In the 1960s the National Football League had many players who were connected to organized crime or suspected of being involved in fixing games.
Two decades before the league had scandals two players from the New York Giants were bribed to throw a championship game against the Chicago Bears. Their bribe amounts? Two thousand dollars and $2,500.
By the 1980s this problem had largely vanished. The reason? NFL players went from being paid what by modern terms would be considered chicken feed to the huge salaries that they earn today.
An article by Jack Moore in Vice Sports recently chronicled how this came about.
Today players like Rob Gronkowski have their own fantasy football leagues, an activity that 50 years ago (assuming there had been an internet) would probably have gotten him suspended.
Moore points out that Alex Karras; a player who purchased a part interest in a famous Detroit sports bar was forced to sell that interest in the 1960s. It was a tough choice for Karras, who was actually bringing in $18,000 a year; twice what he was being paid to play football.
NFL players typically had careers of no more than five years and were paid low salaries, so the temptation to accept bribes was high. In the 1970s due to revenues from televised games and competition from the U.S. Football League, average NFL salaries began climbing, from $27,500 in 1972 to $299,616 by 1989. Today rookies are paid more than $400,000 a year.
Today’s odds makers prefer honest games and so, apparently do players, who are paid huge salaries and have their every action watched closely on dozens of cameras focused on the gridiron. That means that even if someone wanting to fix the game had enough money to pay a player to throw it, he probably wouldn’t be able to get bookies to go along.
According to top football handicapper Mort Olshan, “To make the risk worthwhile, the high-salaried athlete would expect a sizable payoff.”
These days there is sports betting and game fixing, but it is largely confined to college games where, technically speaking, players are not paid.
That doesn’t mean that the NFL doesn’t constantly guard against the return of the scandals of the 1940s and current contracts allow for harsh penalties against players who accept a bribe or agree to fix a game.
