Stuff becomes part of the landscape, while you're not paying attention. One day anti-vaxxers like Jenny McCarthy are rightly regarded as tinfoil-hat-wearing kooks, and the next she's part of a real live Movement, with elected representatives waving its banner and everything.
One day fringe loonies are just, well, fringe loonies, and the next they're getting elected to Congress -- including right here in northeast Indiana.
One day sports gambling lives in the shadows, and the next ...
Well. Then it suddenly has an honored place at Sportsball World's table.
The strangeness of this occurred to me last weekend, while I was watching Jamie Foxx pimp BetMGM's sportsbook during a commercial break in some football game. Now, I've seen those ads a million times, and I've seen a pile of other sportsbook ads a millions times. and it's all become part of the aforementioned landscape. But for some reason it hit me differently this day.
For some reason, when Jamie crowed about all us winners out there hittin' the overs, and hittin' the unders, and coverin' those spreads, I thought, "But what if you don't?"
No one ever talks about that part of it. And it never popped up in my head before, either, mainly because of that whole landscape thing.
Sportsbook ads continually airing during sporting events; leagues -- (cough) NFL, MLB (cough) -- that used to flee from any mention of gambling now embracing it wholeheartedly; major sports media entities devoting entire blocks of programming to Vegas touts. It's all just become kind of, well, normal.
I know, I know. I'm old, I'm cranky, I'm shaking my bony fist and shouting why can't it be 1965 again, dadburn it. Meanwhile, America is telling me gambling and sports have a cozy synergy now, gramps. Get used to it.
And yet ...
And yet, I still can't help wondering how we got from there to here.
From the Black Sox and Pete Rose being cast into outer darkness for consorting with gamblers, to a proposed two-story sportsbook right outside Wrigley Field. From Pete Rozelle suspending Paul Hornung and Alex Karras for gambling, to the NFL having a franchise in Vegas and gambling lines (and sportsbook ads) becoming a key component in driving the product.
Now, let me stop right here and say this is not some gambling Carrie Nation talking, wielding an ax at the first sniff of an over-under. Betting's never been my thing, but I've never been against it, either. You want to plunk your folding green down on an animal with a brain the size of a walnut, or on goofy pro athletes and even goofier college kids, have at it. To each his own.
But when I hear nothing but excitement and winning pumped on these sportsbook ads, I always think of the alternative, being a natural pessimist. I always think of the losers, because the losers are the forgotten element in all of this. And there are probably way more of them than Jamie's winners.
Sports leagues used to recognize that, at least implicitly. Now, because there's so much skin in the gambling game for them, they don't.
I find that sad. And I wonder how it happened.
Shaking my bony fist all the while, I suppose.
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