Former NFL Exec Says Refs Have Been Approached By GamblersLeague Has Put Extensive Measures In Place For Officials |
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Sports leagues may have gotten on the sports betting bandwagon over the last few years, but are still harboring major concerns about game integrity. The NFL’s former vice president of officiating noted last week that some referees have indeed been approached at times about swaying games to help gamblers.
Dean Blandino was in charge of the NFL’s officiating from 2013-17 and confirmed recently to the Awful Announcing podcast that referees had been approached on occasion to make calls that might benefit those with some action on the game.
“We’ve had situations where people were approached,” he said. “We’ve always told our game officials because they’re in hotels — they’re traveling around during the season — we didn’t want them wearing NFL-branded gear. We didn’t want them to be inconspicuous because someone sees them and ‘Oh, those are the NFL officials,’ and then you never know. You don’t know who you’re going to come across. And they know that they’re supposed to go to NFL security if something like that happens. And that has happened in the past.”
Plenty Of Scrutiny
The NFL has yet to see any sports betting scandals involving officials. However, the incidents apparently added extra scrutiny for officials from the league.
“They look at all of your business associations,” Blandino said. “They look for conflicts of interest — all of that, bank accounts, everything. And there’s checks during the season. They’ll look at if a game official has $10 in their bank account on Friday, and then they work a game, and now there’s $100,000. That’s a red flag, right?
“So, you’re checking those things. You’re monitoring the betting lines and looking at how calls impact those lines and the individual officials that are involved in more of those calls. It’s a massive, massive undertaking. Because what the league doesn’t want and what we never wanted was a situation like what happened with the NBA, right?”
Blandino is referencing former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who resigned in 2007 and was imprisoned after the FBI discovered he had bet on games and made calls that affected the outcomes. Donaghy has since stated that there were others involved as well, and that the NBA had knowledge of game-fixing. The NBA denied the accusations, stressing that Donaghy was found to have acted alone.
While officials have been clean so far, the NFL has seen numerous player-involved betting issues over the last year. Many of those led to suspensions and a reassessment of the league’s gambling policy in October. Players now face harsher penalties for violating the rules.
The possible use of insider information for gambling purposes made some headlines over the last week after an employee with the Jacksonville Jaguars allegedly embezzled $22 million from the team. At least some of that used to gamble in high-stakes daily fantasy contests.
“A league review uncovered no evidence indicating any inside information was used or that any game was compromised in any way,” NFL spokesman Alex Riethmiller told ESPN.
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