SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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Flipping channels, I just saw my first infomercial for a sports gambling company. They weren't selling trinkets, kitchenware or skin cream but betting on games. We are being inundated by regular commercials for Caesar's, Draft Kings, Fan Duel, etc. I heard a blurb that one of those companies was now "an official partner of major league baseball". I wondered what Pete Rose thought of that. Orange Nation just did a show that about 50% ads read off for sports books or discussions on what the hosts had bet on and how much they had won or (mostly), lost.
I have three levels of opinions on sports gambling: the personal, the libertarian and the societal.
The Personal: When I went to SU, to commuted from my home in North Syracuse, (which is right near the bus line). Carmen Basilio was before my time but I had some interest in the career of Billy Backus, whose up-and-down career was featured on the local sports pages throughout the 60's. Billy would win 2-3 bouts, then loose one, the win a couple more, then lose, etc. He finally made the welterweight top 10 and battled with other contenders. Finally, he got a chance at the title against Jose Napoles, who agreed to come to Syracuse to fight Billy in the War Memorial, (I think that's the last world title held here). I didn't go to the fight but was interested in what happened. I'd forgotten to listen to the radio over breakfast to find out who won and found myself on the bus to the university still ignorant of the results. I noticed a man reading the morning paper and asked him, "Excuse me, sir, could you tell me who won the big fight last night?" Without looking up, the guy answered in a gravelly Edward G. Robinson voice: "Why? Yeah got some money on it?"
I explained that I just hoped the local guy did good. His response: "Hummmph!" I realized that this guy probably never cared about any sporting event unless he had money on it and would never understand why anybody would care about anything else. It left a sour taste in my mouth and a desire to never see things the way that guy did. (By the way Billy won to become the second world champ in his family, which is why the Hall of the Fame is in Canastota.)
Some years later I had a friend who was into gambling explain why an innocuous football game between Stanford and Oregon State was designated "the lock of the year" by Las Vegas with a ridiculous point spread. It had something to do with that game convincing people to gamble on sports more than they usually would do. Then there's all the occasions when people have been angry that teams didn't do something to beat the point spread at the end of games that were otherwise decided. It was an alternative world, like looking at space through a radio telescope rather than a visual one and seeing something totally different. I just preferred a conventional telescope. It gave me all I needed to see.
I have the same view of fantasy sports. My idea of fantasy sports is imagining what things would be like if they'd been done the way I think they should have done, like what if there had been an NCAA football tournament like the basketball tournament, what if the basketball tournament had maintained geographic regions and the Final Four was a battle of the best team in each region, what if they had combined standings for golf's majors and the winner was the golfer of the year, what if baseball had kept the four division, no wild card set-up and still had pennant races, what if boxing had annual tournaments to determine champions, etc. etc. I don't envision myself as a general manager and selecting a halfback from this team, a quarterback from that team, a receiver from another team and adding up their combined accomplishments and thus worrying about their individual numbers rather than who actually wins the games they are in. Again, that's not my kind of telescope. And when it's monetized, it becomes another form of gambling.
So I'm just Joe Phan and the 'bored historian' and happy to be so. The most I've even done is to put a dollar in the office NCAA pool with my annual sheet, (which only showed me that, while I know a lot about the past in sports, I know nothing the future).
The Libertarian: Controlling one life is a full-time job. I don't want to take on the job of controlling others. I have no need to be superior to others. I just want to be equal to myself. "My rights end where yours begin" makes a lot of sense to me. I've always been more afraid of people who want to limit my options than people who want to offer them to me because I can say 'no' to the later but the former won't care what I say. 'Morality' to me is not about controlling other people or using rules as a cudgel to subdue them. It's simply about how you treat people. If you care about the impact of your words and actions on others, you are a moral person. If you don't, you are amoral. If you like to hurt people, you are immoral. Thus, if people want to gamble on sports or play fantasy sports, I've no objection so long as I don't have to join them and can pursue my own interests. My only concern is whether people who do that might being using money they can't afford to lose, may lose their ability to choose their actions to an addiction and may destroy their personal relationships as a result. It's still not really my business. But on the next level, maybe it is my business because it's everyone's business.
The Societal: I have Marty Glickman's book "The Fastest Kid on the Block". In it, (pages 79-84), he discusses the basketball points-shaving scandals of the early 50's: CCNY point-shaving scandal - Wikipedia
He describes how his father couldn't control his gambling as a child and had to get young Marty to withdraw $35 he had in his personal bank account to pay off one gambling debt and the showdown his gather had with his mother over it. Fast forward to the late 40's and Marty has made a name for himself as a basketball announcer. the sport is booming and gambling is filling the boom:
"People bet big money on those basketball games right after World War II, just as they do now. Kids at school got involved, betting parlay cards. there was so much gambling around that i got caught up in it. I had inside information on every team, every coach, most of the players in the country. I knew about late injuries nobody else knew about. I said to myself, 'Hey, I know all this stuff, maybe I'll make a bet or two.' I bet for the first time with a bookmaker...And you know what? I found myself calling the most one-sided basketball game you ever heard. If the team I bet on did anything wrong, I was sharply critical of them. And if the officials called one against my team, don't ask...I probably bet on two games, then quit because there was no way I could intelligently broadcast a game on which I bet."
He describes a game he broadcast from the Baltimore Coliseum: "I broadcast from a seat in the midst of the spectators at the mid-court line, about 6-7 rows up from the court. Before the game and during the halftime, while I was on the air, bookmakers would go along the sidelines in front of the stands and call out the odds-on bets. During the half, they'd pay off bets for points scored, shooting percent ages, whatever. they would pass the dollars up along the rows of seats, the way you might pass a soda or a hot dog to a person sitting in the stands. I would reach out while broadcasting and take a handful of bills and pass them along behind me, not missing a syllable. My wife, who was sitting alongside me as a statistician, would do the same thing. Baltimore was a wide-open betting town."
"There were bad things in the air, and it seemed as if everybody had blinders on. there was booing and catcalling that had little to do the winning and losing but a lot to do with the point spread... That game's outcome was decided but the bets hung on the balance. Though I knew what was going on in the arena, I broadcast straight. I didn't mention the odds. I have always tried to be open and honest in my broadcasts. I realize I was putting my head in the sand. I just felt strongly that there shouldn't be an emphasis on gambling. I have always objected to the printing of odds lines in the newspapers and the use of those figures on the air. It is rank hypocrisy for newspapers to print odds on college games and then write holier-than-thou editorials decrying gambling scandals when they occur. I never, ever give the price of a game."
"There was plenty of suspicion that college games were being fixed but I refused to believe it. I didn't want to believe it because I was having such a wonderful time making a name for myself doing these games. I didn't believe it even if though players who had played college ball told me so... Like many others I have the capacity not to believe things I don't want to believe...I could not accept that games were being fixed. Certainly, I couldn't detect anything shady while broadcasting the games." He describes a 39-point game by LIU star Sherman White, who later admitted he was point-shaving. "They could dump not only by missing shots but also by playing loose defense, throwing poor passes and committing fouls while continuing to score." Players can do those things even when not dumping points.
"When the stories about the fixing of games broke, I was shocked. I couldn't believe that these fine young men, fellows I knew, shot baskets with, had on my evening shows, were actually involved with criminals, racketeers. And yet they were admitting these things... I put the blame at the time on bookmakers, because bookies provided the machinery whereby players could dump games. if there were no bookmakers, they wouldn't dump games. I used to say on the air, "if you're going to bet on a game, bet with a buddy. Don't bet with a bookmaker because you'll be contributing to the upkeep of a bookmaker"... But the evil traced as well to every sports fan in America who bet on games: every individual who bet with a bookmaker or in those college football pools or competed in contests o the radio to pick winners. We were all at fault because we were making it possible, through gambling, for these things to happen... When the scandals developed, basketball took an enormous drop. We stopped broadcasting college games for two or three years afterwards because interest in them fell off considerably."
One of the things that fuels corruption is the perception that world is unfair to begin with: why follow the rules if they aren't designed to promote fairness? The whole college set-up was designed to maximize the university revenues while denying money to the players who played the games under the guise of amateurism. What kind of loyalty is a player going to have to such a system? What likelihood is he to develop a set of moral standards beyond looking out for #1 if everybody around him is already looking out for #1? Have the recent increases in player spending money and other advantages plus now he has NIL and also the prospects for a pro career insulated players from the temptation to give in to corruption? We're about to find out.
I love old movies and TV shows and recently viewed this episode of "The Untouchables" about what used to be called the "numbers racket':
ok.ru
A woman in the depths of the depression wins $150 and her life improves. But 999 out of 1,000 people gave up their precious money and got nothing, prompting Elliott Ness's lecture at 4:40. Later the states took over the numbers racket. They dressed it up by saying the money would be used for education. In fact, it was, but the politicians deducted those amounts from what was being paid from the progressive tax rolls. Then they passed a tax cut and ran for re-election based on their tax cut. The schools didn't get any more than they would usually get. In fact the quality of public education has probably declined in the lottery era. And, if you view it as an alternative to taxes, it's like a regressive tax, where the people who can least afford to part with the money buy lottery tickets in hopes of being one of the rare winners. Hey, you never know! Gambling is much the same. people who need money are looking for a quick way to make it. There are probably more middle class and even rich people involved. But most of it comes from people who can't afford it.
It just seems to be that we are regressing to a macro version of the Baltimore Coliseum, able to do it with our phones now. What's it all going to come to? I don't know but I doubt it will be something good. What do we do about it? I don't think there's a mood to construct the sort of government bureaucracy that would be needed to control it or stamp it out, (meaning to send it underground again). I just think we are skating on thin ice and unhappy endings are a lot more likely than happy ones.
I have three levels of opinions on sports gambling: the personal, the libertarian and the societal.
The Personal: When I went to SU, to commuted from my home in North Syracuse, (which is right near the bus line). Carmen Basilio was before my time but I had some interest in the career of Billy Backus, whose up-and-down career was featured on the local sports pages throughout the 60's. Billy would win 2-3 bouts, then loose one, the win a couple more, then lose, etc. He finally made the welterweight top 10 and battled with other contenders. Finally, he got a chance at the title against Jose Napoles, who agreed to come to Syracuse to fight Billy in the War Memorial, (I think that's the last world title held here). I didn't go to the fight but was interested in what happened. I'd forgotten to listen to the radio over breakfast to find out who won and found myself on the bus to the university still ignorant of the results. I noticed a man reading the morning paper and asked him, "Excuse me, sir, could you tell me who won the big fight last night?" Without looking up, the guy answered in a gravelly Edward G. Robinson voice: "Why? Yeah got some money on it?"
Some years later I had a friend who was into gambling explain why an innocuous football game between Stanford and Oregon State was designated "the lock of the year" by Las Vegas with a ridiculous point spread. It had something to do with that game convincing people to gamble on sports more than they usually would do. Then there's all the occasions when people have been angry that teams didn't do something to beat the point spread at the end of games that were otherwise decided. It was an alternative world, like looking at space through a radio telescope rather than a visual one and seeing something totally different. I just preferred a conventional telescope. It gave me all I needed to see.
I have the same view of fantasy sports. My idea of fantasy sports is imagining what things would be like if they'd been done the way I think they should have done, like what if there had been an NCAA football tournament like the basketball tournament, what if the basketball tournament had maintained geographic regions and the Final Four was a battle of the best team in each region, what if they had combined standings for golf's majors and the winner was the golfer of the year, what if baseball had kept the four division, no wild card set-up and still had pennant races, what if boxing had annual tournaments to determine champions, etc. etc. I don't envision myself as a general manager and selecting a halfback from this team, a quarterback from that team, a receiver from another team and adding up their combined accomplishments and thus worrying about their individual numbers rather than who actually wins the games they are in. Again, that's not my kind of telescope. And when it's monetized, it becomes another form of gambling.
So I'm just Joe Phan and the 'bored historian' and happy to be so. The most I've even done is to put a dollar in the office NCAA pool with my annual sheet, (which only showed me that, while I know a lot about the past in sports, I know nothing the future).
The Libertarian: Controlling one life is a full-time job. I don't want to take on the job of controlling others. I have no need to be superior to others. I just want to be equal to myself. "My rights end where yours begin" makes a lot of sense to me. I've always been more afraid of people who want to limit my options than people who want to offer them to me because I can say 'no' to the later but the former won't care what I say. 'Morality' to me is not about controlling other people or using rules as a cudgel to subdue them. It's simply about how you treat people. If you care about the impact of your words and actions on others, you are a moral person. If you don't, you are amoral. If you like to hurt people, you are immoral. Thus, if people want to gamble on sports or play fantasy sports, I've no objection so long as I don't have to join them and can pursue my own interests. My only concern is whether people who do that might being using money they can't afford to lose, may lose their ability to choose their actions to an addiction and may destroy their personal relationships as a result. It's still not really my business. But on the next level, maybe it is my business because it's everyone's business.
The Societal: I have Marty Glickman's book "The Fastest Kid on the Block". In it, (pages 79-84), he discusses the basketball points-shaving scandals of the early 50's: CCNY point-shaving scandal - Wikipedia
He describes how his father couldn't control his gambling as a child and had to get young Marty to withdraw $35 he had in his personal bank account to pay off one gambling debt and the showdown his gather had with his mother over it. Fast forward to the late 40's and Marty has made a name for himself as a basketball announcer. the sport is booming and gambling is filling the boom:
"People bet big money on those basketball games right after World War II, just as they do now. Kids at school got involved, betting parlay cards. there was so much gambling around that i got caught up in it. I had inside information on every team, every coach, most of the players in the country. I knew about late injuries nobody else knew about. I said to myself, 'Hey, I know all this stuff, maybe I'll make a bet or two.' I bet for the first time with a bookmaker...And you know what? I found myself calling the most one-sided basketball game you ever heard. If the team I bet on did anything wrong, I was sharply critical of them. And if the officials called one against my team, don't ask...I probably bet on two games, then quit because there was no way I could intelligently broadcast a game on which I bet."
He describes a game he broadcast from the Baltimore Coliseum: "I broadcast from a seat in the midst of the spectators at the mid-court line, about 6-7 rows up from the court. Before the game and during the halftime, while I was on the air, bookmakers would go along the sidelines in front of the stands and call out the odds-on bets. During the half, they'd pay off bets for points scored, shooting percent ages, whatever. they would pass the dollars up along the rows of seats, the way you might pass a soda or a hot dog to a person sitting in the stands. I would reach out while broadcasting and take a handful of bills and pass them along behind me, not missing a syllable. My wife, who was sitting alongside me as a statistician, would do the same thing. Baltimore was a wide-open betting town."
"There were bad things in the air, and it seemed as if everybody had blinders on. there was booing and catcalling that had little to do the winning and losing but a lot to do with the point spread... That game's outcome was decided but the bets hung on the balance. Though I knew what was going on in the arena, I broadcast straight. I didn't mention the odds. I have always tried to be open and honest in my broadcasts. I realize I was putting my head in the sand. I just felt strongly that there shouldn't be an emphasis on gambling. I have always objected to the printing of odds lines in the newspapers and the use of those figures on the air. It is rank hypocrisy for newspapers to print odds on college games and then write holier-than-thou editorials decrying gambling scandals when they occur. I never, ever give the price of a game."
"There was plenty of suspicion that college games were being fixed but I refused to believe it. I didn't want to believe it because I was having such a wonderful time making a name for myself doing these games. I didn't believe it even if though players who had played college ball told me so... Like many others I have the capacity not to believe things I don't want to believe...I could not accept that games were being fixed. Certainly, I couldn't detect anything shady while broadcasting the games." He describes a 39-point game by LIU star Sherman White, who later admitted he was point-shaving. "They could dump not only by missing shots but also by playing loose defense, throwing poor passes and committing fouls while continuing to score." Players can do those things even when not dumping points.
"When the stories about the fixing of games broke, I was shocked. I couldn't believe that these fine young men, fellows I knew, shot baskets with, had on my evening shows, were actually involved with criminals, racketeers. And yet they were admitting these things... I put the blame at the time on bookmakers, because bookies provided the machinery whereby players could dump games. if there were no bookmakers, they wouldn't dump games. I used to say on the air, "if you're going to bet on a game, bet with a buddy. Don't bet with a bookmaker because you'll be contributing to the upkeep of a bookmaker"... But the evil traced as well to every sports fan in America who bet on games: every individual who bet with a bookmaker or in those college football pools or competed in contests o the radio to pick winners. We were all at fault because we were making it possible, through gambling, for these things to happen... When the scandals developed, basketball took an enormous drop. We stopped broadcasting college games for two or three years afterwards because interest in them fell off considerably."
One of the things that fuels corruption is the perception that world is unfair to begin with: why follow the rules if they aren't designed to promote fairness? The whole college set-up was designed to maximize the university revenues while denying money to the players who played the games under the guise of amateurism. What kind of loyalty is a player going to have to such a system? What likelihood is he to develop a set of moral standards beyond looking out for #1 if everybody around him is already looking out for #1? Have the recent increases in player spending money and other advantages plus now he has NIL and also the prospects for a pro career insulated players from the temptation to give in to corruption? We're about to find out.
I love old movies and TV shows and recently viewed this episode of "The Untouchables" about what used to be called the "numbers racket':
The Untouchables (12) 1959 – You cant pick the Number
The Untouchables (12) 1959 – You cant pick the Number
ok.ru
A woman in the depths of the depression wins $150 and her life improves. But 999 out of 1,000 people gave up their precious money and got nothing, prompting Elliott Ness's lecture at 4:40. Later the states took over the numbers racket. They dressed it up by saying the money would be used for education. In fact, it was, but the politicians deducted those amounts from what was being paid from the progressive tax rolls. Then they passed a tax cut and ran for re-election based on their tax cut. The schools didn't get any more than they would usually get. In fact the quality of public education has probably declined in the lottery era. And, if you view it as an alternative to taxes, it's like a regressive tax, where the people who can least afford to part with the money buy lottery tickets in hopes of being one of the rare winners. Hey, you never know! Gambling is much the same. people who need money are looking for a quick way to make it. There are probably more middle class and even rich people involved. But most of it comes from people who can't afford it.
It just seems to be that we are regressing to a macro version of the Baltimore Coliseum, able to do it with our phones now. What's it all going to come to? I don't know but I doubt it will be something good. What do we do about it? I don't think there's a mood to construct the sort of government bureaucracy that would be needed to control it or stamp it out, (meaning to send it underground again). I just think we are skating on thin ice and unhappy endings are a lot more likely than happy ones.
