It’s The Gamblers Not Gambling

As I sit here on the morning after arguably the best sports weekend, I can’t help but be frustrated. My Broncos have made the AFC Championship for the first time in a decade, I should be happy. Unfortunately, Bo Nix broke his ankle, and Denver’s opponent is the Patriots. 

But that isn’t the major source of my frustration. I’m used to playing the heel. I did it for like 20 years, what’s one more? The real issue here is something I’ve become increasingly annoyed with for quite some time now. 

I’ve written about the prevalence of gambling in sports now that it has been essentially legalized almost everywhere. I’m not going to moan or whine about the never ending deluge of bad gambling commercials. I’ve already done that in a blog and it would be just rehashing the same gripes. Nobody wants to read that again. 

As I sit here on this snowy MLK Day, I came to a realization; I have no problem with the gambling itself. My big issue is these people that have turned gambling from a casual hobby into their whole personality. 

Now I’m not going to dive into the latest scandal that has to do with college basketball. It would just be a carbon copy of what I wrote about the NBA’s issues a few months ago. That’s a bigger issue that won’t ever be solved. The sport is just too easy to fix. The ship has sailed on that one. 

So let’s ignore this for a minute and talk about what really grinds my gears.

As someone who is a diehard football fan, in this playoff season, I am consuming as much gridiron content as I can. In the past few years, I have driven away from a lot of the content I used to enjoy because it has been infected by these “gambling experts” that do nothing but talk fake numbers made up by rich moguls that really don’t mean anything. I know that they are made up, because they CHANGE THE SPREADS based on how much money is being put on teams. That should be the first red flag to anyone with a shred of intelligence. Those so-called “gambling experts” are just paid schmucks from casinos and gambling companies that are only there to entice you to throw some money at some game. And guess what? They’re definitely paying some other loser to pick the other team so they can cover their bases. The Simpsons episode with Professor Pigskin illustrates this perfectly in this clip: 

Why do you think these gambling companies have all this money to throw around? Because the house always wins. 

The real epidemic here isn’t the amount of money these companies are making. It’s just like cigarettes and the lottery. It’s an idiot tax…which I am all for by the way. The real scourge upon the sports content world is these content creators who post their meaningless picks and pretend like they know something everyone else doesn’t. Whereas in actuality, these picks can be more accurately made by flipping a coin. 

They’re easy to spot. It’s either some dorky looking guy with a "market based system” or a nominally attractive female reading from a screen making sure to show certain parts of their anatomy. Hell, I even tried it back with our weekly NFL picks. Guess what? I was just as good as any “expert” out there. You know what else? I never actually bet on any of the picks I made. 

That’s the other thing. 

Anyone who is taking any of these picks and actually putting money on them should know that the “experts” are not what they claim to be. They’re just pretending to convince you that they are. If they were winning, the casinos wouldn’t be paying them, plain and simple. 

Listen, if you want to be a numbskull and listen to these scammers pretending to be “experts” go right ahead. It’s your money, and this is America. You have every right to waste it away. I greatly appreciate the tax dollars paying my salary. I just urge you to gamble responsibly. Never spend what you don’t have and don’t chase losses. Seriously, I actually mean that. You hear all the ads say it, but don’t want you to hear it. Why else would they read it at 100mph and make it easily skippable?

This may be misunderstood as an anti-gambling post but it isn't. I believe in personal responsibility. It’s not on the casinos and big gambling companies to protect us from ourselves. I’ll keep my money, you spend yours. Just remember, it’s not DraftKings, Fanduel or Caesar’s Palace fault. It’s yours.