Gambling

TIME WAS when folks would put pencil to paper and fill out a form, often under cover of darkness for legal considerations, and, in the company of a shadowy, shady character known as a "bookie", make a wager or two. Those days are, if not entirely gone, archaic. Enter computers, smart phones, and liberalized, legalized gambling laws, and, as they say, its off to the races, pun intended. Or, as they used to say, "Katie bar the door". By the end of Super Bowl Fifty Six, Americans will have gambled, most of it away, what.....hundreds of billions of hard earned ill spent money? The cheapest ticket, in real space and time, for a ticket to said game, is..what...six grand? I recall my Boy Scout master, a nice middle aged man now doubtless long dead, who told me on the way to a troop meeting that they had decided to merge the AFL and the NFL, and to create a new championship game called "The super Bowl". I didn't believe him at first. Why would they do something cazy like that? How could the obviously inferior AFL teams even hope to compete? And who in his right mind would name a big game something goofy sounding like "The Super Bowl"? The first Super Bowl ever, if memory serves, had a top ticket price of no more than twenty five dollars, and the game, in the L.A. colliseum, was not sold out. Back then gambling was strictly illegal, except in Vegas, and there it was limited. Back then Victorian people were still alive, and we baby boomers were small children, mostly. Now, the goal post has been narrowed by at least fifty percent and moved ten yards back, and fifty yard field goals and three hundred and fifty pound limeman are the norm. Back then, the "aitch" goal post was on the goal line, was very wide, players had to dodge around it, and your average NFL line went about two sixty, tops. We no longer have kickoff returns; games begin at the twenty five yard line, to reduce brain damage. (It doesn't help much). On the first play from scrimmage millions of young American men will punch a few numbers into their cell phones, and bet on whether the first play from scrimmage will be a run or a pass. Trillions of electrons representing actual currency will flow across the net and through the atmosphere, and if its an RPO (run pass option), the internet will crash, Vegas will go broke, inflation will soar even higher, and the American economy will languish in disrepair, if only for minutes. Marriages may dissolve, even before dozens of spicy chicken wings are washed down with gallons of brew. Billions of dollars will change "hands" over a four hour period during an interminable, surpassingly clever commercial which will be regularly interrupted by blocks and tackles. In football, huddles should be outlawed, and might well be in some Orwellian future. Oddsmakers who offer organized gambling as a service to humanity carefully structure it so that they profit greatly, while most people lose money, much like lotteries and casinos. Hope springs eternal; people never learn. You're much better off betting your spouse that Stafford goes deep on the first snap of the first drive than texting outside the home in search of improbable monetary gain; at least the money stays in the family. But into the great cyber black hole beyond will go everyman's money, most never to return, and will be emailed into bulging bank accounts by dark shady men wearing cigar's and cheap suits. Most things change. Some never do.