Monday, August 31, 2009
It Absolutely, Positively Didn’t Get There
St. Paul’s College is going to have to pay out a cancellation fee and other expenses to West Virginia Wesleyan after their opening NCAA Division II football game was called for lack of equipment. The home team’s helmets and shoulder pads hadn’t arrived by Thursday, and St. Paul’s athletic director Leroy Bacote called his counterpart at WVW and told him not to make the trip. Could there be a FedEx commercial in Bacote’s future…?
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Posted At
2:06 PM
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Friday, August 28, 2009
Meanwhile, Over at the State-Run Lottery…
As a side note on the whole Delaware sports betting issue…I lost a little more than $2,000 betting on sports online (back when it was legal to do so) over a four-year period. The money went to Jamaica — most, probably, to a scumbag casino owner who wasn’t even Jamaican, but some portion of it went to the people who answered the phones, the people who set the odds, the people who cleaned their modest offices. If it were an option to wager on sports here in the U.S., I’m sure I would take advantage of the opportunity. My money would stay here, and the sports book would be taxed and licensed, and if I were ever lucky enough to win (fat chance), I’d pay taxes on the winnings.
My mom, who was very concerned that I’d gone down this road, used every opportunity to try to convince me to stop. Then, in one of our urgent-sounding phone calls, she admitted that she played the lottery every week. (Lotteries are exempted from all the gambling-is-evil discussions, and multiple-play parlay bets are exempt from the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, too.) In Connecticut, where she lives, the state-run lottery gives her 25 plays for $20, and every week for more than 15 years, she’s been handing over her Hamiltons and letting the computer pick her numbers. She has won maybe a couple hundred dollars in that time — and lost $15,000 and counting.
Tell me, again, about the fabric of American society coming apart if I’m allowed to put twenty bucks on the Packers. Igglesblog got this one right — if betting on a game is morally wrong, then how come it’s okay to bet three games?
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Posted At
12:23 PM
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Bet You’re Wondering What the Big Deal Is
If you make a bet on an NFL contest — let’s say you’re in Las Vegas on a business trip, and you visit the casino’s sports book and put $110 on the New England Patriots to cover the 10 and a half points against the Bills in their season opener — do you think your actions could somehow compromise the result of the game? If enough of you and your drinking buddies put money on the Patriots, will the bookmaker make a quick call to the referee, asking for a phantom holding call or two to keep the Bills in it? Or to a Patriots running back, asking him to fumble at a key moment, allowing the Bills to escape with a mere nine-point loss?
No. A sports book offers multiple odds on every conceivable sporting (and every other kind of) event — from the Super Bowl, the game with the biggest action across the globe, down to the Golden Globes, political contests and Survivor — and even on specific occurrences taking place during those events, from how many yards rushing Edgerrin James will get to how many times the TV cameras will show Jack Nicholson during the Oscars telecast. Sports books can afford to be wrong, because every event is a toss-up, and even when they give you $100 for your winning $110 wager, they keep the $10 vig. They can’t lose, and they don’t. Sports books have no incentive to manipulate game results.
So the “integrity of the games” argument flashed by the major professional leagues this summer in opposition to Delaware’s decision in May to legalize sports betting just doesn’t wash. Don’t get me wrong — a crazed gambler with fifty grand riding on the Redskins on Sunday can certainly offer twenty to a Giants’ lineman to have a particularly bad day blocking. But he can do that now, no matter where he placed his wager.
This week’s decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down Delaware’s betting plans hinged on its finding that the state’s bill “violates the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act” of 1992. No act of Congress is more poorly named. Restricting legalized betting ensures that money wagered will continue to get in the hands of the types of shady characters that turned the White Sox black, instead of creating tax revenues that could be used to fill state coffers, just like state-run lotteries do. And the more places there are to take legal bets, the less likely it is that the integrity of games can be compromised.
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Posted At
12:26 PM
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Monday, August 24, 2009
A Shameless Plug for Electricity
I was surfing the Dallas Cowboys’ site, looking for some tips on installing scoreboards, when I came across this item about Direct Energy extending its gig as Official Electricity Provider to the Cowboys and Cowboys Stadium. The consumer in me started to giggle; I’d like to hear Madison Gas & Electric’s response when I tell them I prefer that some other company (there isn’t one) burn a big heap of coal so I can run my toaster oven. But a few clicks later, I’ve learned a little something about the market for electricity in Texas, which passed a bill in 2002 that phased in deregulation, allowing consumers to choose among various electricity providers. By one estimate, 85 percent of Texas households have switched providers at least once since the bill became law, and since Direct Energy is just the third-largest electricity retailer in Texas, its Dallas sponsorship is truly important to the company’s brand-awareness goals. Whether it’s working is another issue — it can’t be good news that the company is still in Dr Pepper territory after five years as a Cowboys preferred provider.
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Posted At
12:26 PM
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