Three-Dot Monday 2.5
The Super Bowl in Vegas seemed impossible. Now we're living in bat country...
The ridiculousness of Super Bowl hype week has already kicked in, and it’s only Monday. We’ve got another week of this before the actual game. Life intruded in several different directions this past week, and all of them were a big reminder of how unfathomable this actually is…
It reminds me of one of the more famous passages from the best book ever written about the town where they are playing this game. A little tome called “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by a noted football and gambling fan by the name of Hunter S. Thompson. You might have already figured out the passage I’m thinking about: “You can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”
The Super Bowl in Vegas is a culmination of so many things. For so long the NFL, and football in general, insisted that gambling was not a driving force in the popularity of their game. And of course, by continuing to say that, they merely drove more interest in gambling on football. The continuous veiled references by Brent Musberger and Al Michaels to point spreads on national teevee broadcasts were snickered at by millions, including me, who enjoys in-jokes tremendously. Of course, the NFL has a very big say in who is allowed to be a national television announcer for their games. And while their official stance was “no gambling,” they winked at those references just like the rest of us and no doubt tacitly enjoyed the extra publicity, not like the NFL actually needed help…
Eventually, the gambling money got too big to ignore on all sides. When more states started legalizing sports gambling, the NFL had to relent and join in. A team in Vegas was inevitable, and then a Super Bowl, and now here we are. Think of how impossible this seemed just ten years ago, and now it’s being treated like the most normal thing in the world…
What would Thompson think of it? We can only speculate, but he loved excess, football and gambling, and one would think he would absolutely find a way to Gonzo Journalism this week to the extreme…
Gambling has never been a big part of why I watch sports. Though Scott Van Pelt’s “Bad Beats” segment is the funniest thing he does every week. The gambling part of it isn’t what gets me, it’s the “here’s how this thing that was predicted to happen (the spread or the over/under or what have you) was almost guaranteed not to happen, and yet here’s the crazy way it did happen.” That’s enjoyable to watch every time, in fact it’s most of the reason to watch sports…
Having money on the game, serious money, takes the enjoyment out of it. Sure, I’ll make a wager when it’s legal for me to do so. When California finally gets their act together and legalizes it (if the state ever realizes they can solve most of their debt problems like that) I’ll do those goofy 15-leg parlays for a dollar to try and get rich quick. But for me, putting a dollar on a game is like putting a thousand or more on it. A wager is a wager is a wager…
But contrary to many, apparently, I’ll watch almost any game without having to put money on it. I’m already letting the players dictate my mood for (at least) three hours, why add to the consternation of it all by tying money to it? Money is tied to nearly every decision everybody makes every day, which is a problem in and of itself…
No, I’m not saying money is bad, far from it. What I am saying is that we are in a society right now where it continuously overrides any rational thought of happiness or comfort. Money “will” bring the happiness. Money “will” bring the comfort. Whereas those feelings are fleeting, and now more money must be gotten in order to bring the happiness back for another fleeting moment…
This has always been what has made Las Vegas and places of that nature feel kind of icky to me. Yes, cities are built because people had money and lots of it. But Vegas, in a desert, where nobody could even live comfortably until air conditioning and a massive river diversion to bring water there, seems way more artificial than Chicago or Atlanta or Kansas City or San Francisco…
It seems like the wave is breaking in Vegas, right now. Of course, that’s just from where I am at this moment, with real life on all sides. Gambling and the NFL will continue to get closer and closer, and nobody will pay it any mind. When does the NFL open their own casino or gambling app? Probably sooner than you think. And people will not think twice about it, and give their money away to them even faster…
As one of the many lines I’ve stolen goes, “They aren’t able to build all those big casinos because the house loses…”
I didn’t steal that one from Hunter S. Thompson, however. He’d have made it smarter…
A wonderful, thoughtful, occasionally whimsical prose.
Did we ever think we would see the day when Las Vegas has two and will have three in a couple of years and likely four major league franchises?
And, Las Vegas will host the NCAA Men's Final Four in 2028!
Hunter could wax exceedingly poetic about that!
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Children getting sucked into sports gambling is exploding and will be a huge problem soon. Don't think for a moment that the "mob" (in whatever form it takes today) doesn't have a large stake and controlling interest in gambling. That never went away, no matter how "family-friendly" Lost Wages claims to be. I predict that it will not be too long before we see a repeat of past sports gambling scandals. I'm talking shades of 1951 (college basketball) multiplied by millions of dollars. The combination of gambling, the portal and uncontrolled NIL will lead to fixed games (if it hasn't already). I support the idea (NIL) of college athletes getting some sort of compensation. But, there are virtually no controls. Colleges are suing the NCAA so they can "recruit" athletes and find them high-paying "jobs" in town. It makes that Hummer LeBron James' mother was suddenly driving around Ohio look petty. Imagine you are a tackle on a team loaded with stars making loads on NIL $ while you get nothing but a possible concussion. And a gambler offers you a big pile of money to miss a block or two so he can make the spread. Basketball is a prime candidate for the fix. A few missed shots, unforced turnovers, failing to make a long pass for an easy bucket. It only took one or two players on a team to get it done in 1951. See Charley Rosen's "Scandals of '51." The final score will be fake. Gonna happen. Maybe it already is.