Ridley In Hot Water

Gambling on sports. This is nothing new in society. It's been going on since the early 1900s. It started with horse racing and has now grown to cover all sports. You can bet on just about anything in the sports world and in many different ways. It one thing for the fans to do it. Its another when the athletes themselves do it. This applies to Calvin Ridley.

The Atlanta Falcons receiver has been suspended by the league for the 2022 season for placing bets on NFL games during the 2021 season. According to the story, Ridley placed $1,500 on bets during the season. Now its going to cost him his $11 million salary for next season.

According to sources, the league determined that Ridley placed multilegged parlay bets involving three, five and eight games that included the Falcons to win via his mobile device out of state, and learned of Ridley's betting activity through its relationships within the legal sports betting industry. This now makes five players who have been suspended over betting. The others were Alex Karras (1963), Paul Hornung (1963), Art Schlichter (1983) and Josh Shaw (2019).

Hey I'll give credit where it is due to the NFL for being able to take care of this quickly and they've done it in the past with betting on the game. In this regards the NFL is consistent with their stance on it and good for them in that regards, which is a very weird thing to say these days with the NFL and making some of its rulings as it has in the past.

That's a little different from how the NFL hands out discipline in other regards in the league. It been well documented how relaxed the league has been at times in punishing its players for doing things they shouldn't be doing. This they got right at least and have been consistent with. Some of the tweets that Ridley put out also make me wonder a little bit. He was seen making jokes in light of the suspension. Which is not a good sign for him and shows me that he isn't in the right frame of mind to be able to play and be the weapon for the Falcon that he was two seasons ago.

But it does leave one to wonder, is there a bigger issue at hand here with gambling? This we found out about, but what is going on that hasn't been discovered by the league, or us fans? There's more to this then meets the eye at the moment I'm sure. But this really makes us think and hopefully it can help get Ridley to figure things out so he can stay on the field.