Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
What makes a good sports story? If you’re a bandwagon fan, that’s easy, it’s anything that supports your newly discovered team. If you’re someone who follows a team, or more likely a sport, the challenge is a bit greater, and if you’re an entrenched lifelong fan of a team, it becomes a challenge.
It’s easy to placate those that jump onboard any team that’s winning. As Bob Dylan sang in one of my three favorite songs by him, “Positively 4th Street:”
You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinning
You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that’s winning
A lot of fans do want to be on the winning side. They find new, transitory friends, share a few laughs, then jump off once the franchise falls from favor. Not to be discouraged, they quickly find a team on the rise and have an entirely new group of people to ride the bandwagon with.
It’s not so annoying as it is humorous to observe. People suddenly saying, “We played great on that last drive…”
“We?” I’ll sometimes ask just to put them on edge, “We? What position did you play?”
That’s just the nature of fandom and as long as they buy tickets, purchase team gear and pay for TV and online access the marketing people love it.
There has been an insidious element to the NFL recently. Since 2016 the erosion of trust in the media, courts, criminal justice system, and now the officials in every level of play from Little League to the Super Bowl has increased exponentially. There have always been claims of hometown officiating, of a little “home cooking” on controversial calls, but that was just part of the game until recently.
The most glaring example has been the Kansas City Chiefs this season on a scale much larger than previous ones.
It seems that the boys from KC get every call at crucial times, whether it’s a phantom foul of some sort in their favor or a seemingly blatant look away when an obvious call would favor their opponent.
Many claim it’s the sudden popularity of the franchise by hordes of “Swifties” now following the Chiefs.
Swifties may follow their idol, Taylor Swift, but they’re not living and dying on down and distance situations at Arrowhead Stadium.
The question is who is relying on those last-second calls to lift the Chiefs to yet another win?
It doesn’t take long to find a culprit, and it’s not just the Chiefs but every heavily wagered NFL game. It’s something you don’t see in the other major professional sports. The NBA is largely devoid of rules, where the officials have about as much effect as a professional wrestling referee has in a carefully orchestrated cage match. On the other extreme is major league baseball where a pitcher can throw 15 balls in a row and the umpire still calls it the same.
In the NFL there are so many nuances, so many inane rules and schemes to generate more offense and protect the league stars at all costs.
The camel’s nose entered the tent in 2018 and now uses it as shade.
Jim Strode, a sports gambling expert, had this to say, “The NFL, like all professional sports leagues, is a business looking for ways to generate revenue. Many professional sports leagues kept sports betting an arm’s length away due to the history of corruption and organized crime involved in sports gambling. When the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, states were able to not only legalize sports betting but also regulate it.”
In six short years, organized gambling changed from contacting your local bookie or placing clandestine bets to FanDuel boldly displaying the point spread, the over/under, and the estimated chance of winning in percentages on a scrolling marquee below every NFL broadcast. They’ve jumped to NCAA Division I football as of this season.
With the portal and NIL, major college football is just a lower-paying (for most) professional league now anyway, devoid of the pretense of players actually graduating with a degree.
In the 2024 NFL season, $35 billion has been bet on games so far.
The big money is easy to spot in action when you see a coach kick a late field goal when they could kneel out a game for the win in victory formation. A blocked return could end up with his team losing the contest, but those extra three points cover the spread, and the pros in Vegas, Atlantic City and offshore make millions with that single kick.
Covering the spread is what the NFL has become.
When money, big money, enters anything, it becomes tarnished, jaded, and a lesser entity than it was previously.
The greatest hitter of all time is still not in Cooperstown. Pete Rose passed away last year without ever being considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He gambled on games as a manager, but never as a player. He’s not a consideration for the hall as a manager, but it smacks of uniquely American arrogance and dissonance to not honor his play on the field since he “gambled.”
But, that badge of dishonor is from another era, an era when at least the façade of propriety was in place. Now, anything goes if it has a few zeros following the dollar sign.
We’ve entered the money at all costs in all things era. Devoid of a moral compass the inevitable fall awaits us.
Though Dylan wasn’t writing about sports, but life in general when he wrote “Positively 4th Street” his final stanza seems fitting here.
I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is to see you
Money has taken hold of a great American institution, and it’s not likely to break free anytime soon. How we handle it is anyone’s bet.