A Game of Chance

Sports are supposed to be fun.

Not exactly the type of groundbreaking epiphany you have come to expect from the JBorhood, but an important concept, nonetheless. Whether you watch sports, hear about sports, read about sports (on the JBorhood, of course) or participate in sports, you should enjoy yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating a cheerful attitude about defeat, lord knows I have suffered my share of agonizing sports moments (damn you, Steve Bartman), but overall, I think people should participate in athletics because they enjoy it.

Which is why I take issue with gambling on sports.

Gambling removes the thrill of competition from sports. The focus is no longer on winning and losing. The focus is on winning and losing money.

The primary example of this skewed focus is the spread. For those of you unfamiliar with sports gambling, the spread is a concept used to level the playing field between two teams for the purpose of gambling. For example, if the New England Patriots played the University of Hawaii in a football game and you wanted to bet on the winner, you would undoubtedly pick the University of Hawaii (I mean come on, they’ve got COLT BRENNEN…). Just kidding. You’d pick the Patriots. Now, in order to make the pick fair, for the purposes of gambling, the person accepting the bet would set a required margin of victory for the favorite, let’s say 50 points, which is called the spread. In other words, if you pick New England to win, they have to win by more then 50 points for you to win money. Conversely, if you bet on Hawaii, they just need to lose by less then 50 points for you to win.

This sounds innocuous enough, except now, everyone that bets on the game no longer cheers for Hawaii or New England to win, they cheer for them to beat the spread. New England could take Hawaii out to the wood shed to the tune of 49-0 and people that bet on Hawaii would consider it a victory, while people that bet on New England would lament the defeat. In other words, Hawaii bettors consider any thing less then an utter humiliation a victory and New England bettors consider anything less then complete domination a defeat.

Gambling changes the goal of the sporting event from winning the game to winning the bet and there is something fundamentally wrong with an activity that leads to either, (a) feeling upset that you won, or (b) feeling happy that you lost. (Side note: There are acceptable scenarios for feeling upset after a victory or amicable after defeat. For example, a narrow victory that reveals a fatal flaw in your team, a victory in which you lose a key player to injury, or winning a who-has-more-STD’s competition with your friends. Never good to win that one…) The thrill of sports lies in the hard work, persistence and determination required to win, not correctly predicting the outcome. The joy that would accompany a Cubs World Series win or UH appearing in a BCS game comes from the years of following the teams, experiencing the agony of defeat and finally getting over the hump. It doesn’t matter how they won, or that you thought they would win, just that they won. I can put money on the Cubs not winning the World Series every year, but it doesn’t make me feel any better when they lose.

As you can probably guess at this point, I’m not the biggest gambler, but longtime J-Bors (who am I kidding, I don’t even have short term J-Bors…) will remember my participation in the annual J-Borhood Monday Night Pickoff. Me and my buddy Sean watch every Monday Night Football game and take turns picking the winner. If one our favorite teams is involved (Sean is a Colts fan, bastard, and I’m a Bears fan), then we automatically get to pick them. At the end of the season, if gambling were legal (*wink*), the person who picked more games correctly would win a six pack. The pickoff never interfered with our enjoyment of the games, until last week.

Last week, the 5-0 Dallas Cowboys were playing the absolutely horrid 1-4 Buffalo Bills. It was my turn to pick, so of course, I picked the Cowboys. Except, I felt bad about the pick, because the game appeared so lopsided. The Cowboys had just come off a Sunday night beat down of the reigning NFC champion Bears and looked to make short work of the undermanned Bills. In a moment of weakness, which I regret to this day, I told Sean, “Why don’t we use the spread.” From that moment on, I was no longer cheering for the Cowboys to win. I was cheering for them to win by 10 points.

Flash forward three hours, I’m sitting on the couch watching one most exciting Monday Night Football games in history. Exciting, that is, to everyone but me.

The Bills intercepted Dallas QB Tony Romo 5 times, recovered a fumble, returned two of the interceptions for touchdowns, returned a kickoff for a touchdown and clung to a 24-16 lead with 1:59 to play. On what appeared to be their last possession, Dallas slowly drove down the field and scored the potentially tie breaking touchdown with only :20 left. They attempted the two-point conversion to tie the game and Tony Romo lofted a near perfect pass to Terrell Owens in the corner of the end zone…only the Bills defensive back ripped the ball out of the Owens’s hands to preserve the victory.

Or so they thought.

With almost no time remaining, Dallas successfully recovered an onside kick. On the ensuing drive, Terrell Owens made a spectacular sliding catch of a Tony Romo ball at the Buffalo 10 to potentially set up the field goal, except time was running out. The Cowboys rushed to the line of scrimmage and managed to spike the ball with one second remaining. Just as the Cowboys kicker was running on the field to take kick, the referees ruled that they had reviewed the Terrell Owens catch and ruled that the ball touched the ground before he caught it.

No game tying field goal. Cowboys back at midfield. 17 seconds back on the clock.

The Cowboys ran two more plays to set up a ridiculously long 53 yard field goal, for their rookie kicker, Nick Folk, whose career long was 47 yards. Folk stepped back, Dallas snapped the ball and Folk nailed the longest field goal of his career to win the game.

Or so he thought.

Unbeknownst to Dallas, Buffalo head coach Dick Jauron called a time out right before the ball was snapped, so Dallas had to kick the field goal again. They line up again, Dallas snaps the ball and the rookie crushes it right down the middle again, finishing off one of the most absurd comebacks of all time.

As I watched this truly unbelievable sequence of events transpire, I should have been excited. I should jumped up and down and celebrated the victory the Cowboys stole from Sean’s clutches. Instead, I thought “the Cowboys aren’t going to cover the spread” and sulked over my “defeat”. A sad way to end a truly spectacular game.

So I say a pox on the spread. From now on, I’ll take my sports just like I take my scotch: straight up.