Confronting the audience about sports is way bigger than just headlines and controversy.
With the rise of legalized sports gambling, subsequent gambling scandals, and millions of dollars being paid to fired coaches, the question naturally arises: Does integrity in sports still matter?
On Monday, Seton Hall's Center for Sports Media (CSM) hosted a virtual panel addressing that very question. It was moderated by Bob Ley, the legendary sportscaster and executive founder of the CSM.
Ley opened the panel with a statement that set the tone for the rest of the night: “Loyalty is a closed closet of integrity.”
With that statement, Ley questioned the values of sports and whether it can be forcefully reshaped financially. Joined by 11-time Emmy award-winning journalist Andrea Kremer , sports business journalist Darren Reovell, and Executive Director of the Jeffrey Morad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova University Andrew Brandt, Ley spearheaded a conversation on the reality of modern athletics and the almost trillion-dollar market(s) that continuously surrounds it.
During the conversation, the panelists reminisced on how unrecognizable the sports environment is compared to a decade ago. Kremer found that the turning point was back in 2012, “When the NCAA, NBA, NHL, MLB, and the NFL sued the state of New Jersey to prevent sports betting from being permitted all around the country.”
Citing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s statement from the lawsuit, Kremer explained that the leagues’ motivation behind doing so was because they believed “if gambling is freely permitted on sporting events, [then] normal incidents of the game such as bad snaps, dropped passes, turnovers, penalties, and playcalling inevitably will fuel speculation, distrust, and accusations of point shaving and game fixing.”
But in 2018, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) was overturned by the Supreme Court, allowing states to legalize betting. As such, leagues and networks had to quickly embrace this change, especially with teams like the Raiders and Golden Knights moving to Las Vegas shortly after.
Brandt explained that the federal government decided not to impinge on a state’s right to sports betting, which he believes the professional leagues were against. But once Justice Samuel Alito ruled PASPA unconstitutional, the tables turned. As the monetization of sports betting grew stronger, the NFL could not resist, as FanDuel and DraftKings blitzed the NFL with advertising.
As such, Kremer and Brandt then discussed prop bets—that is, wagers on individual player statistics, which poses a major threat to the integrity of athletes and coaches in this sports betting era. Compared to game outcomes, individual stats are much easier to control.
For example, heading into Cleveland Brown’s rookie quarterback, Shedeur Sanders' first career start in week 12 of the NFL season, DraftKings offered 11 separate bets based on his stats. These ranged from rushing yards to passing yards, all of which could be heavily manipulated by coaches’ playcalling, players, and even the referees during the game when throwing penalty flags.
Professional athletes could very well be vulnerable themselves within their own locker room. Kremer recalled an incentive pool created in 1996 by ESPN called “Smash for Cash.” The pool was in favor of the athletes in the locker rooms hitting certain statistics during their regular season games. The teams themselves could not participate in this because of the salary cap, but the players in the locker room could. These players could display, what Darren Rovell called, a “win-at-all-cost mindset” when taking these incentives into consideration.
Much like the pros, college sports face its own integrity crisis. The panel questioned why regular students may place bets, but student-athletes cannot. Meanwhile, the House settled on a NIL spending limitation with a salary cap. Yet, some universities already plan to exceed this cap with bonuses they assume the athlete won’t hit—while boosters are prepared to pay fines if they do so.
The NCAA struggles to combat these loopholes, which leads to bills like the College Athletics Reform Act (CARA) to protect universities from themselves.
The conversation then shifted to the coaching market, particularly as it relates to LSU. Multimillion-dollar buyouts have become the standard in college football. With the firing of Brian Kelly, the university is paying him, as well as Ed Orgeron, while hiring Lane Kiffin to a $72 million contract. Universities justify these payouts as investments because sports are these universities' storefronts, which is the fastest way to build their brand.
Every panelist agreed that the system is strained under the weight of financial incentives. Within this era, loyalty to these teams is thinning. Between transfers, NIL moves, and gambling incentives, fandom has become more transactional in this era. Brandt expresses the frustration with this transactional era of young people being satisfied with athletes moving from school to school.
“Yeah, he was at this school last year, and now we got him at this school,” Brandt said. “Then he’ll go to that school.”
This is becoming a social norm within college athletics, showing that the meaning of sports is changing just as quickly as the money behind it.
The question of integrity in sports is deeper than just loyalty. Ley closed the panel by stating that integrity is a system that needs to be constantly nurtured in sports and not just an inherent component of athletics at both the college and professional levels.
Jayden Bracket is a writer for The Setonian’s Sports section. He can be reached at jayden.bracket@student.shu.edu.
