NFL Game Announcers Obliviously Ignore NFL Betting Lines; Dick Button has Passed; Was on ABC for years
By Rich Podolsky 02/03/2025
On January 18th, with only seconds remaining in the game, the Kansas City Chiefs found themselves perilously close to their own goal line. But even if they fumbled and saw Houston recover for a touchdown, the Chiefs were going to win. KC was ahead by 11 points at the time, but regardless, Chiefs coach Andy Reed had his team take a safety. The line on the game had the Chiefs as a 9-and-a-half point favorite.
The safety was the difference in winning or losing the bet for NFL fans all over the world.
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Surprisingly, ESPN play-by-play announcer Joe Buck commented on the betting reversal, intimating that colleague Al Michaels was going to like it. Michaels, one of the great play-by-play broadcasters himself, has been known to make a wager here and there. It was surprising because, for the most part, the broadcasters on Fox and CBS ignore what the point spread is in their games despite their networks’ pregame shows filling time with ads from gambling companies like Fan Duel and Draft Kings. And near the end of those pregame shows, they even have their stars pick the games with the betting line in mind.
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On TNT’s Inside the NBA, Kenny and Charles and Shaq are even asked their opinions on parlay bets the gambling sites have devised. This is probably because the gambling sites make more on parlay wagers, often referred to as sucker plays, than any other kind. Yet, on NFL games, Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady are oblivious to the line. Same goes, for the most part, to Jim Nantz and Tony Romo at CBS.
I say you can’t have it both ways. If the networks are going to take the money for all the gambling ads and encourage us at home to wager before each game begins, the least they could do is inform us with betting info during the game. What non-bettors don’t realize is that betting on NFL games continues during the game. The betting sites will continuously post betting lines during the games which change according to who has the momentum or has scored. Yet nearly all NFL broadcasters pretend they know nothing about it.
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Dick Button died the other day. He was 95 and he will be missed.
Button, who was one of the world’s best skaters, won two Olympic gold medals and six straight world championships. In 1949 when he not only won the U.S. national championships, but the European championship as well the European administrators banned him, and all other North Americans from competing in the future. He was the first to do a double jump in competition and the first to do a triple. In 1949 he won the Sullivan Award, given to the nation’s top amateur athlete. A skater winning the award was not only rare but startling. It took 52 years until another skater (Nancy Kwan) won another Sullivan.
After his career Button became one of the greatest broadcasters of all time. Beginning in 1960, and for the next 50 years he entertained us with straight-shooting analysis of the world’s best skaters. He was never afraid to criticize a performance or call it “flat.” When asked why he told an interviewer that he didn’t think the television audience wanted to hear an analyst say, “Isn’t that lovely.”
Besides broadcasting, Button put his Harvard education to work and started a business creating TV specials, and also became a Broadway producer. It wasn’t long before he created one of the most successful sports TV series of all time, “The Superstars.”
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The show featured the world’s best athletes competing against each other in events other than their own specialty. It had things like Peter Rose playing tennis and Joe Frazier trying to swim. When I asked Dick how he got the idea for the show he told me about Edward Villella.
Villella was one of the top ballet dancers when Life Magazine featured him. A two-page photo of Villella about 10 feet in the air doing a split was spread across the double-truck layout in Life. Under the photo the caption asked the question: “Is this America’s best athlete?” The question got Button thinking about how anyone could determine that. His answer was “The Superstars.”
He took his idea to Barry Frank and Howard Katz at IMG and together they sold Roone Arledge on the show, which ran through the 70s and 80s on ABC. It also gave birth to spinoffs like “Battle of the Network Stars.”
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In 1981, Button won one of the first Sports Emmys for “Outstanding Sports Personality,” beating out the great John Madden. Madden, however, went on to win 16 Emmys thereafter. And at the age of 80 in 2015 Button was elected to the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. You have to wonder what took them so long.
