Five players, including four current (or now-former) Lions, were suspended Friday for violating the NFL’s gambling policy, including three players earning indefinite suspensions that will last at least through the end of the 2023 season.
And on Monday, Boomer revealed exactly how the NFL is able to monitor it all.
“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,” Boomer said. “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.”
The problem, in Boomer’s eyes, is that these players should’ve known better.
“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,” Boomer said. “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.”
So, it’s baffling to him how two of the players, who got six-game suspensions, earned those for gambling on college football while in team facilities, while the other three were whacked for betting on the league itself, reportedly.
This isn’t something new with the rise of gambling apps, either, because Boomer remembers that even in his day, guns and gambling were the two big topics league security personnel would come to training camps to talk to players about.
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“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. “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.”
Gun laws and restrictions were discussed because the laws varied from state to state, so, for instance, a player who lived in an open carry state couldn’t bring their gun to camp in another state if camp was held in a state with different laws.
And still, Boomer said, even back then, you’d be surprised how many people slipped up.
“It's amazing how many players don't understand the laws that are out there,” Boomer said.
We know of five for sure, and three of them have at least 10 months to think about it.
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