MLB has fired one of its umpires, Pat Hoberg, after a “lengthy investigation” for sharing a legal betting account with someone who bet on baseball games. It was the friend who shared the account(s) who did the betting and not Hoberg which introduces various levels of strangeness into this situation. Please take a moment and follow this link to a report at espn.com for a summary of the details in this case; the evidence is not nearly as open-and-shut here as it was in the Tim Donaghy matter in the NBA about 20 years ago. Hoberg admits to errors of judgment but “adamantly denied” to Commissioner Manfred that he ever bet on baseball.
The “shared accounts” became a thing due to Iowa law regarding legal online sports betting. To use those betting accounts, the bettor had to be physically in Iowa and the phone or other device used to place the bet had to register as connected to a site that showed it was in Iowa. The friend was not always in Iowa when he wanted to make a wager and asked Hoberg to join his account(s) to place wagers for him when he was out of state. Agreeing with that request was the first error in judgement; and unfortunately, it was not the last one.
According to the ESPN report, Hoberg was regarded as the best ball-and-strike umpire in MLB. He will be eligible to petition for reinstatement no earlier than the opening of Spring Training 2026; it will be interesting to see how MLB handles any such petition because in the official statement announcing this termination, it says that there is no evidence that Hoberg bet on baseball games but that his friend did.
Moving on … There was an announcement last week that FOX signed Jameis Winston to be a “Super Bowl sports correspondent” this year. When I read that, my first thought was that Carson Wentz must have been otherwise occupied …
Switching gears … The NFL’s international footprint will undergo another expansion in 2026. According to a report in the Herald Sun – a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia – the NFL will play 3 games in Melbourne starting in 2026 with the games to take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. This venue is the largest sports stadium in the Southern Hemisphere according to Wikipedia and it can seat just over 100,000 fans.
I can attest to the popularity of NFL football in Australia. We went on a trip to Australia and New Zealand that would have had us in flight as the Super Bowl was in play; that was unacceptable; so, we flew to Australia two days early to adjust to jet lag and then to go and see the game live at a sports bar in Sydney. The game happens there on a Monday morning starting at 9:00 AM for pre-game “stuff”. The sports bar we found was a 4-story building with one floor devoted almost entirely to betting on the game; the other three floors were packed with people on a Monday morning to watch the Super Bowl. Moreover, Australian fans know the game and the rules; this is not the only game they watch during a season.
To put that observation into perspective, we were there in 2012 – – the second time Eli Manning and the Giants beat Tom Brady and the Pats in the Super Bowl. Assuming that level of interest has grown in the intervening years, it is possible that Australian fans will fill that 100,000-seat venue for that regular season game.
The dominance of the NFL as a sports enterprise continues to amaze me. Think about this season for a moment:
- Three of the worst teams in the league are in three of the largest markets in the country – – the Bears, the Giants and the Jets.
- Three of the best teams in the league are in three much smaller markets – – the Bills, the Chiefs and the Vikes.
- No problem with dwindling fan interest under those circumstances; the league just keeps on keeping on.
- The upcoming “Australian regular season games” will mark the fourth continent to experience NFL regular season football. There are only seven continents and one of them is Antarctica which will never be considered for NFL football.
Elsewhere … NBA Commish, Adam Silver, was a guest on a podcast and said that he was in favor of reducing NBA games from 12-minute quarters to 10-minute quarters which is the length of college games and international pro basketball games. Silver admitted that he might be in a significant minority by liking this idea, but he did not walk away from it. People have experienced the phenomenon of “shrinkflation” at the grocery store; if Adam Silver were to get his way, shrinkflation would come to the NBA. You pay the same price; you get less product.
It would be interesting to see what might be the network reaction to a serious proposal for “shrinking” NBA games. On one hand, the networks just paid $76B for 11 years of “48-minute basketball” and not “40-minute basketball”. On the other hand, shortening the game on the court might allow for tighter scheduling for the networks as games fit into smaller time windows. I don’t know which way the networks might come down on that.
Finally, consider this observation by former Dodgers’ manager Tommy Lasorda:
“If Mike Scioscia raced his pregnant wife, he’d finish third.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
How is the NFL team supposed to handle Australian airplane exhaustion and jet lag?
When you were in the Australian sports bar, did you see Pat Hoberg by any chance?
TencciousP:
My guess is that the Australian game would be the season opener as was the Sao Paulo game this year. Teams would fly down several days before the game; get in a few practices there and then play the game and get an extra day or two to adjust for Game 2.