NFL Gambling Scandal Unlikely
Jim Derwin |Aug 20,2007
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Unfortunately for the NBA, they are going through a tough time coming off one of their weakest seasons (ratings-wise) and now the Tim Donaghy gambling scandal. The Donaghy scandal has had a ripple effect on all sports, including the NFL. Once I heard that an NBA referee had placed bets on games, my mind immediately thought about all the bad calls I’ve seen in NFL games and couldn’t help but wonder if the fix was on there as well. After much consideration, and while one can never really say never, I’m confident a referee gambling scandal could not happen in the NFL. First of all, the NFL allows instant replay. Each coach can challenge one call per half, and then the booth upstairs reviews all close plays in the last two minutes of every half. NFL football moves extremely fast, as does every professional sport. These athletes are one hundred times quicker than the referees keeping track of them, so obviously mistakes are going to be made. It’s only fair that overturning calls on the field be an option for the teams. Having the ability to overturn a referee’s call makes it very difficult for an NFL ref to alter the outcome of a game for gambling purposes.Secondly, there are as many as seven referees on the football field monitoring the action compared to only three for basketball. If there is one crooked ref in a basketball game, they are twice as likely to be able to make a game changing call as one crooked ref in football. All professional football referees in the vicinity of a close call will confer to make sure they get the call right. If one of those refs has an agenda, he better be one hell of a salesman to convince the other two or three guys that what they saw was wrong. An NBA official may only have to make his case to one other person which if adamant enough could sway the other ref to their viewpoint. My last point that makes me certain the NFL refs aren’t fixing games is that football is just too big in America. The NFL only has 17 weeks of a regular season, essentially one month of a post season and all of these games are seen by millions more people than NBA games. Not to mention, the Super Bowl is the biggest television spectacle in the world. If a referee was making calls to bolster another team’s chance of winning or to control the score, chances are someone is going to notice. Sure, referees make bad calls and we boo them to no end, but I can assure you it’s from human error and not shadiness.
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