It’s extremely wild the way America has gone from zero to light speed on “legal” sports betting. After decades of near-complete prohibition, all of a sudden everyone with a credit card has an online sportsbook in their pocket and is being relentlessly barraged with advertisements encouraging them to use it. I know I’m not the only one with a friend who wasn’t inclined to bet when it was “illegal,” and who never really cared for baseball, for example, but is now staying up past midnight to see if the under hits on the Padres/Diamondbacks game. With more Americans than ever living paycheck to paycheck or stuck in increasingly meaningless and soul-deadening jobs it’s an especially slippery slope.
Thus, with the new NFL season upon us today, I’m issuing this public service announcement in hopes of encouraging more mindful and responsible exercise of this new “power” that’s been conferred on us by our lawmakers, and also in furtherance of the sound and ancient principle that future suffering that can be avoided should be avoided.
First, please note that “legal” is in quotes here mainly as a reminder that what’s lawful on one hand, and what’s safe, right, or good on the other hand, have as little relationship as ever in this nation where not only has all manner of corruption and greed been made “legal,” but where our so-called civilization increasingly prioritizes over anything else the ability for people to be as greedy and corrupt as they want to be no matter what harm they cause to others. Land of the free! Anyway, the point is that no one should assume that those responsible for the sudden widespread legalization and normalization of sports betting have your best interests at heart, and there is in fact plenty of reason to assume the opposite: That they want you to keep you as tied to your screens and as comfortable in your pod as they can make you, and all the better if you’re immiserated and perpetually indebted to them.
Which goes to the importance of The Number One Rule of Sports Betting, which is really the only rule you need to remember about sports betting if you can understand it: This is simply that there are no shortcuts in life, including and especially sports betting, no matter how much you know or think you know about sports. Remember when LeBron said, after he lost to the Mavericks in the NBA Finals in the season after he first left the Cavs, that “all the people who were rooting on [him] to fail [would still] have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today”? Well, that was true then, it’s true now, and it’s especially true when applied to sports betting. In other words, just like rooting against LeBron was never going to be your shortcut to health, wealth, happiness, peace, or respect, neither will sports betting.
If it’s hard for you to accept this idea at first pass, I would urge you to give some thought to two principles that are more or less fundamental to most major religions and codes of ethics and which most people understand and accept to some degree. Those are, as the Hindus call them, karma and dharma.
Most people understand karma as the idea that what goes around comes around, and that a person ends up getting what they deserve in the end one way or another. While this principle might be especially questionable here on Planet Earth in 2023, it also helps explain why some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world are also, at bottom, some of the most miserable. Additionally, many have noted the connection between the notion of a universal law of karma and Newton’s third law of physics, which holds that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The basic idea here is that if you’ve got bad karma coming to you, you’re not going to escape it by betting on sports no matter how much money you might win on your bets. I must submit that anyone who accepts the most basic notions of karma would be an idiot to argue with this.
Relatedly, dharma is a Sanskrit term that translates to “duty,” and refers to the idea that every person is born with certain duties to fulfill to the universe (or the universe’s “creator”), and that fulfilling those duties as they unfold in one’s life is the only means a person has to any lasting happiness, peace, or glory. Importantly, one need not adhere to any particular religion or believe in any particular god or set of gods to derive substantial value from this principle. Rather, all you really need to accept to appreciate the concept of dharma is that you don’t know everything, including exactly why you or anyone was born, or exactly what will happen after you die. From there, it should be a short step to being able to muster at least some measure of respect and gratitude for whatever it is that gave you your life (call it God, a set of gods, a random accident, “the unknown,” or whatever you want). And with that measure of respect and gratitude should come a corresponding obligation to do right by that force (even if you must insist it’s a random accident), or, to put it another way, at least some obligation not to waste your life completely. If you’re a person who denies any such obligation entirely, this post is not for you! The rest should be able to easily accept that whatever duties arise from having been born (in other words, your dharma) can not be escaped by betting on sports, again, no matter how much money you might win at it. To believe otherwise would just be nihilism.
With that all having been made clear, please let me also clarify that this is NOT to suggest that sports betting isn’t fun, or that there aren’t good and natural reasons that people are attracted to it. Of course, if your ancestors didn’t have the drive to take risks you never would have been born. Plus, of course, sports are fun. Being right about sports, also fun, and something that people to this day spend hours waiting on hold to try and do on the radio without getting paid a dime for it. So the chance to get paid to be right about sports at the push of a button? It’s not too hard to understand why sports betting is now estimated to be an 80 billion dollar business. Whatever anyone thinks about it, I don’t suppose it’s necessary to deny that betting on sports, in moderation, can be a fine and rewarding hobby, especially when done in community and fellowship with friends and loved ones, and especially when one bets on the Cleveland Browns to win the Super Bowl. Just please don’t be an idiot and get carried away with it. Thanks and a most blessed American football season to all!
