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Time for fall football gambling
By Brian D. Rossman
Are you ready for some football? Seeing this in the subject line of the email made me smile. Since I was, in fact, ready for some football, I opened the message. It was an invitation to join a football pool. Like the changing colors of the leaves, it was my signal that fall had arrived.
After examining the email, I realized it was time to get down to business. It was time to crunch numbers, to analyze patterns, and to break the law. Did I say break the law? Yes, because participants in these pools are considered to be engaging in gambling activities. (And, as we all know, outside of Nevada, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, Indian Reservations, cruise ships, casino nights, poker establishments, bingo halls, the internet, fund raisers, gambling is completely forbidden.) Even though there are more office football pools than office romances, only the former is legally prohibited. However, the risk of getting caught does not stop participants from embracing either activity.
Just check out the Internet, where football pools have cropped up everywhere. They are no longer isolated on sports websites. Popular portals like Yahoo! and AOL are attempting to cash in on their popularity. These sites promote their ability to create and manage office football pools electronically. Talk about flaunting the promotion of an illegal activity. I could not have imagined a more flagrant display until I read about various police departments and district attorney offices that run their own office pools. Apparently, the football pool holds a certain decriminalized place in our society.
If that is the case, then the law prohibiting football pools should be officially stricken from the books. It should go the route of those antiquated laws that land in the humorous law-a-day calendars. You know the type: In Cincinnati, for example, there is a law that makes it illegal to ride your elephant backwards during a parade.
If not officially outlawed, how about regulated similar to the lottery. A state run football pool instead of the lottery would be a great improvement. What could be more tedious than randomly selecting six numbers? Boring! What are the numbers that we usually select? Our birthdate, telephone number, address. Yet, we still do not win.
A state-run football pool would be much more interesting since it would involve true skill. Pick all 15 games correctly and win. This would be a real test. Instead of examining the astrological number chart, a contestant would examine the latest point spread.
This would also settle the continuing debate over the value of professional athletes in our society. Many people scoff at a rookie professional quarterback making $3 million per year, while a public school teacher makes only $30,000 per year. Granted, having a state-run football pool may not improve the lot of the undervalued educator, but it may more than justify the outrageous salaries of the pro athletes. If a citizen can win $50 million from the outcome of a football game, then that rookie quarterback's game-winning dive into the end zone is surely worth his measly $3 million salary per year.
Likewise, if the lottery money continued to go to the schools, maybe it would not look so hypocritical, when our youth's role models are professional athletes. If you think of it in that sense, professional sports would be giving back to the community in a direct way. Professional sports would be helping our schools and the programs necessary to train students to become anything they want; even professional football players. Heck, they could even offer a class in handicapping football games. It would be for a good cause. Now, I ask you, are you ready for some football?
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
