Chase Utley Controversial Slide

In the seventh inning of game 2 of the NLDS, there was a very controversial play that occurred at second base. What happened was the Mets were attempting to turn a double play and when Ruben Tejada caught the ball at second base, Chase Utley slid into Tejada to break up the play and the end result was that Tejada broke his leg. Trying to break up a slide is legal, but what is making it controversial is that Utley did not slide towards the bag, but off the bag towards where Tejada was going to make the throw to first base. The result of this slide after the game was Chase Utley receiving a two game suspension. While the slide was against the rules, I don't completely agree with the decision to give Utley a two game suspension. The reason for this is because if Tejada had not broken his leg on the play, then there would more than likely be no consequence for Utley. There have been numerous times where I have seen slides like this and a player received no discipline for it. If the league wants to give Utley a suspension, then they should be consistent with giving players a suspension every time a slide like this happens and not wait until someone get seriously injured to do it.

Sports Stations and Daily Fantasy Sports

ESPN, CBS and other sports news sources have been doing tons and tons of business with DraftKings and FanDuel since they have become popular. It is seemingly impossible to watch a sports channel and not see 1 or 2 daily fantasy sports ads every commercial break. However, with all of the recent news about daily fantasy sports allegations and debate about whether it is gambling or not, this could lead to these news sources thinking again about their deals with these companies. While these couple of negative things may make sports sources think twice, I doubt they would completely cut off any type of deal with DraftKings or FanDuel. Despite the debate about daily fantasy, it still continues to grow week in and week out as the news has not affected whether people use it or not. In fact, directly after all of the news about the insider trading, daily fantasy sports had it's biggest week ever in week 5 of the NFL. Though there has been controversy, the rapid increase in daily sports popularity is too much for sports sources to resist, as they will most definitely keep showing the ads, as they should. Why would they not show ads for the most increasingly popular thing in sports and fantasy sports.

Daily Fantasy Sports Scandal

The big news recently in Daily Fantasy Sports has been about whether or not it is gambling, and now directly following this controversy there has been an insider trading scandal between FanDuel and DraftKings. What happened was a DraftKings employee basically used his insider information in a FanDuel league and ended up winning $350,000. Apparently the DraftKings employee had data about the percentages of players that were being selected in each contest, something that normal people wouldn't be able to see until after their contest started. He used this to choose the best players that a low percentage of people chose so that if these players had a big game, he would have the advantage over everyone else. This is clearly what happened as the employee turned a $25 entry fee into $350,000. What this shows is that the companies don't have knowledge about what their employees are doing, and what information they are allowing their employees to have access to. This is also shows that this could be happening more often, and this might not be the only time an employee has used insider information to get an advantage on the competition. If more people are doing this, then it basically makes some of the games impossible to win, as all of the people with inside information will have a huge advantage over all of the other people in the contest.

Icing Kickers

An unethical part of football would be when opposing teams "ice a kicker." Icing a kicker is when opposing team's head coaches call a timeout right before the ball is hiked. Opposing teams usually do this for potential game winning field goal attempts in order to try and psych out the kicker and make him think more about the kick. In some instances, the opposing team calls a timeout, but the kicker still kicks the field goals and makes it. But then on the real kick on the next play, he ends up missing the field goal and losing the game for his team. There has been a good amount of discussion about whether this is unfair, or just part of the game. I believe icing the kicker is unethical because teams know what they are doing by getting in the head of the opposing kicker and possibly causing him to mess up and lose the game.

Gambling Controversy

Gambling has always been a huge part of the NFL throughout it's history. The current season going on right now is projected to have people bet $95 billion throughout the season. Out of that money, $93 billion of it is projected to be illegally gambled. Since gambling is banned in nearly every state in the United States, people have to go through with their gambling illegally, and people have clearly been getting their bets in. An example of a gambling controversy in the NFL's history would be with an ex player named Jerry Sturm. Jerry Sturm was a Houston Oilers center who was part of one of the two potential game fixing schemes known about in NFL history. Sturm says that back in 1971, he was approached by a former teammate, who was no longer in the league at the point, and was asked to throw the game on December 5th against the Steelers for $10,000. This amount of money may not seem like much today, but back then, Sturm was only making $30,000 a year. The former teammate that offered this money was running back Donnie Stone. Sturm said Stone asked him to snap the ball badly on extra points and field goals, and make an occasional bad snap to the quarterback to blow the game. Sturm ended up turning away the offer and turned Stone into the FBI. Nothing happened to Stone however, as he denied the allegations and got away with it. This was one of the few known times where a gambler has tried to interfere with a game in the NFL's history.

Daily Fantasy Sports Controversy

Within the last two years or so, the rise in the popularity of daily fantasy sports has been astronomical. Not too long ago, barely anyone played daily fantasy sports, or knew about it at all. Now it seems like you can't get through a sports game without 20 commercials from DraftKings and FanDuel each. The main reasons for the recent boom in the popularity of daily fantasy sports is because people see it as a quick and cheap way to win a lot of money. They spend a few dollars and and want to believe they will win and get a lot of money out of a small investment. Another reason that people have flocked to daily sports is because there is no season long commitment. People want a chance to win money every week instead of having to wait a full season to see if they will win some money. So basically the reason everyone wants to play daily fantasy sports is because they are impatient and greedy to sum it all up in one sentence.

Along with the explosion in popularity of daily fantasy sports, has come lots of controversy about whether it is gambling or not and if it should be illegal. In 2006, there was a ruling that said daily fantasy matches are a game of skill, not chance. Since then, people everywhere have challenged this ruling, calling daily fantasy gambling, and wanting it to be outlawed. In my own opinion, I do not think that it is gambling. The reason for this is because it does take a good amount of skill to be successful and have a chance at winning money. You have to know the players in your sports, the match ups and you have to have a strategy going in due to the salary cap you have. Any random person that throws in a lineup obviously has a chance to win, but the likelihood of it happening are slim to none, as there are people that are experts at daily fantasy sports that will more than likely beat out the people that don't know what they are doing.

Daily fantasy sports impacts football a lot, more than any other sport. One of the biggest reasons that daily fantasy sports has exploded the way it has is because of football. There have been people that spent thousands and thousands of dollars every Sunday to try and win big.