IRVING, Texas — Sports gambling may be making its way into the mainstream, but that doesn’t make it the most comfortable discussion subject for those in the NFL’s inner circle. One owner, as he was leaving this Dallas-area Four Seasons, declined to get into it—while doing his best to illustrate how fast change is coming.
“When they were vetting me,” he said, “they’d have wanted to know if I was involved in a Friday night poker game.”
That was then. This is now.
Then, in this case, could be seen as less than 21 months ago, the point at which commissioner Roger Goodell finished the 2017 annual meeting by declaring to the press that “we still strongly oppose sports gambling.