There were two sports-related segments on major national shows last night. First up, John Oliver’s take on daily fantasy.

I always find it interesting to see comedians – like Oliver, Jon Stewart, etc. – take on a topic with which I am intimately familiar. It allows you to see how much poetic license is taken in the name of comedy. Oliver did a nice job of summing up the daily fantasy debate in his typical hysterical way, and was fair in his criticisms, which focused mainly on daily fantasy’s classification and not the products themselves. But, he did miss two points I think are central to the debate: 1) a reason why supporters consider it a game of skill, and 2) the whole reason why oversight might be necessary:

  1. He detailed the reasons why both Draft Kings and FanDuel claim they’re games of skill, but he missed a major point in discussing it. It’s not only about needing detailed research on players, teams and games – the sport – to be consistently successful in the big money leagues, but it’s also about knowing how to win the game. To win big, you need underused diamond-in-the-rough type players, otherwise you’re just running with everyone else. It’s not about just picking the best players. Knowing the overall player pool – how many players are using a player – would be of great benefit in big money games. Which leads us to:
  2. This all reached a tipping point when there were reports of a Draft Kings employee using information to which he may or may not have had access at Draft Kings to create his FanDuel team(s). This is why oversight may be needed. Besides putting their hands into the pot, government regulates casinos to make sure that, even though the odds are stacked against users with slot machines, the machines function the way they purport to function and everything is fair. If daily fantasy employees have access to inside information, useful in the big money games, then there needs to be some independent observer to make sure it’s not being misused.

Further, I’d add that daily fantasy is not just the slot machine nature of playing lineups in multiple, massive public leagues. The private games – with friends – are just as fun, and allow you to know the competition. It’s basically two different games, and that’s often overlooked when discussing Draft Kings and FanDuel.

And then there was 60 Minutes on NFL and CTE. After the jump:

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Good stuff. It’s obvious that the NFL may have wanted to stop using helmet sensors because they indicate that it’s not necessarily concussions, but the repetitive head shots over time that do the most damage. Those you can’t eliminate – you can mitigate – from the game the way you can greatly reduce the number of major impacts.