Gambling jones

 The NFL yesterday suspended four Detroit Lions and Washington defensive end Shaka Toney for violating the league's gambling policy, and, gee, who didn't see this coming? Also, the NFL has a gambling policy?

What would that be, exactly? "Do as we say, not as we do"?

Because, listen, you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas and all that, and the NFL laid down with the mutts awhile ago. A league that once rightly saw opening itself to gamblers as an expressway to its own Black Sox scandal now not only welcomes the gamblers, it does bidness with them.

Or maybe you missed it when Jamie Foxx hawking Bet MGM became as much an NFL fixture now as Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow. Or when the NFL became partners in 2021 with not one but FOUR sportsbooks: BetMGM, FOX Bet, PointsBet and WynnBET.

That's a lot of gettin' cozy with gamblin' folk for a sports monolith that once wanted nothing to do with them.

And, yes, times have changed and sportsbooks are big business now, and totally legit besides. The NFL even has a team in Vegas now. Think Bugsy Siegel isn't having a good laugh about that somewhere in eternity's void?

Easiest prediction in the world, given all of the above, that players eventually would get sucked into the betting world themselves. And so Calvin Ridley being suspended for betting on NFL games last year begets Toney and Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore of the Lions being suspended indefinitely yesterday for betting on NFL games. And Lions wide receivers Jameson Williams and Stanley Berryhill being suspended six games apiece for mobile betting on college football at the Lions' facility.

(Which, frankly, I don't understand. What difference does it make where they pulled out their phones and bet on Whatsamatta U., other than optics? And if optics matter, why is the NFL involved with sportsbooks at all? Because those optics ain't exactly pretty.)

In any case, this is a classic example of having your cake and eating it too. The NFL wants the revenue stream sportsbooks provide, but it also wants us to think theirs is a straight game whose players don't do what it encourages its audience to do. The league has no problem with gambling, but stands foursquare against its potential taint.

The trick is promoting one while with a straight face condemning the other. And maybe someday they'll master it.

Wouldn't hold my breath, though.