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)
I don’t gamble, I’m not good enough… yet… But seriously, I don’t think it’s changed my view on the sport as a whole. I don’t mind gambling and on reddit I would periodically engage on the faux gambling poll. I don’t think it’s bad, but I’m not sure that I’d want to invest the time to do any better than predict the over/under on a few big vols games each year. But what I do hate about gambling is how unbearably present it is in sports media now. Like I get it, some of us are allowed to gamble. But holy shit I don’t need the chyron giving me the odds on the game of the week 24/7. This is part of my greater sports media as a whole but especially college media has received some serious downgrades over the years thing, but I really do think the lines seem to be more prevalent than the scores sometimes.
I almost kind of feel like CFB was insulated from it for longer “becuz amateur!” but once the increasing number of legalized states made the dam break, it’s become very annoying.