GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
Some sports fans love the competition. They thrive on the purity of sports, the innocence, the simplicity. If my guys play better than your guys then my guys will win. They connect with the athletes on a basic level, equating their team’s success to success in their own lives. This is pure fandom. This is just fine with me.
The “other” sports fans are those who follow teams for very different reasons. They want monetary rewards. Merely feeling good that they root for a winner is not enough. The thought that they could make some money off of a team’s hard work is so intriguing, they’re willing to sacrifice the integrity of the game.
Gambling in sports is nothing new. In fact, as stated elsewhere in this issue, gambling has been around since the dawn of time. Lately though, it’s been brought to my attention that betting on sports is a bigger problem than Mark McGwire circa 1998. The main reason it’s been an issue of late, you ask? It’s because I suck at it.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve followed sports almost religiously. I can name some of the most obscure players in sports history, like Eddie Gaedel, the dwarf who had one at-bat for the St. Louis Browns when they were owned by the always crazy Bill Veeck. I’ve already watched more sporting events than most people will watch in an entire lifetime. Yet for some reason, I can’t make a winning bet to save my life.
It’s not that I lose a lot of money on gambling. I’ve probably lost a net of about 75 bucks in my lifetime betting on games. The things that tick me off the most are, my friends who win. These are people who will wager on sports they know absolutely nothing about and win big.
My buddy from an unnamed state school told me last night that he bet on the India-Pakistan cricket match. Actually, he didn’t bet on the match itself, just that the fourth player in the second inning would get the dismissal method.
Trust me when I tell you that he has no idea what the “dismissal method” is. I’m pretty sure last night was the first time he had ever heard the word “wicket” because every time he said it on the phone, he’d snicker like a seventh grade boy reading a dirty magazine before gym class.
Yes, my friend is a gambling addict. He’s an extreme case. But you know what? He wins and he wins big. Meanwhile, I’m the guy he calls to make his picks. But if I tried to make the same picks, the karma alone would probably injure the star player on the team I picked.
If you’re still reading this, you might ask me what got me thinking about this subject in the first place. Well, I’ll tell those of you diligent enough to stick it out this long. I got creamed in my NCAA tournament bracket pool by people who know less about basketball than I do about quantum physics. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
It always seems to work out that way. The guy who takes his time with his bracket, studies each team and scrutinizes the coaches and the matchups within the games before each pick will almost always finish in last place. On the other hand, if some guy comes in with a list of team mascots and chooses his picks based on which sounds “more dope,” he will most certainly be walking away with the money. That’s just the way it is.
This year, my bracket was in shambles by the third day of the tournament. I had Syracuse and Gonzaga (yes, that Gonzaga) both going to St. Louis. How foolish of me. Syracuse came up against a powerhouse program named Vermont in the first round and was vanquished immediately. Gonzaga proceeded to wet their shorts after amassing a 13-point lead against Bobby Knight’s Texas Tech team.
Then, just to top it all off, Kansas decided to lay an egg at midcourt against Bucknell. So once again, my bracket went down in a blaze of glory. I’m not sure why I still fill these things out and pay the $10 entry fee. To steal a line from Bill Simmons: the lesson as always, I’m an idiot.
Now, it’s not a total loss. I still picked Illinois and North Carolina correctly. But who didn’t? The problem now is that even if Illinois beats UNC in the title game like I predicted, I’ll still lose by a wide margin simply because my first two rounds were about as bad as it gets.
So there you have it. Gambling on sports is morally wrong and possibly illegal. The bets you make can ruin your life as well as the sports themselves. Making a wager one time can lock you into a life of habitual spending and keep you penniless and miserable as you live out the rest of your days searching for a winning parlay to feed your gambling fix.
But most of all, if you’re like me, you just lose a lot, and losing stinks.
03-31-2005
