Sports bro culture ruined the Notre Dame swim team, and I’m not making any excuses for the Notre Dame swimmers—almost all of them, apparently—who were caught betting on their own swimming performance, resulting in the school suspending the entire team for the season.
Read the last eight words again, OK?
… ban the entire team for the entire season.
Imagine how widespread the gambling problem must be on the Notre Dame swim team if the school basically says, screw it, you’re done.
More: Seven questions about Notre Dame’s suspension of men’s swimming due to gambling scandal
This is a Notre Dame problem, and by that I mean it’s a Notre Dame Swim Club problem. And by that I mean, these young men – these kids – did this. They gambled. If it comes out that their coaches somehow contributed to this culture, fine, then we blame the coaches and the administrators who hired them and so on and so forth.
Until then, the blame is on these kids. Not the coaches. Not the school. These young men, these kids, have fallen for the sports bro culture, which actually kind of sucks, and this is the result. They’ve gotten swept up in what’s cool, what’s hot, what’s boss. Sports bro culture says it’s cool to bet, buddy! It’s cool to bet on games and even mini-moments in the game. Special bets, dude. Special bets!
Notre Dame sports fans, like all sports fans, are influenced, because that’s what happens to weak people: They are influenced. They don’t think for themselves about what’s good for society in general or for their own personal story. They see people playing and they hear about people playing and it’s all over social media and pretty soon they’re looking around and saying: What’s wrong with me? Why am I not playing??
And before you know it, Colts cornerback Isaiah Rodgers Sr. is suspended for the 2023 season, Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon is fired that same year, and Notre Dame’s men’s swim team is shut down – one of the most severe punishments for a single sport and a single school since the SMU football team received the NCAA’s “death penalty” in 1987.
Nice company, you are at the Notre Dame swim.
Doyel in 2022: Sports betting is our next crisis, but until then, live life, bro!
ESPN, Barstool – you don’t help
That’s partly your fault, ESPN.
You too, Barstool Sports. And you, FanDuel and DraftKings, and now I feel like Bill Belichick, who once said he doesn’t do MyFace. Maybe it’s because of FanKings and DraftDuel. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Let’s talk for a minute about how much some of you hate what you read and therefore hate me too – because you can’t disagree with a story anymore; the author is an idiot and a bad person! – and let’s also talk about principles.
Go back for a minute and read something I wrote:
That’s partly your fault, ESPN.
Any idea how much fun and smart it is to write these words? ESPN is the leading employer in the sports industry I call home: sports media. That’s television, that’s radio and yes, that’s writing. A long time ago, I wrote for ESPN.com. That was part-time and I covered, I think, the Atlantic 10 and Big East and ACC. That was 25 years ago. It’s hard to remember the details.
The point is: joining ESPN is not exactly career-enhancing.
You: This story is clickbait!
Me: Yes, genius. I’m writing this because a hate click from you and your sports brothers is more important to me than securing my career opportunities.
Hey, you’re right, I’m not a freelancer. I have a pretty great job now – this is the best job of my career, and it’s not close – but nothing is guaranteed. I have 10-15 years left in this business. Will I be looking for a job in the meantime? Hopefully not.
But if that’s the case, hey, ESPN is the biggest employer out there. Maybe they’d hire me! If it weren’t for that time in 2024 when I wrote…
That’s partly your fault, ESPN.
But that’s it. The geniuses who run ESPN, and I mean that, know how to make money. For years, their sportscasters, analysts and others have talked about betting odds and Las Vegas favorites, and Scott Van Pelt has this hilarious segment on his nightly show about point spreads or over-unders or whatever, and how a meaningless basket or touchdown near the end of a blowout victory can sway hundreds of thousands of dollars one way or the other.
Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Sports betting where a meaningless basket or touchdown at the end of a landslide victory can swing hundreds of thousands of dollars in one direction or the other. Who would say no to that?
The whole thing is bad, but ESPN has realized there is a huge market – or audience – and has launched its own sportsbook. You can find it online if you want. I’m not helping them take your money.
But when ESPN has its own sportsbook and starts using its bookmaker analysts as crossover hosts on SportsCenter broadcasts and has regular betting segments on its wildly popular, ubiquitous sports highlight show… then it’s over. The sports brothers have won. Gambling must be cool, safe and normal. It’s on ESPN!
A few less people with principles and we are Russia
This is not about ESPN.
This is about gambling and sports bros and the idiots who run this gambling site called Barstool and the lemmings who think those idiots are someone to follow. Am I that, jealous? Not even. The meanest bully in school has a huge following too, but I never wanted to be that guy, or his friend. The jock with the most acid tongue was always the most popular kid on every high school team I played on…but those weren’t my kind of people. I didn’t want to hang out with them, didn’t want to be them, didn’t want their following or influence – not if it meant being a jerk.
See, principles.
Principles are what makes this place – this country, this world – run. Principles fall by the wayside because it’s so much easier for Pat McAfee and even the Manning brothers to throw their weight behind sports bros and sports betting. And it’s so much easier to hate Donald Trump in 2016 but then years later kiss his ass to be his vice president in 2024. It’s so much easier to swallow the pride of Jim Banks, Todd Rokita and Mike Braun and chase Trump’s votes.
Governor Eric Holcomb and Senator Todd Young? They held firm. Principles, those two. And Mike Pence, who had lost his principles for four years, miraculously found his last on January 6, 2021. If enough people had lost their principles, January 6 almost wouldn’t have happened. It does happen. And soon we will no longer be America, but Russia.
So what does this have to do with Notre Dame swimming, ESPN, or Barstool? Not much, if anything. Although Barstool… yeah, it all has to do with those idiots.
As for Notre Dame swimming and sports bro culture, well, we’re in the middle of it. We’re drowning in it.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
More: Join the text conversation with sports columnist Gregg Doyel to hear readers’ questions and Doyel’s behind-the-scenes insights.
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