Posted on 09/09/2021 3:36:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
You can’t turn on a TV or radio without seeing some ad for a sports betting app. Some hot chick or semi-famous dude telling you all about how “the game” can be even more fun to watch if you put money on it. And your first bet is free, or given absurd odds, or they’ll just give you a chunk of cash anyway. They’re all desperate to get you to download their app because they know once you do that, they’ve got you. It’s a boom time for casinos, but it will ruin sports even more than the leftist activist athletes already have.
I don’t gamble very often. Occasionally, I will go to a casino if friends are desperate to, or whatever. But I know I’d be a problem gambler if I let myself. I know this because when I’ve gambled and I’ve been up, a voice inside my head tells me I can win even more if I keep betting. And if I’m down, that voice tells me I can win it back if I keep going. Plus, it’s just boring after a while.
If you want to gamble, I couldn’t care less. I will say one of the saddest sights anyone can see is a casino the day after Social Security checks arrive – elderly just plugging it into slot machines all night long. Anyone who wants to can get to a casino pretty easily…so do we really need another opportunity to gamble?
Ready or not, want it or not, you’ve now got more opportunities to gamble than ever before. Every sporting event is a chance to win or lose money, multiple times. Bet on kick-offs, garbage bets, prop bets, everything is now betable, depending on whether or not your state has approved it yet. If they haven’t, they will.
Again, I couldn’t care less if you want to set your money on fire, though I’d prefer you give it to me. It’s your money, knock yourself out. But what I find odd is how the professional sports leagues have embraced this.
There was a time, not that long ago, where the heads of all the pro sports leagues went to Congress to advocate against allowing gambling on sports anywhere but Vegas. Not anymore. Now they’ve partnered with various casinos of betting houses and are integrating betting into the TV coverage of the game.
My question, then, is pretty simple: Now that Major League Baseball is embracing gambling, will Pete Rose be allowed in the Hall of Fame? There’s no doubt he belongs there, the all-time hit king is only kept out because of a lifetime ban for betting on baseball. Well, now baseball wants you to bet on baseball. They want you to bet on just about every aspect of it. Why not forgive Pete and move on?
Why not also reinstate all the suspended members of the 1919 Black Sox? Shoeless Joe Jackson deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and he didn’t even bet or take money. Jackson simply knew about the scheme the rig the World Series and didn’t say anything. He his .375 in the series, so it’s not like he was trying to throw it.
Things have changed for professional sports, obviously, with the embrace of gambling, so why not start fresh by forgiving the people they’ve punished for that very sin in the past?
Frankly, baseball could use it. There aren’t that many people eligible for the Hall of Fame who are worthy of getting in. Rather than lower the bar for enshrinement, how about widening the door a little?
Yes, Rose bet on baseball, but at this point who cares? Baseball is betting on people wanting to bet on baseball. As is football. After a couple of years of alienating fans, they’re looking for ways to bring people back to the games. If that means embracing gambling, so be it. They’ll take the viewership of gambling addicts while running PSAs featuring gambling help lines. Maybe one of the apps will allow people to bet on which commercial break they’ll run in.
Since professional sports don’t seem interested in making the game more enjoyable to watch, just more urgent through gambling, they could at least let someone like Pete Rose be the spokesman for one of the apps. I mean, if all the professional sports leagues are going to be hypocritical frauds, they might as well embrace it.
Pete’s sin was that he bet against his own team, the Cincinnati Reds. That is why he won’t be let into Cooperstown during his natural life.
I’m already done with pro sports, turned my MLB Nationals season tickets back in after not missing a game for 3 years.
The USA is one of the few countries where sports gambling is not legal everywhere....it hasn’t ruined soccer around the world or other professional sports like Rugby, Basketball, etc....
This year for the first time I decided to join DraftKings and play fantasy sports for money, I only allotted myself $250 and plan to play until it’s gone....or I make some money in the process....
My main motivation was not necessarily the gambling but I am approaching it from the standpoint of statistical analysis and trends....
Earlier this summer I bought an online Excel Master Class that you might see advertised online with a headline that reads Excel Master’s Class regularly $1600 on sale for $39 , I thought it was a fraud until I purchased one, the excel online training has been fantastic, I’m looking into other types of training as well like Visual Basic and Python....
I am planning to use my new excel training to build a statistical tracker and analysis tool with Excel and apply it to fantasy sports....
To me the $250 I might lose is a fun way to really increase my skills with Excel....
I don’t even plan on watching the games I’m trying to base all my decisions on numbers and how I can manipulate them with Excel...
Due to my former career in film/tv/radio, I’ve met and worked with many dozens of celeb level talent. Pete Rose is, by far, the biggest asshole of them all.
I think "ruined" is a highly subjective term.
It's not hard to see how the demise of major U.S. sports is going to happen, and I'd be almost certain that this has already become a factor in other countries around the world: athletes rigging minor aspects of competitive sports to win money for their friends, family and criminal associates. Top athletes wouldn't want to risk this sort of thing, but I could easily see someone playing for the NFL minimum salary padding his income this way.
The house always wins, the punters always lose.
NOT one shred of evidence that he did so.....NONE!
Pete did not bet AGAINST the Reds. The Dowd Report did not state or prove that he bet against the Reds. The current milk toast manager of the team might get more involved in winning if he had large sums riding on the Reds. I used to be a big MLB fan until last year. I happened to watch part of a game on TV a couple of weeks ago and was stunned to see betting lines, along with news and scores along the bottom of the screen. Does MLB have betting windows at the stadiums now? If not, why not? If Pete associates with current MLB players and execs is he, by MLB rules, associating with known gamblers?
And Michael Jordan decides to retire from basketball and become a professional player then a year later decides to come out of retirement and play basketball again..........LOL!
Anyone who bets on sports think that somehow they have the ability to see into the future.
You may as well learn when a slot machine is almost ready to pay off.
Cases of fixing games thru players and referees have already happened in this country when sports wagering was completely illegal except in Las Vegas.
When the gambling is done in the open and legal I think fixing games will be less likely because it’s hard to cover it up and the last thing legal bookmakers want is to be caught fixing games
Around the world when sports have been fixed the people who discovered it first was legal bookmakers who turned people in
It sure looks like it.
Rose reached a decision point at some point in his life, and he chose poorly.
I don’t gamble for the same reason I don’t smoke, drink alcohol, do drugs, or even drink sodas,buy my coffee at Starbucks, buy lottery tickets or keep a balance on my credit cards (interest is a big hole in anyone’s financial bucket. Not on moral grounds but on financial grounds.
Each of those activities cost money. A little at a time you barely notice but in a years time it is a lot of money.
I am not cheap I am frugal.
I was not always this way. In my twenties I was in debt and could not understand where all my money went, until I began to budget and keep track of every purchase. I soon discovered the leak in my bucket and began to plug the holes.
It took a couple of years to get my financial house in order but soon I had savings that seem to grew without effort.
We all have choices and I am not going to tell you what to choose, just be sure you understand the real cost of some of your choices.
I’ll bet the United States crumbles and falls with everything that is going on. We are about to become the Yugoslavia of the West.
To each their own, statistics do hold up in sports, analytics in sports was made famous by the book and movie Money Ball about the GM of the Oakland A’s who could not compete financially in MLB but used statistics to pick players and was proven successful
Rigging plays within a game -- especially if they are not of any consequence -- is not difficult and can easily be done without detection.
Imagine an NFL kicker deliberately missing a field goal attempt when his team is up or down by three touchdowns. Nobody would even notice it, but these sports gambling outfits are set up to process bets on this kind of crap.
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