Don’t gamble, kids

Good teams win. Great teams cover.

The title of this one is a bit misleading. I have no qualms with sports gambling, so long as it, like many other things in life, is done in moderation. Know your limits, don’t gamble more than you can afford to lose, and always take the over. Life is far too short to bet the under.

Before I moved to Colorado in 2020, I had gambled exactly one time in my life — a casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when my friend and I took a trip to his hometown of Omaha, Neb. The two cities sit on either shore of the Missouri River, and gambling is legal in the easternmost of the two. So, in a sheer moment of “when in Rome,” I decided it was a good idea to go into my first-ever casino. I took in exactly $20, lost it all on blackjack, and waited for my friend to lose his money so we could leave. To put it simply, I do not like donating money in this fashion. An actual charitable cause? Sign me up. But I’d rather literally set the cash on fire than to gamble it and lose. Frankly, I see no difference in the two.

When I became a resident of the Centennial State at the height of the pandemic, I saw an ad for mobile sports gambling, which, of course, piqued my interest. Little did I know where that would take me.

Turns out, it took me to not just enjoying the world of sports gambling — a recent series of events has led to me swearing it off for good.

I am by no means a degenerate gambler — especially not compared to my friends. I don’t build monster parlays full of 18 different touchdown scorers, nor do I believe in every underdog. I might put $25 into FanDuel SportsBook on a random Saturday and place a few $5 bets that will net me a profit of $25-80. I truly do not go for the big payouts. I’d rather have the better odds and lower payout, rather than try to swing for the fences and lose all my money.

Well, it turns out, even those better odds still result in the same thing. I have continued to donate money, $25 at a time, over the last four years. It’s not every weekend that I do this. Probably once or twice a month during football season, so between seven and 14 times a year. I don’t gamble on other sports, as I’m far less knowledgable on them compared to football. Maybe that could be my key to success? Well, I’ve tried that theory, and it’s no more successful than pigskin.

A blind squirrel finds a nut on occassion, unless that squirrel is me, and the nut is a winning bet. I’ve seriously seen some very bad beats in my time, even with how little I truly gamble compared to others. As much as it pained me to do, I researched my own statistics just for youe enjoyment. From Sep. 1 to Nov. 29 this year, I deposited $91 total — an average of $30.33 per month. My net winnings? Negative $30. No, that is not a typo. I profited a whopping $8 in Sep., -$30 in Oct., and -$8 in Nov. I wish I hadn’t bought that cheeseburger with my winnings in September, because I countered that huge payday just two months later.

I pride myself in my knowledge of the game of football. I bring that to the readers every week in my Pigskin Picks, where I picked 75 percent of the games correctly this year, behind a lot of analysis. I wrote a column in October about two-high safeties, which landed on the front page of Google for that term. I wrote another on why Travis Hunter should win the Heisman just two weeks later when the whole country was on Ashton Jeanty — Hunter is now the favorite. I know ball, I promise. But gambling, boy do I struggle.

In another column — about Pete Rose — I wrote about “… the DraftKings highlights of the day, provided by FanDuel Sportsbook, with an ad from ESPN Bet and Bet360 at the commercial break.” Gambling is all but forced upon us at every turn. My child can’t watch a Taylor Swift music video on my YouTube account without getting an ad for it. It’s disgusting and I hate it. If I was better at it, I wouldn’t hate it nearly as much, I promise.

Among these commercials are plenty of notifications from the app for parlay odds boosts, bonus bets, and the ability to get your money back on a bet if it misses, in the form of bonuses that can’t be cashed out. I recently took advantage of this, and I got a $50 bonus for referring my friend. I used those for parlays on Thanksgiving, because what pairs better with your Chinese food than winning money? I spent a lot of money on Pokémon cards for my kid Wednesday, plus we went to a hockey game that night, so why not try to win that all back? I cooked up a few bets that were sure to hit. They, of course, did not. So I used a little bit more of my bonus bets and picked four touchdown scorers in the night game — Jayden Reed, Tyreek Hill, De’Von Achane, and Josh Jacobs. This was one of the surest bets of my life, until it wasn’t. But then it was again.

With seven minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, in a game I hadn’t been watching, I checked the app. I saw that everyone but Hill had scored, and they offered me a cashout option. The orignal stake was $5 to win $100. Their cashout was offered at $15. I thought I better take that, since a $10 profit is better than none. Well, I took it, and when I woke up Friday, I saw that Hill had scored in garbage time. That means I took an $85 loss on a winning bet. That is what inspired this writing that I’m doing now. Because even when I win, I still lose.

“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious,” is a quote from Michael Scott of The Office that lives in my head. One year, I didn’t watch the Ohio State Buckeyes all season because the two games I had watched the year prior, they lost. I don’t watch divisional games for the Steelers, nor do I watch playoff games. I am a firm believer in jinxes.

I also won’t share my bets anymore. I won’t talk about them, either. I don’t want to curse them. I don’t watch the games that I have any stake in. Instead, I opt for Red Zone. This is also true of my fantasy teams. If I have a vested interest in anyone participating, I don’t watch, outside of the highlights shown on the ‘eight hours of commercial-free football.’

I’m at the point where I don’t care about great bets my group chats have cooked up for the weekends. I don’t even give my support like I used to. I would often say that there was no surer bet in the history of sports gambling than what they shared, but I just can’t put my faith into sports gambling being anywhere close to beneficial for me. If they hit, and I didn’t make the same bet, then I have FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) over not tailing them. If I do tail them, then it’s a sure-fire recipe for the bets not to hit. I seemingly can’t have my cake and eat it, too.

Please, heed my advice. Don’t gamble. It’s not worth the stress, the ups-and-downs, the nailbiters, rooting for FCS or MAC football (the difference in the two is negligible, honestly), waking up in cold sweats because Tyreek Hill scored a touchdown after you cashed out, or just ruining your weekend because one leg of a parlay missed.

Good teams win; great teams cover. Life is too short to bet the under.