Gambling, football embrace

Modern day sports, as you may know, is as much about money as it is about effort, tradition, on-field heroics and sideline clipboard brilliance.

Foremost among American sports is football, but it won’t be long before it’s eclipsed before the new number one: gambling on football.

For many years, big-league sports tried to distance itself from the underground world of betting, fearful of another 1919 Black Sox scandal and the point-shaving scandal in college basketball in 1950-51.

But there’s just so much easy money – by that I mean it’s easy for “gaming” businesses to take your money – that the NFL has pretty much given in. Every NFL telecast is riven with commercials extolling this “book” and that book and showing how glamorous and much fun it is to throw your money away.

And then there’s that straight-faced warning to “gamble responsibly,” which is sort of like telling glam rockers to “sing quietly.”

ESPN estimates that almost 73.5 million American adults bet on NFL games this year. legalsportsbetting.com estimates that about $100 billion was bet with legal sports books in the U.S. in 2023.

That, of course, doesn’t include “friendly bets” between individuals, office pools, fantasy football and under-the-radar bookies for Californians who cannot – yet – legally use Draftkings or BetMGM.

Aside from feeding a growing problem with gambling addiction, all this lucre is bound to encourage shady elements to consider trying to adjust things in their favor through player relationships or – who knows? – deflated footballs.

And, of course, the betting is not just on who wins. You can bet on point spreads, over-unders and probably how many State Farm commercials Patrick Mahomes will get.

You can wager on almost anything, and probably will. Will billions of dollars changing hands on the basis of a missed field goal or a dropped pass prove too tempting?

I hope not. But, you know … I wouldn’t bet on that.