DavidsonCats.com

Scarier even than The Portal. So much pressure on young athletes already, then to add proposition betting to the list of things for which others might be disappointed in their performance. Scary and sad.

I like the logic that if something is happening already, then you might as well legalize it. I’ll leave more general application of that principle to the reader.

Some years back I was at a gathering in Washington where we had workshops relating to various social concerns. I chose to attend the one on legalized gambling. There was an after session for those of us in states where a lottery was liable to pass. One interesting observation was that where it had passed, there was an increase in reports of bicycle thefts. Note that I said reports and not necessarily thefts. Kids would sell their bicycles to pay off gambling debts and report the bikes as stolen. They would get new bikes with the insurance money.

I mostly forget about that. But six or eight months after the lottery went into effect in NC I heard on the radio one day that bicycle thefts had rapidly increased in the past few months. Coincidence?

Let’s say you knew a team that had decent leads in game after game, but lost almost all of them by 2 to 5 points at the end. Wouldn’t you be suspicious?

I would be suspicious if the team of late collapsers were as deep and athletically gifted as the teams they were collapsing against.