NFL Kickoff Night: Chiefs vs Ravens & New Betting Rules

NFL Opening Night: Chiefs vs. Ravens big help for you on a weekly basis. We'll have that for you coming up in about 40 minutes from now. But we begin with tonight's game in the National Football League. And look, they've they're opening up with a good one. It's the Kansas City Chiefs again on opening night. If you haven't been paying any attention over the last few months, the Chiefs are three point favorites tonight, a total of 46.5, 46.5. Is the game going into night. New kickoff rules. Also first time we're going to see these in an NFL game. So it should be a lot of fun to watch. Naturally they've had a lot of time to prepare for this. And Andy Reid, the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs happy with where things stand heading into Thursday Night Football. So before the challenge of playing the Ravens good football team, we know that had a good week of practice. Guys are ready to go, I go in saying we're going to play. Well that's how that's my that's how I go into every game. But, no different here. Yeah. I'm curious to see you know, what we've got. I mean, that's always, I think that's probably with every player, every coach, every fan, every media person curious to see what you have and how you how you handle everything. But that's the best part about it. We'll see how it goes. Should be fun tonight. And of course in game Live and Gabe tonight we'll have you covered College Sports Legal Battle on all of the action and live updates. As far as where sports betting options are now, as far as college football and college sports is concerned, we've seen a new landscape. We've seen players now being paid. We've seen a transfer portal like no other. And maybe, just maybe, we're about to see even more as a judge is going to hear the NCAA case on objections today. Now, there's a California based federal judge that's overseeing these antitrust lawsuits that could potentially reshape college sports for the first time on Thursday. There's a judge that's going to ask questions, gather information from plaintiffs, defendants and other parties to decide whether to grant preliminary approval for a settlement between the NCAA, itfive power conferences, and a class of former and current Division one athletes. A lot of players played the game previously and never were paid and used their name and likeness for many, many years. This would be a groundbreaking case if indeed it happens. Trying to determine whether or not these student athletes were actually employees for many years, so stay tuned. Controversy in the NFL: Washington Commanders Scandal This would be a huge, huge monetary settlement to all of the college athletes that were involved. Meanwhile, we've got some breaking news from the National Football League. The Washington Commanders have fired an employee who made comments about a team's players being anti-gay, accuses Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones of being racist and anti-gay as well called NFL commissioner Roger Goodell a $50 million puppet while the team also fired its vice president of content, Raul Entin. Just now, who has been with the organization for four years for comments that he made to an undercover reporter for the Oak Leaf Mia Group. According to a social media video. And admit the reporter on the dating app hinge and met with her twice at local restaurants. While the Washington commanders have released a statement, e language used in the video runs counter to our values at the commanders organization. They said in the statement that they suspended the employee, but NFL Week 1 Highlights and Updates they've just fired him. So this just happened. Minutes ago, so we don't even need to show you the statement anymore. It's sort of irrelevant. Okay. Now let's move on to the National Football League. As we said, week one begins tonight. Chiefs and Ravens should be a good one. Tomorrow night we'll have the NFL playing in Brazil. It's the Packers and Eagles. And amidst some concerns that the players are sort of scared for their family safety, San Paolo has tightened security ahead of the NFL game in South America. And naturally, this is going to be the first DeMar Hamlin's Return to the Field time the NFL has opened up on a Friday night, let alone in Brazil as well. Really gd news too, though, from the National Football League. Like telling you good news. Damar Hamlin is back as a starter for the Buffalo Bills first time in over a year. He's going to start in the secondary against the Arizona Cardinals and met with the media to talk how great it is to be back as a starter with the bills. Truly a blessing. You know what I mean, you know, I reflect back on the whole process and, you know, not knowing if I would even be able to play again, you know, sitting in that uncertainty was like eating at me. You know, it was it was really eating at me. Because football is truly my passion. You know, it's the thing that I've always been obsessed with my entire life. So, you know, just sitting back k then, but, you know, it just all goes to the power of being process oriented and taking things one day at a time and accepting where you are at each moment of the process. You know it truly allows you to you know, conquer anything of what you're facing. Very well said by DeMar Hamlin, who will start this weekend against the Cardinals now. Meanwhile, Jamaar Chase, believe it or not, appears to be practicing with the with the Cincinnati Bengals without, I said, without having a new contract extension. All of the media seems to be indicating rumors and reporting that that a deal could get done as early as today. But as of now, no new deal for Jamaar Chase. And folks, they play the Patriots coming up on Sunday. But Chase College Football Updates did practice yesterday, so that would put him in line to play Sunday if they can get a deal done. Meanwhile, the Florida Gators have already made a quarterback change. Graham Mertz with a concussion. So ey're turning to freshman D.J. Lagway. He's going to make his first career start on Saturday against Sanford. Mertz is in concussion protocol. Lagway was a fantastic high school player. Number eight in the ESPN 300 and Gatorade Player of the year in 2023. And he'll get his first taste and test against Samford. Meanwhile, you saw this last week LSU's John Emery, hurtn LSU's game, and he did tear his ACL. He's going to miss the remainder of the season. Caleb Jackson will start at running back for the Tigers also in college football tomorrow nit. By the way, no games tomorrow. Today tomorrow night BYU will take on SMU. They'll play that game in Dallas and also Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway has been making headlines now a lot for the last couple of years. Yesterday, he announced the firing of four staff members assistant coaches Rick Stansbur, Faraj Philps, James Rosser and Demetrius Dyson will not return to the team, and Hardaway and MLB No-Hitter and Playoff Picture the school have not explained why, and they open up the college basketball season in less than two months. So go figure. No hitter in Major League Baseball yesterday. Shota Imanaga, who's had a fantastic rookie campaign, he threw seven no hit innings. They brought in a couple of relievers to complete it. And they did. And parodies by the way, had three errors in the game as well. It was a great, fantastic finish for the Chicago Cubs, who put themselves right back in the playoff picture. Craig Counsell impressed with what he saw. It's always hard to do in tt situation. But, you know, look, just you're taking care of Shota. I mean, that's that's 100% about taking care of Shota. And making sure we're doing the right thing for him, and so you know, it, it's not fun to do, but when you're, you know, prioritizing the player's health and making sure that, you know, you don't know what's going to happen moving forward. And we want him to stay healthy. He's had a career high in innings and doing a great job. He actually didn't know he had a no hitter going at all, which is which is funn, but, yeah, we Tommy and I talked about it, you know, we considered it, frankly, after the sixth inning, I would tell you right now, the craziest market on FanDuel in baseball this year has been the NL rookief the year. Imanaga the favorite. Skenes the favore. Merrell the favorite. Imanaga the favorite. This thing has gone all over the place. San Francisco Giants signed Matt Chapman to a contract extension, so he'll return to San Francisco six years, $151 million. The White Sox finally won last night. They snapped a 12 game losing streak. Legal Sports Betting Trends And in addition, Bryce Harper left the game last night with a hit by pitch on the left elbow. We'll see what his status. Welce here on Sports Grid. Sam McQuillan is with us on the opening night of the National Football League from Legal Sports Report. You can read about all of these stories over at Legal Sports report.com. Sam college football all the way back now or, you know, week and a half in basically. And the NFL returns tonight and naturally we got a lot of topics to discuss. Thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Craig. All right. So let's get started here. And by no surprise, we're expecting the most amount of money bet all time legally on the national football League this season. Is there anything else that's fair to say beyond that? Because that's the easiest prediction in the book. Yeah. This number has gone up every year, as you accurately allude to. You know, you have more states betting on sports, more states legalizing sports, more people betting on sports. You're going to have more money. Bet on sports. This number, $35 billion, comes from the American Gaming Association, which is the industry lobby. They monitor pretty much all the legal wagering that goes on. It would be a 31% rise from last season, which is pretty significant to me, given that we don't have that many new states on board this NFL season. You only have Maine and Vermont, which are pretty small, and then the biggest one being North Carolina, which was kind of the only big significant launch we had this past year and a half. So the fact that you're going to have 31% increase in dollars bet just from adding those new states, I think that's pretty big news in and of itself. That means it's not just the bettors in these new states they're going to be contributing. You know, Maine and Vermont, there's not even pro sports teams in those states, although North Carolina obviously is pretty bi, it means that wagering is growing in other states as well. Some of the oldest markets, which is a really good sign for the industry. You always talk about when it's going to consolidate, when are people going to get tired of betting? If you look at a state like new Jersey, which was one of the first to launch sports betting, their wagering is actually up about 23% from last year. And it keeps going up and up in every other state as well. So, when you talk about companies trying to you know, figure out how to get more money out of people, how to get people to bet more people are betting more and more. And it doesn't seem to be stopping. We only have about 38 states with legal sports betting and Washington DC, so there's definitely some more that will probably add to this number in the coming years. Maybe you have California, Texas down the line. Obviously this number will balloon at that point, but we don't know when that's going to be. We don't know what the world of legal sports betting is going to look like. Obviously, NFL is a huge draw. So $35 billion just legally on this season as well. They estimate a lot of the money still goes to the black market as well. So it's a number that continues to go up, which is a good sign for the industry. Yeah. No. Look it's only natural to think, as you said once one of the bigger states gets legalized, this number could really jump. Now as far as some of the odds are concerned going into the season, what we're noticing, Sam, at least initially, is the oddsmakers have made a lot of the NFL totals a little higher going into the season, a point or maybe two points or three. They sort of look off, to be honest with you, a lot of these games, you're wondering why the totals are so high. Do you think it has a lot to do with these new kickoff rules? Because it seems to be an indication of that. Yeah, it's really interesting ju looking at the totals in general, when you think about how many games have gone under over the last 2 or 3 years, there's been a big trend where an unusual amount of games have been lower scoring than the books have predicted. So I caught up with some oddsmakers this past week to ask them about these new kickoff rules, which makes some pretty big changes. There's going to be a landing zone. The ball must be kicked in between the goal line and the 20 to try to encourage more returnable balls in play. Players are going to have to wait until the ball lands or is caught to then pursue whoever has the ball, which is designed to make the game safer and less high speed impacts. Essentially oddsmakers think you're going to have the ball higher up the field to start and you're going to have more scoring opportunities, which in turn is being reflected in these higher totals. At DraftKings, the totals opened up about a half a point higher than they have in past years. I caught up with Johnny Avello, who's a sports trader at DraftKings, who explained, yeah, we're bracing for these rule changes, but obviously we don't want to overcorrect as well. That's why you're not seeing sky high totals accounting for all these new touchdowns. It's going to be something they monitor throughout the year and monitor how bettors and the public react to it as well. We've had rule changes in the past in college football. You had the first down change last year where the clock wouldn't stop. The initial thinking was maybe that's going to make the game slower, less scoring. It didn't. So oddsmakers are aware that you don't want to overreact to stuff. You don't want to underreact to stuff, and you also want to listen to what the market is telling you. So right now, there's a lot of money coming in on the unders in this game, in these games, but obviously ahead of kickoff, that's when a lot more of the money comes in. A lot of the public interest, which would probably come in on the over as well. So it'll be interesting to see week one if we have any returns. Last year, only the Texans had two kickoff returns. FanDuel is offering a new market. Which team is going to have the most kickoff returns. So it'll be interesting to see if the team finishes with more than two or if these rules just kind of status quo. Yeah, I would agree. And again, I think Responsible Gaming Initiatives we'll get a good indication in the first half of a lot of these games because the field position will tell a lot of that story. It's a good point by you, Sam. All right. Let's get over to FanDuel. And we know the American Gaming Association is trying to make sure everybody is informed going into this upcoming NFL season how to bet responsibly. And it looks like, you know, players who are on the younger side is particularly of Fanduel's interest, making sure that they understand the risks of sports wagering. Yeah. The theme kind of this past year has been what can the industry do to not only promote responsible gaming, but make it beyond just a boilerplate? Hey, that responsibility here's a number. So you're seeing the leaders like FanDuel go in and start kind of their own initiatives on their own without waiting for the industry to tell them something, without waiting for, you know, some kind of crackdown or anything like that. So they're launching this new campaign with a former NBA player, Randy Livingston, which is centered around parents having meaningful conversations with their children, or coaches having meaningful conversation with the kids they coach about the dangers and risks of gambling, how to spot early warning signs, how to seek help. You know, sports betting is such a new thing in the light of our society. It's obviously been going around going on for a long time, but it's now on commercials. Kids see it all the time, so FanDuel wants to make sure that you know you're having a conversation with your kid similar to the way you might talk about alcohol when they're, you know, turning 18 or around high school age. They want to give parents and coaches those resources, because a lot of the times, I think people just don't really know how to talk about this in general. You know, it's great to say that responsibly or be careful, but what does that really mean? How do you give people help? So they launched this series this week, which is a bunch of meaningful conversations with this coach who is a former NBA player, who's going to try to give people the tools and give parents the resources to inform their kids about the dangers of gambling. So hopefully it works out for FanDuel. Hopefully it's a good campaign that gets picked up a lot nationally. Yeah, I would agree. All right. Thanks, Sam, once again for coming on. We'll keep an eye on the games and certainly appreciate all of WNBA and U.S. Open Highlights the information that you give us over aLegal Sports report.com. And the updates. Thanks again. Yeah thanks a lot Craig. All right. Sam Aquila with us from Legal Sports Report now for those of you following the WNBA, in case you missed it last night, Caitlin Clark's second triple double gave the Indiana Fever a victory over the LA sparks by a final of 93 to 86. In case youissed that yesterday over at the US open, Jannik Sinner beat Daniil Medvedev. And so he moves on to the US open semis. Kenny Ducey on the show yesterday picked an underdog named Jack Draper, and he ended up winning. He defeated Alex de Minaur six three, seven five, six two at the US open and Jessica Pegula ousted number one on the women's side. IGA Svitek as she moves on to the