The much-honored sportswriter, Roger Angel, writing in 1972 about baseball, while reflecting on sports, said, “Sports are too much with us. Late and soon sitting and watching—mostly watching on television—we lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm and, in time, attention as more and more closing rallies and crucial putts and late field goals and final playoffs and sudden deaths and world records and world championships unreel themselves ceaselessly before our half-lidded eyes. Professional leagues expand like bubble gum, ever larger and thinner, and the extended sporting seasons, now bunching and overlapping at the ends, conclude in exhaustion and the wrong weather.”
Fifty years later, Angel’s 1972 lament is especially biting. I recall it for the millions who play inside rather than outside. As Angel’s “time thinned product” invites boredom, today’s owners have spent billions on their boyhood fantasy, cynically pushing their captive audiences to buy more, pay more, and now bet more. It is said the all-in cost of an NFL game is $350-$600 for two persons, for example. The all-in cost of gambling is unknowable.
Bob Costas, a 29-time Emmy Award winner, and recognized as the National Sportscaster of the Year eight times, in a recent interview on sports gambling by his father said there was “a lot of trauma in our family life because he had a volatile temper and the mortgage was often riding on how his bets went….. he didn’t bet on, you know, cards or poker games or crap games or go to the racetrack. He bet on baseball, football, and basketball games.”
There was a time in the early 1970s when I played poker with five or six guys. During football season, we would meet at a friend’s business, and he would give us the Sunday football betting card. It was done quietly—betting on sports was illegal.
And there were the bets with my Dad. We would always bet on the Army-Navy game—he had been in the Army, so I always had Navy. The numbers were digestible; as I recall $10 tops (1950s dollars). I come to this topic initiated, but boy, how times have changed. Too often, stimulation has become the game.
Now my loyal ChatGPT assistant reports that “Online gambling is undergoing rapid, double-digit annual growth—driven by expansion in the U.S., mobile-first strategies, and immersive technology adoption.”
I suspect some of the growth momentum is caused by the micro-bet. Major League Baseball is investigating two specific pitches that Cleveland Guardian pitcher Luis Ortiz threw. Both pitches had a higher-than-usual number of bets placed on them — action that was flagged by a betting integrity firm.
Yes, there are essentially an infinite number of ways you can bet on sports these days. One of them is a micro-bet about what the first pitch of a given inning might be: ball, strike, swinging strike—well use your imagination.
As we “lay waste our powers of identification and enthusiasm,” our ultimate animal spirit object, money, has become the stimulus. The game becomes ours. We either win or lose; who cares who wins the game on the field or in the gym? We get to play regardless of how inanimate we choose to be.
Oh well, the cynical win. The new owners with their billions on the roulette wheel of life. They are the games rights holders; the networks ultimately deal with them. The rights holders mostly own monopolies. Viewers might find an off-brand football league, but of course want to watch their NFL team.
And then there are the middlemen who handle the transactions and the State agencies that provide the gambling licenses—they get a cut too. Maybe we should throw in that part of the health care community that intercedes with the addicted. Maybe that is the final cut.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
Mickey Terrone says
Thanks for writing this article, Al. As a 14-year old in Brooklyn, working in my dad’s luncheonette, there were customers who played the horses. They’d read the Morning Telegraph and retire to the phone booth and place their bets for the next day. One Saturday morning, of these people, a very successful lawyer, received a visit from a big, hulking fellow who beckoned our customer into the alley. Ten minutes later, our customer returned bleeding from the nose and mouth. Apparently, he welched on a bet. Eventually, this fellow’s gambling problem managed to cause a divorce from his wife with two young sons. A few years later, he lost a second wife and two more young sons, before being disbarred and essentially ruining numerous lives in the process.
This microcosm of the rapidly growing nationwide gambling problem can’t begin adequately to characterize the breath of the problem in our society today. The legalization of sports gambling and micro-betting are even now corrupting sports and society in general. Some of the same people who claim to have trouble putting food on the table for their families are likely losing appreciable amounts of their pay via their gambling accounts. Americans legally bet over $120 Billion on sports in 2024 (a 35% increase over 2023). That is a lot of money off the kitchen tables for American families living from month to month with minimal, if any savings. Is it any wonder that so many Americans perceive that “inflation” is causing them to feel their pay increases aren’t “keeping up”?
I’m appalled by the TV ads for gambling before, during and after televised sports of all kinds. The hidden persuaders of Vance Packard’s days aren’t hiding anymore. As a passionate college football fan, I’m aware that many college alumni become upset even after their team wins but fails to cover the points or fail to produce enough points to cover the “over” – so they lose money despite the fact that their team(s) won their games. And they get mad at the coaches for not covering the points or the over/under.
Personally, I feel bad enough after a loss without adding the insult to injury of losing a bet, too. The original idea of legalizing sports gambling to gain tax revenue knowing that millions of people were gambling illegally anyway, seemed to make some sense a few decades ago. The monster that has been created is a considerable threat to society at this point, however.
With college players now being paid, I suspect there will be many more Shoeless Joe Jackson situations, point shaving scandals and inexplicable fumbles as time goes by. At some point, most every win or loss in every game, regardless of sport will come under suspicion of a fix. I suppose there will always be a job market for enforcers and social workers for the homeless family victims of gamblers. Too bad for America.
Wendy Roth says
The World Is Too Much With Us*
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
*….for those unfamiliar with the poem