Was lurking a bit at the old place, and there was a thread asking who had never bet on CFB*, but the discussion went more into how legalized sports betting has affected fans’ engagement with college football. I am in a weird place, as I can’t come up with a lot of good reasons to specifically ban it when so many other forms of gambling are legal. It can also of course be done to a healthy degree, and even if someone is enthusiastic and engages with the sport in a gambling-centered way, who am I to say that’s “wrong”?
That said, I do fucking hate it at a personal level when people care more about the lines and the spreads or how their fantasy roster is doing in contrast to the rivalries and the stories and the analysis as a competition. I feel like these people, and particularly the media catering to them, are nudging team sports closer to the liminal space currently occupied by boxing and horse racing, where there is a hardcore base dedicated to the sports themselves, but the broad appeal is for gamblers and the occasional looky-loo spectacle. I can’t argue for any particular measure to stop it, but I sure don’t have to like it.
So, for those of us still hanging around in the very stupid offseason we now have with no real transfer restrictions and plenty of NIL to push players to leverage that fact, how has the explosion of sports betting affected your relationship with CFB?
(* - One $10 bet, well before 2022, on TCU to win the natty while in Vegas for other reasons, and one very boring season of buy-in fantasy football, though now that I type it, I guess that was betting on the NFL)
As Sports Betting has risen my interest in all televised Sport, not just CFB, has fallen. Bad Call / No Call that transitions to an advert for “Super Mega Ultra Gambling Palace!”…hmmm I wonder what just happened.
As an example how much money changed hands from this mess? That was far from the only one too, here’s a whole pile more of bewildering and game changing penalties in the NFL from the 2023 season.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this problem has gotten noticeably worse with the rise of Sports Betting and NCAA sport is definitely not immune.
Whether its real or not my perception is that these games are being fixed so that money can be made on the outcome and because of that I increasingly don’t want watch.