causing them this problem. This is only going to get worse, right?
Does anyone think Ridley is the only player who’s gambled on the games? Or will be? He’s probably just the first to get caught. Before this, you probably had to be smart about it. Give your bets to a designated loyal in-between guy who made the bets on your behalf, that sorta thing. Now that betting is easy any doofus with a smartphone like Calvin Rdley can just plop a few bucks down. We might start seeing a lot of these suspensions pop up. More deserving ones at that.
On top of all of this noise, the Dolphins owner is still accused of bribing Brian Flores to lose football games on purpose, a massive accusastion that is not getting nearly enough investigation and reporting. Ridley almost seems like the NFL trying to distract people. This whole thing is a weird mess and there is probably time for things to get weirder. But it’ll probably have to wait now that everyone is hype on the Russ trade and Rodgers news, which the NFL is probably thrilled about.
I am so confused by Calvin Ridley’s statement that he only gambled $1500 and doesn’t have a gambling problem when he literally gambled his yearly salary and most likely future income because of how much time he will have missed before he will even be eligible again. As a Falcon fan I was really hoping for that first round draft pick for trading him. Oh well.
Also I want to know did he at least win his bet
An 8 team parlay? No way in hell. You get better odds playing the lottery.
I didn’t even look into it. 8 team parlay against the spread pays generally about 80 to 1. Not good odds but way better than the lottery because I have hit it more than a dozen times and never hit Power Ball
Stupid decision, on Ridley’s part. All the different sports out there to bet on, even college football, if he didn’t want to leave his wheelhouse, and he chose to bet on NFL games. It’s amazing how blindly stupid so many of these athletes are. I’d like to suggest the NFL make a rule that only players with college degrees can join the NFL, but I know a lot of these athletes cheat their way through classes, as well, so that wouldn’t really make a difference.
Also, the punishment was too harsh. Players who beat their wives/girlfriends get weaker punishments than this.
There should be no rules against betting on your own team to win. Betting on your own team to lose, though, is obviously sketchy and the hammer should fall swiftly.
No, because then the stakes are different for the players involved in the games they have money on versus the games they don’t and that makes it harder on the fans who are betting on the games. It has to be a blanket ban.
Football and basketball betting is done on point spreads, not straight up. The gambling bugaboo is point shaving.
And regardless, even if it was just straight up, what’s that mean when you’re not betting on your team? Will you play differently if you don’t have that little extra stake in it?
>Will you play differently if you don’t have that little extra stake in it?
What if you did? Would you suddenly be seeing guys who force players to bet getting called the best coaches?
>Football and basketball betting is done on point spreads, not straight up. The gambling bugaboo is point shaving.
Look, I’m all for dunking on the NFL, but I don’t know what you want them to do about Ross on such short notice. They said they were going to investigate it and everyone in the media who knows even a bit about this thinks that if they find anything he’ll be forced to sell. I’m cautiously optimistic that this is what’ll happen but now Mike Florio who’s been the loudest about it was right about Russ, which means he’s reached his yearly quota for things he’s right about. Still, it’s too early to say they’re applying a different standard to the owners than the players.
Ridley’s suspension isn’t without precedent, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras were both suspended for the 1963 season for betting on games.
Mongo just pawn in game he had a parlay on the Over and Eagles covering the spread.
It’s in the CBA. If you get caught gambling on NFL games while you’re on a roster you’re out for a year minimum. It’s overly harsh, but it’s supposed to be punitive to discourage it from happening and the players agreed to it. Everyone knows the rule and the punishment. Even if they don’t have a sign up in the locker room like MLB requires, the NFL sends someone to every team every year to put them on notice.
I feel like a whole year is too harsh, I mean did he bet on Falcons games or other games? Even then he wasn’t betting games while he was playing. Plus even if he did bet on Falcons games, Football (Or the Falcons in General) is way to unpredictable even if you have insider knowledge. His punishment should be 4 Games tops.
Yes, he bet on Falcons games. He said he never bet against them, but that’s irrelevant, because football betting is on point spreads not straight up.
i’m no expert, but can’t you take the money line on straight up w/l in nfl games?
After what happened with Pete Rose, this is all on Calvin Ridley. His entitled attitude after-the-fact didn’t help much either.
Oh, dear God. I’m on Goodell’s side?!
As a Dolphins fan. I really hope Ross is forced to sell Miami to literally anyone else for his bullshit.
Careful what you wish for … if there’s anything we should have learned over the last two years, it can always get worse.
Not “literally anyone else” but I agree with the sentiment and so does the rest of the fanbase from what I’ve seen
Who was the Dolphins’ last good owner? Huizinga? I mean, outside of football he wasn’t a good person, but just as an owner was he good?
I wouldn’t go as far as calling him “good” but he was a better owner than Ross and Loria combined, not like that’s saying a lot
The Packers, Seahawks, and Broncos aren’t signing your petition, Dave.
Hope I don’t start a big argument here, but… can we suspend congresspeople for a full season for betting on the stock market?
It’s going to be one year. Does it seem harsh, kinda, but it’s also in line with all the other gambling related suspensions in NFL history. Alex Karras and Paul Hornung got suspended for a full season, while Art Schlicter got 13 months, which is equivalent.
Yeah, suspensions have all been weird since Goodell took over, but this one isn’t out of line with historical suspensions. Ridley is a total idiot for not going through a proxy, though.
Waiting for someone with a username “Kirk Cousin’s Huge Ass”.
Do you believe Pete Rose should be reinstated?
Pete Rose should be in the hall of fame and it’s a joke that he isn’t
I think Rose (Bonds, Clemens, etc.) should get in, but only posthumously and without any fanfare or friends/family invited.
The stats and impact as a player are kind of ridiculous to ignore, but denying him the honor of getting to experience it seems like a reasonable enough punishment.
Rose, yes. Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Sosa… no. What Rose did didn’t affect his all time hits record or on-field performance, but the other four using performance enhancing drugs 100% did affect their on-field performance. And in Bonds case, he didn’t need it. He was already a Hall of Famer before he started juicing, but I guess he felt he had to do it in order to keep playing at the level he did when he was younger. Clemens is probably in the same boat… I’m not sure how old he was when he started juicing.
Too bad there are some juicers in though.
The whole “1 year is too harsh” take is absoulute horse shit. That is the rule and the punishment. It is laid out in front of players, and he still did it. He doesn’t get off easy for any of the bullshit reasons people are tossing out either.
Have you gotten my E-mail, Dave?
Dave, at this point the joke for Friday’s comic should be about all the news wrecking your working comic idea
The problem with the Ross situation is that Flores hasn’t given anything more to work with than his allegation.