When Worlds Collide

There’s an old axiom in sports that says, "if you notice the referee, he’s doing a bad job". You don’t get any more notice than Tim Donaghy is getting these days, and his shadow is falling over referees and umpires in every sport regardless of their innocence. This particular shadow is being cast through allegations that he participated in fixing games and has ties with organized crime, as opposed to unorganized crime which, by virtue of its name, acts randomly and with no governing body.
Tim, it seems, has a gambling problem. That’s a coincidence, because professional sports has a bit of a gambling problem too. Some enterprises, like horse racing, owe almost all of their popularity to gambling. How many people would show up to watch horses run in a circle if they couldn’t bet on who would win? I’m not even sure you could get horses to watch.

Sports will turn its back on gambling until it becomes an issue. Then, they are mortified and seek to discipline the people involved. It’s sort of like a guy who eats a lot of pie. When the pie habit gives him a disease, he blames the pie. Sports has a gambling problem, and it’s hard to blame the people when the leagues area feeding them the pie.

Point spreads are published in newspapers every day for every major sport. The NFL issues an injury report every Thursday to let the public know whether key players are going to play or not. Television devotes huge blocks of time to what are called Tout Services, where supposed experts tell you who to bet on every week. The NCAA championship basketball tournament (called March Madness for a reason) openly promotes bracket pools. Broadcasters routinely ask their viewers to “check your brackets” so often that the word 'bracket' becomes annoying through repetition.

Last year, about $100 million was wagered legally on the Super Bowl (America’s biggest secular holiday), which owes at least part of its popularity to gambling. Then, there’s the phenomenon of Fantasy Sports. If there is money involved, that’s gambling too, folks. And of course, there is Las Vegas, where you can bet on just about any sporting event – even soccer.
That isn’t to say that if we changed our attitude on gambling that it would go away, because it won’t. It’s human nature to want to gamble.

It might, however, serve the professional sports leagues well to acknowledge the fact that they are at least partially responsible for feeding the problem. They like to promote gambling when it serves their purpose, and then act stunned when gambling creeps into the contests.
It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.