Fox Sports: NFL Needs to Come to Terms With Gambling

Kevin Hooshangi is the owner of The Village Pourhouse, a neighborhood sports bar in New York City's East Village. Every weekend, Hooshangi's bar - one of those joints with 20 flat screen TVs, a jukebox blasting AC/DC and All-You-Can-Eat Buffalo wings that you'll find in just about every major American city - airs over 100 college and pro football games. Over the years, Hooshangi's seen it all.

Yet, on Monday afternoon, he spoke of the controversial final moments of Sunday's Pittsburgh-San Diego contest with the reverent tones of a grandfather who'd seen the very first Super Bowl with his own eyes. The scene he saw unfold in his bar was unlike any other he'd ever witnessed.

"For those three to four minutes - between that last touchdown and the refs' overturning the score - it was just pure mayhem in here," explains Hooshangi. "After the Steelers' touchdown return, a bunch of guys in our bar were celebrating like their team had just won the Super Bowl. Then, when the referee came back on the field and said the ruling of the touchdown had been overruled, an entirely different crew of guys in the bar started jumping around, going nuts."

Hooshangi adds, "People got upset when I switched the sound off of the game prematurely, even though the outcome would be unaffected by the officials' review with no time left.

"When I finally put the sound back on and people learned that the Steelers would not be covering the 5-point spread, it was pure chaos. There's no way a real Steelers or Chargers fan could have possibly cared about this particular ruling one bit - the Steelers had won the game either way. And trust me, the people who had the visceral responses to the ruling were not the ones wearing Steelers black and gold or Chargers blue and yellow. To put it simply - all these guys had 'other' interests in the game."

If that description of Sunday's controversial Chargers-Steelers finish comes straight from the horse's mouth, Sirius Satellite radio host Scott Ferrall has heard it from an army of horses over the past 48 hours. On Monday evening, his show's callers wanted to talk about several sports topics - but none more than the final ruling of Sunday's game.

A ruling that, according to R.J. Bell of the Web site PreGame.com, resulted in an estimated $64 million swing in "payouts" across the country.

"They were livid in the Vegas sports books," explains Ferrall. "And if you think that's the only place people were mad, you are tripping."

On Monday, gambling on the NFL wasn't the elephant in the room. It was the room.

Though Jim Nantz and Phil Simms craftily danced around mentioning the dreaded "G" word during Sunday's CBS telecast of the game and Chris Berman and Co. didn't even mention it in their ESPN "Blitz" wrap-up show, Bob Costas made a brief, albeit awkward allusion to the potential financial implications of the refs' ruling during Sunday evening's "Football Night in America" telecast.

By Monday morning, though, there was no avoiding the elephant any longer. It was all anyone wanted to talk about. Blogs and sports radio stations across the country covered the situation like it was Watergate, while the mainstream media began tackling the issue later on in the day as well. By mid-afternoon, ESPN's "Outside the Lines" featured an extensive segment on football and gambling, and Tony Kornheiser discussed the NFL's relationship with point spreads in a surprisingly candid conversation with his co-host on "PTI."

Something can only be "taboo" and go unspoken about for so long. And though not everyone in America has a New Jersey bookie looking to break his knees over an overturned call on Sunday afternoon, few football fans would deny that their Sunday football viewing experience is at least in some way connected to what can be considered gambling on the sport.

Whether it's the point spreads printed in just about every major newspaper's Sunday edition, the $10 survivor pool with the guys at work, or a basic fantasy football league - you'll find few football fans not involved in at least some sort of "interest" other than the winners and losers of the games on Sunday.

The lines can certainly get blurry.

Take, for example, the league's own web site, NFL.com, and its heavily promoted fantasy football product. You had to have been living under a rock this summer to have avoided the constant advertising brigade featuring Warren Sapp that promoted the site's fantasy football game. It was "Saved By Zero" times 10.

On top of hosting a fantasy football product on its site, NFL.com also prominently features articles from Michael Fabiano, a fantasy football "expert" giving "tips" every day of the week. FOXSports.com, CBSSports.com, ESPN.com and NBCSports.com - all the broadcast partners of the NFL - host their own fantasy football products as well.

Though you'll never see mention of actual money on the site (or any of the major sports sites on the 'net), I'm not sure I've ever come across a fantasy football league that didn't have at least some small entrance fee or some sort of monetary prize awarded to winners at the end. It goes unspoken.

Jason Sarney, co-founder of FantasyPhenoms.com, explains, "Fantasy owners don't gamble each week on their teams; they wager their knowledge of football with a group of friends, co-workers, family members or even total strangers over the course of the season. NFL on Sundays has become all about fantasy football."

Sarney adds, "Money is to be won, and fortunes could be made. Forget what that reversed TD did to gamblers. What about the fantasy owners who would have had a "W," on the board if Troy Polamalu's defensive TD held up? The fantasy playoffs are approaching! Fantasy football has become an investment opportunity whether the NFL likes it or not."

With the NBA's recent black eye involving referee Tim Donaghy and the NHL's ugly 2006 issues with Janet Gretzky and Rick Tocchet, the last thing the NFL wants is a national discussion about gambling on its hands. It's bad for public image; it's worse for business.

But when you live by the sword, sometimes you've got to die by the sword. Having network talent dance around the mention of point spreads is all well and good, but when the average American football fan is being inundated by ads during every commercial break to play fantasy football on your site, well, it's a rather shaky tightrope to stroll.

Pots, kettles and the color black. Or something like that.

Of course, there are some who view gambling on point spreads and fantasy football as completely different entities.

Mike Pesca, a sports reporter for NPR, explains, "The NFL needs to have its back up against point-spread wagering. But they should, and have, embraced fantasy football. Fantasy football is a quintessentially brilliant American innovation. Smart people took information, they created rules around and about that information, and they played a game based on the information.

"The game requires skill and luck and engages sports fans in an unprecedented way. Overall, most fantasy wagering is for relatively small amounts of money, and the money is beside the point."

Pesca, himself a fantasy football owner, then adds, "I won my fantasy league last year, and my co-owner never even paid me. He's still my friend - I figure he'll get around to it - but money wasn't the issue. With wagering on spreads, it's only about money. That's the only issue."

Whether you consider fantasy football "gambling" or not, the fact remains - millions of Americans watch football on Sundays for reasons other than whose winning and losing the games straight up.

There was a $64-million swing Sunday evening over a call that had absolutely zero affect on the outcome of the game. Neighborhood sports bars, Las Vegas sports books and the various tentacles of the sports media world were up in arms over the situation.

You know that YouTube clip where the elephant attacks its trainer?

That happened Sunday evening for the National Football League. Fortunately, the NFL survived its fight with the elephant in the room.

But not without its bruises.

Peter Schrager, Fox Sports