If there is one thing that poker players enjoy – perhaps more than poker itself – it arguably would be the National Football League. With the NFL exhibition season in full swing, a controversy has arisen that joins the world of poker with professional football.
Last season, an NFL lockout by the owners against the players almost scuttled the season before calmer heads prevailed and a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) was reached. This year, the NFL is facing the same issue with its referee corps and it has reached the point where the NFL is using “replacement” officials for the start of the exhibition season. One of these officials set to referee a game this week is facing a great deal of scrutiny for her past, and it isn’t regarding her football background.
Shannon Eastin is, like many of the “replacement” referees being used by the NFL while they lockout their regular officiating staffs, is a 17-year veteran of football refereeing. Currently working in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, Eastin is set to become the first female official for an NFL game in the league’s storied history. The locked-out “regular” officials are pointing out Eastin’s past as a reason that she shouldn’t work the game.
According to reports from Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio today, the locked out officials are bringing up Eastin’s past as a poker player to question her ability to officiate an NFL game. According to the Hendon Mob database, a “Shannon Eastin” has made the notable achievement of cashing in two World Series of Poker tournaments, first in the 2006 Ladies’ Tournament and then in 2007 in one of the $1500 No Limit events. The “Shannon Eastin” noted on the Hendon Mob boards has earned between those two events slightly more than $26,000 and Florio notes that several live reporting outlets prominently feature her name.
The alleged news of Eastin’s background is a sticky one for the NFL. Asserting that the now-expired CBA between the officials and the league applies to the “replacement” officials, the NFL has a strict policy on the activities that officials can participate in outside of the field. “Gambling is an unacceptable activity for game officials in the National Football League,” the guidelines state. “Such activity constitutes conduct detrimental to the integrity of, and public trust in, the NFL.”
The NFL, in this CBA agreement, bans officials during the season (which counts the preseason through the Pro Bowl, the NFL All-Star game) from “entering a horse or dog race track or a gambling casino, bet on any game or any other sporting event.” Policing the issue is left up to the individual officials, who are supposed to report to the NFL within 24 hours of entering any such establishment.
Florio, for his part, does nothing to lessen the controversy regarding Eastin. “We’re not saying that Shannon Eastin will be the next Tim Donaghy (the disgraced former National Basketball Association official who is currently serving time in prison for betting on NBA games),” Florio huffs. “We’re saying that, if the standards for screening replacement officials are sufficiently lax to let a former contestant in the World Series of Poker get through the filter, perhaps one of the other 119 replacement officials WILL be the next Donaghy.”
The argument over whether Eastin will be allowed to officiate the NFL preseason game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Diego Chargers this evening isn’t dying down. At this moment, Eastin is still on track to become the first female to ever officiate an NFL game.
Florio and the locked-out NFL officials should be ashamed of themselves for dredging up Eastin’s past in an attempt to discredit her and – perhaps not as importantly – should issue an apology to perhaps their biggest fans of all, the poker community, for insulting the venerable institution that is the WSOP.
