Like we usually do on the second weekend of January, my wife, some friends and I are spending a few days in Las Vegas.
She’ll play the slots. I’ll try to avoid the sucker bets at the craps table.
We have tickets to see a Prince impersonator, which could be awesome or atrocious. Like most things in Vegas, it’s a gamble.
But the real reason our group goes on this particular weekend? It coincides with the NFL’s Wild Card games.
The four football games this weekend are the only games each year that I wager on. There’s an excitement in rooting avidly for or against Alex Smith, Kirk Cousins and others who I otherwise feel ambivalent toward.
Thankfully, the drama and tension of sports is enough to captivate me during the 51 weeks I don’t have money riding on games.
That said, it’s past time to end our country’s puritanical prohibition against organized sports gambling.
Mention sports gambling and images of the Black Sox scandal or shady backroom bookies come to mind.
In reality, you can’t sit through a commercial break without coming face to face with sports gambling in the form of daily fantasy leagues.
ESPN devotes whole segments on its television and radio shows to analyzing point spreads. SportsCenter has one called “bad beats,” which rehashes the past week’s most confounding pocket-emptying losses.
Nearly $4 billion was bet at Las Vegas sports books last year, but that pales in comparison to the $95 billion the American Gaming Association estimates will be wagered illegally on just the NFL this season.
So if everyone is doing it, why is it still illegal in every state but Nevada?
Let’s forget those hollow “integrity of the game” arguments that major sports leagues used to lobby for the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, which outlawed sports gambling in most states.
In testimony before a Senate committee in 1991, then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said: “We have to make it clear to the athletes, the fans and the public, gambling is not a part of sport, period.”
This coming from the leader of a league that makes its teams report injuries — largely with gamblers in mind. The NFL has maintained its anti-gambling stance in public, yet gambling-driven viewership is a major reason why the NFL is the king of American professional sports.
The NCAA has also used its lobbying power to keep sports betting illegal, saying the temptation for student athletes to come under the sway of gamblers would be too great. By that logic, the NCAA wouldn’t allow teams or games in Nevada, where roughly $1 billion is bet on college sports each year.
Legalized sports betting is common in most of Europe. Great Britain, where gambling is legal and regulated, generates ?700 million ($1.02 billion) in tax revenue each year.
Court cases in New York and other states have challenged the legality of daily fantasy websites such as DraftKings and FanDuel. But the only reason why states are trying to shut them down is because they aren’t getting a cut of the action.
Moral righteousness is hardly the reason Nevada has banned daily fantasy sites, nor is it why offshore gambling sites are illegal. Like most things, it’s all about the money and who’s not getting it.
When governments step off their high horse of false morality and away from the sway of sports leagues, they’re see that there’s plenty of money to be made in a gambling industry that’s legal, regulated and benign.
Assuming he hasn’t hit the jackpot, Micah Rice is The Columbian’s sports editor. Reach him at 360-735-4548, micah.rice@columbian.com or via Twitter @col_mrice.
