NFL finally wakes up to legalized gambling

FPHOENIX or decades, the folks who owned NFL teams hardly portrayed themselves as bastions of progressive thought. There weren’t many John Deweys running around the fraternity house of billionaires.

They were more old school than transistor radios and leather helmets, more stubborn in their views than a petulant teenager.

And now, you might as well fit them for Saint Laurent sweaters and drop them in the front row of a Drake concert.

Can’t you see Jerry Jones and Mark Davis getting all crazy to “Hotline Bling”?

Perhaps more amazing than owners voting 31-1 on Monday in favor of allowing relocation for Davis and his Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas were topics of discussion that arose before the official announcement. Or, more important, didn’t. Several sources confirmed that gambling was barely mentioned — a few said not at all — and that the one thorn in the side of owners thought too big for Las Vegas to land a franchise was no longer visible. What happened? How did one incredibly significant issue go from owners abstaining from a forbidden fruit for so long to gorging on a Thanksgiving feast?

The easy and correct answer is money, that once Davis showed his peers a stadium deal highlighted by a $750 million tax subsidy, explaining to the world any fears of gambling and how it might negatively touch their shield with a team in Southern Nevada became a whole lot easier to digest.

But perhaps there is a deeper and more influential reason, and as much as Jones and his Dallas Cowboys are loathed by anyone without a heart shaped like a blue star, the fact he and others with like mindsets about gambling now represent the most powerful voices in the room means everything.

“The sensitivity toward (gambling) and the integrity of the game is still there, but Las Vegas in no way compromises that,” Jones said. “Las Vegas has evolved. It’s not your father’s Las Vegas. We’re very confident because of its (progressiveness) toward gambling. Gaming in Las Vegas was not a deterrent at all to this decision.”

This is what’s known as a breath of fresh air. GRANEY,