One of many greatest names in NFL officiating revealed that there have been makes an attempt to repair video games for playing functions.
Dean Blandino, present FOX Sports activities guidelines analyst and former NFL VP of Officiating, appeared on the “Awful Announcing” podcast to debate how legalized sports activities playing has affected current-day officers.
Whereas Blandino was unable to touch upon whether or not it has impacted the job, he did acknowledge the heightened scrutiny across the league’s vetting of potential referees. In accordance with Blandino, the strict protocols round referees are nonetheless at the moment in place.
“They look at all of your business associations. They look for conflicts of interest — all of that, bank accounts, everything,” Blandino advised host Brandon Contes. “And there’s checks during the season. And so, 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 are their 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?”
Most leagues have had their fair proportion of crushing playing investigations. Pete Rose continues to be serving a lifelong ban for betting on Reds video games. The NBA handled a game-fixing scandal throughout 2007’s investigation into Tim Donaghy.
In accordance with Blandino, the league has gotten near having one in every of its personal.
“We’ve had situations where people were approached,” Blandino mentioned. “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 gonna 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.
“They’re not allowed to go…if they have to go to their casino, maybe in their other job, there’s a speaking engagement, it’s at a casino they can’t go in the sportsbook. They have to let the NFL know that they’re gonna be in Las Vegas for this event and are gonna be staying at wherever. There a lot of controls in place.”
The NFL officially approved 4 sportsbooks in 2021 – FOX Guess, BetMGM, PointsBet, and WynnBet – and agreed to a few official partnerships with Caesars, DraftKings, and FanDuel. With such shut ties, it is smart why the league would need to be as strict round playing as attainable. In September, the league updated its playing coverage to levy harsher penalties in opposition to gamers who wager on their very own staff. Now we all know referees are being protected against the repair, too.
