Another thing I thought I'd reflect on this offseason is gambling. The big question being, why can't I shake the habit of losing money? I owe everyone from my stepdad to the lunch lady an estimable debt from some foolish, heartfelt bet on a college football game. So I guess you could actually call this reflection more of a cry for help.
Here in the cool, clean air of the offseason I can take a step back and think a bit more clearly as the passion I carry for other sports, the NBA for example, wouldn't put me on the cross like college football. Though this is an Olympic year, something feels a little out of step gambling on amateur athletics in the name of peace and diplomacy. Still, something tells me I could find a bookie to take almost any bet I could propose. I wonder who's the odds on favorite to win this year's curling competition.
Switters discovered the parlay this season, which is essentially low-risk, high reward betting in which you place money on a number of situational outcomes that all must happen for you to win. Since the odds are long that all four or five things happen (first score is a field goal, half time +/-, total number of sacks) the returns are generally pretty good. So when Switters put up $25 on his very first parly and pulled in some three-figures' worth of compensation, he started feeling pretty good about himself and continued to bet, thinking maybe he was on to something or just smarter than the rest of us.
Then the losing started. Even betting just $25 at a time, usually every weekend, the house steadily closed the gap until such time as Switters was wallowing in the bottom of a shitcan of debt. Being that human beings are incapable of perpetual improvment, in terms of decision making mostly, statistics invented a term for this inevitable fall from grace, regression to the mean. Which also explains why Miami, Nebraska, Oklahoma, USC or any football dynasty before or since, including the Patriots, cannot keep getting better year after year. Sometimes there's a crash, and that crash is known as regression to the mean (except to USC, for which that crash is called, with a shudder, Vince Young).
Of course the only solution to gambling debt is placing more bets with borrowed money (cash advances on a high-interest credit card if you really like to live dangerously) and promising that you'll honor your fiduciary obligations once your ship comes in.
And that's only since you can't count on luck like befell my friend Dexter after a season of bad judgement (betting on Clemson and against Boise State on the spreads and over/unders back in 2004) left him under a mountain of debt.
His bookie, some wastrel he knew from his frat daze at the old alma mater (we'll call him Gene) was starting to pressure him to make good on his debt after Charlie Whitehurst for Heisman started to fizzle. Gene was as much a villain as they make these days and had little respect for Dexter's knees and made no secret of his intentions toward them.
But one drunken night Gene tried to pay for a case of beer with his driver's license. When the clerk behind the six inches of plate glass predictably refused, Gene grew incensed and insisted harder that the clerk just swipe the fuckin' ID so he could take his case of beer. One thing lead to another, Gene flew into a wild, cursing rage, push came to shove, and the clerk had Gene arrested and thrown in the drunk tank to cool off.
Sometime in the night, perhaps when someone had come and paid Gene's bail, the officer at the jail attempted to wake Gene from his slumber in a puddle of urine on the cell's cool, concrete floor. Gene was never one to be interrupted, least of all when comfortably sleeping off a blacked-out drunk, and awoke furious. Without hesitating, he snatched the keychain from his own pocket and in one efficient, ninja-like blur, jabbed the long ignition key deep into the neck of the policeman. For good measure, and at least in the eyes of the law, because he was trying to kill the officer, Gene then jerked the key downward, ripping a good two-three inch gash in the man's throat.
Somehow the officer survived and Gene's problems went from bad to insurmountable. In the process of defending himself in court and presumably losing, Gene fell out of touch and like magic Dexter was exonerated from one full season's gambling debt.
Of course, Gene may get out of prison someday. And he'll probably need money, in which case I wouldn't answer my door late at night if I were Dexter. But that's only conjecture and in the here and now Dexter got off pretty damned lucky.
The takeaway for the rest of us is that the debt in the first place may be the wiser thing to avoid since we all can't be the lucky beneficiaries, like Dexter, of a surprisingly gruesome twist of fate freeing us from the bondage of gambling debt.
We instead ought not to bet. Or if indeed we must we might start paying attention to the percentages and stop betting with our hearts.
College Football News ran a feature that presents a strategy I might have to follow next year that says take the double-digit home underdog against the spread. This may not be sexy but you should win about 66% of the time.
Until I can try this out then, there's the SuperBowl, Olympics, NCAA Basketball Tourney, most of a baseball season, probably a heavyweight fight or two and I'd better get to work if I'm going to be even or up by the Kickoff Classic.
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