POSTED FOR SCOTT KOHLHEPP
As you get older, the language of football begins to change. As we’ve aged, no longer do we ask who we think the better player or better team is, we ask “what’s the spread?” or “you going over or under?” Many people find themselves waking up Sunday morning and rushing to their computer to look at the latest spreads. They justify how much they need to spend to either maximize profit or make a comeback off a shaky previous week.
"http://redding.com/news/2008/mar/02/when-the-chips-are-down/?partner=yahoo_headline
The article above deals mainly with gambling addicts. One of the people interviewed for the article (who chose not to be named) said “His free time is his Achilles heel…noting that his gambling addiction was fueled by online sports betting.” When you type in a search for “Online Sports Betting Sites” into google you get around 909,000 finds. These sites range from sportbet.com to sportsbook.com to wsex(World Sports Exchange).com. With a few credit card numbers, an individual can be online and betting on sports in mere seconds. Just a few clicks can mean a few hundred dollars either way.
In the Handbook of Sports and Media, Michael Real touches on the concept of online gambling. He cites that between 1997 and 2003, online gambling losses went from an estimated $300 million to between 3 and 6 billion dollars. He also states that a reported 5.6% of college students are pathological, unable to stop betting money online that they do not even have. He also goes on to state that up to 35% of student athletes were reported on gambling on sports, 5% of which bet on their own games, provided inside information, or even played poorly in exchange for money.
To further this, we are seeing problems on our campuses. Students with their first credit cards are maxing them out online by the making chronic bets. These sports betting sites are more then glad to take their money that they should be spending on food, gas, or textbooks. To further this, players are getting in on the action. The games we’re watching could be tainted by student athletes throwing the game for the right amount of $ or even for betting on the game itself.
The questions I pose are should we regulate online sports betting? How many students in this class use online betting sites? Has it been profitable? Also, should we raise the legal betting age to 21? With this, college kids who have credit cards in their own name would be regulated. Finally, should
6 comments:
I'm interested in this blog, not because I gamble on sports, but I've seen the effects it has on my friends that gamble. Every time I watch a Patriots game at a boys house this season, I would watch all the gamblers on their cell phones every five minutes contacting whoever they talk to about their bets and then I watch them literally bite their nails through every quarter. How do you enjoy sports like that? I felt enough pain watching my Patriots lose the SuperBowl, I can't imagine the turmoil the people who bet on them to win were going through.
Not only does it affect their bank statement, I think it affects their social life too. Watching sports is a social engagement, it's a time to interact with friends and root for your favorite team. When there's someone there who has money on the game, it adds this tense feeling to the room, like you can't relax and enjoy the game. They're constantly talking about spreads and unders and overs and swearing when their team does something bad that it's no fun watching with them. More than once I've watched my boyfriend's roommate, who bets weekly on games, get up and punch a wall or swear and ends up watching the game alone in his room. What fun is that? Sure, it's fun to win money, but is it really worth the agony? After reading the article Scott provided, I realized that it's an addiction just like anything else, sometimes people can't get out of the vicious cycle. You're probably going to laugh at me, but I'm reminded of Keanu Reeves' character in the movie "Hardball" when he bets on basketball games, he literally cannot watch the games because the suspense of a close game that he has money on is killing him. He has to have them dictated to him by his friend until the final buzzer.
When reading Real's comments about college students betting on their own games and playing poorly to win money, it brings me back to the Pete Rose scandal. All of his achievements went right out the window because he bet on his own team to lose. Even though he was a coach at the time, all of the stats he piled up while he was playing were stripped of him. No one saw him as the hero of the game anymore, he was a fraud. I just wish these college students who are pathological betters could see the error in what they are doing, what damage they could do to their career if they get caught.
I honestly don't know if there's anything more the United States can do about the gambling habits, especially since the sites are from outside the country. Just because society says its bad for you, doesn't mean people are going to stop. I haven't seen enough of good coming from sports gambling to say that it's a profitable habit, and I don't think I ever will.
Do we really want the government to get involved with regulating online gambling? That is a scary thought to say the least. Government agencies are notoriously inefficient when it comes to regulating the personal habits of the people. In my opinion, people need to take responsibility for their own actions. The founding fathers surely did not envision the government as a device to protect us from ourselves. Michael Real wants to blame the Internet for gambling problems when the problem lies with the personal responsibility of the gambler.
A perfect example of regulation gone bad was the prohibition on alcohol. The only thing the Eighteenth Amendment accomplished was to drive the problem underground. The same thing is evident with Internet gambling site ban in the United States. The gap was filled with offshore Internet sites. If people want to gamble, they are going to find a way.
The government should enforce existing laws on illegal gambling whether it be the Internet or the local bookee.
Michael Real writes about all the people that lose money gambling, but he fails to mention how many people actually make money. I for one used to consistently gamble on college basketball games. This was before the Internet was available, so I would call my bookee every day to place my bets. I would bet $100-$500 on each game about 8 to 10 times a week. I would consistently win $200-$500 each week. The problem was that I was spending 20 to 30 hours of my spare time each week studying college basketball. I stopped betting when I figured out the hourly pay rate for my efforts was not worth the time.
I have personally seen sports gambling ruin lives. I have seen my own family become so invested in making money from betting sports it was destroying the lives around them. After seeing the negatives affects of sports betting I was able to understand how serious the matter was. Making a little extra chash is not worth the risk of throwing your life away. Those in my family that faced this addiction were lucky enough to have a supporting force that cvought the problem early on and were able to talk them away from the problem. For those who only see betting as a recreational hobby have yet to see its affects personnally. I feel there is a need to regulate gambling to those who do it. There should be a limit to how much one can bet at one time or how much in a certain time period.
If there are restrictions on gambling i feel there will no longer be any lives ruined by this terrible addiction.
I have learned from my family memebers who faced this addiction that by gambling it made the games more exciting when none of their favortite teams were playing. The biggest problem with gambling is once you get in a hole you try to win all your money back at once and that gets you in an even bigger hole. That is when lives are destroyed.
As the sports handbook shows, gambling has made its way to the internet in the form of fantasy leagues. People become owners of their own sports team and not only invest their own money into these leagues but invest mass amounts of their own time. This is just another way for people to engulf their life in sports but also face the risks of losing their hard earnmed money.
I feel sorry that I had to learn the awful affects of this addiction through the mistakes of my own family memebers but I see no good coming from gambling. I know I said I want to see regulations but i would love to see is gambling made illegal. Seeing my own family suffer from the ill affects definatley put this addiction into perspective.
It is well known that sports gambling can become a dangerous addiction. But the same can be said for gambling in Vegas or on lottery tickets. More people than we can probably understand drop thousands of dollars that they can't afford to lose in Las Vegas, Atlantic City or even a little west of us at Mohegan Sun.
Real says a study "reported that 5.6% of U.S. college age and young people are pathological in their betting - gambling to recoup losses, spending money they don't have, unable to stop - almost three times the rate among the general adult population."
As a member of the 94.4% that does not fall under this category, but does participate in sports gambling, there is really no one to blame but the young person that can't control themselves. If online gambling were outlawed, they would just find a bookie who could take their bets instead.
There are plenty of things in this country that are legal to use that are abused by its citizens. As was mentioned on another post, alcohol is both legal and extremely profitable in the U.S., and I would bet both are abused by at least an equal percentage of people. However, the majority of people are able to use alcohol in moderation responsibly.
In the end, people need to held accountable for their own decisions. I should be able to risk money I've earned on something if I so choose. There are outlets for those who have a problem controlling their gambling, but I don't think anything should really be done to regulate it.
The sad reality is that this country's sports nation, thrives, dare i say lives, to gamble on games. For some people it is a means to be more entertained by the games. While for others it is a way to make a few extra dollars aside from their day job. But for a majority of people it is a way for them to lose everything they own, including jobs, homes, futures, and families.
Is it right for the government to get themselves invovled in a "sport" that is growing at alarming rates? Is it right for the government to step in and stop young adolescents who do not know when to stop? Lastly, is it bad for the government to stop gambling online because of the damaging effect it has on our economy? These are all valid questions to pose, but what is the difference between gambling online and gambling in a location casino on Indian reservations. How could the government regulate one and not the other without seeming hypocritical.
As for college, or even professional, athletes that accept brides so that bookies and other gamblings can gain the big pay day, it just seems so unjust and unethical. How can you tarnish or taint a game that you love and endure so much from? Why would you be willing to sacrifice a sport that gives people so much satisfaction? The ideas of what goes on behind closed doors at refree meetings, player meeting, and owning meetings is all too private. There is more that meets the eye in the world of gambling and sadly to ones that suffer are the little guys, the average Americans, who are just trying to turn sometime into a small fortune. For most it is a pipeline dream, in the end, their debts outweight their winnings and that is the sad truth people refuse to phatom.
I believe that there are two major forces to sports gambling One is that fans like to make themselves a part of the team. Fantasy teams for example, makes fans as close to a real General Manager as it gets without actually going to games and handling contracts. And in today's day and age, what's the point of competing in something like this without putting a little something on the line? My girlfriend and I are filling out NCAA Brackets for the heck of it. And of course, the loser buys a nice Italian dinner. That's just our mindset.
With that, fans want to have the feeling of superiority towards their friends and colleauges as far as sports knowledge is concerned. As it says in the Handbook on page 175, "March Madness featuers 64 NCAA college teams engaged in basketball games at the same time...Nielsen//NetRatings reports 20 million unique to sports web sites for those games."
Every year with college basketball, there are those one or two games that are huge upsets, and somewhere, somebody picked that upset. And that person gets the chance to look at his or her buddies and say "Yeah, I told you guys that was going to happen!" What kind of things let fans pick up helpful information? Things like Spreads and over/unders.
As mentioned in the post, there are so many different outlets to this information that its hard for fans not to get involved. anyone who follows sports and talks about updates with their friends has at least one friend who is interested in the gambling aspect of sports, and its a shame. I guess its whatever can get the fans involved.
Post a Comment