LAST WEEK, my favorite ailing team, the Washington Redskins, finally defeated the Dallas Cowboys, their most hated rival in the NFC. Not that you can call it a rivalry–Dallas had beaten the Redskins ten times in a row over the last five years. But still there was much to celebrate. Retiring cornerback Darrell Green made a beautiful 35-yard punt return. Cowboys legend Emmitt Smith fell short of his twelfth consecutive 1,000-yard rushing season. You couldn’t ask for a better ending for a team not making the playoffs. The players were ecstatic. The crowd went wild. And I sat there, watching the television, seething.
At last it had come to this. My love for the game had been perversely affected by a little thing called a football pool. Because of an occasional gambling itch, I’d entered into an online league where you and a bunch of other degenerates try to pick the weekly winners for the NFL regular season. I’d been coaxed into joining by my old college housemate Pete, a hard-core gambler himself. He’s the kind of guy who would chew you out for splitting tens playing blackjack. If you were at a craps table and chose to bet with the House, he’d accuse you of going over to the Dark Side.
“You ought to go in, it’s lots of fun,” he told me. And because I so enjoyed getting wrapped up in college basketball and filling out brackets for March Madness, I couldn’t resist. Naturally it was only after I committed to the pool (called “Sundayrage”) that my friend told me he stayed out last year because it almost drove him insane. Now I was about to find out for myself.
One of the conditions associated with sports betting is the point spread. It’s not enough that you pick a team to win–the team has to win by a certain margin (the spread) that is scientifically calculated by men who devote their entire lives to watching games. They’re the bookies (also known as bookmakers and oddsmakers, to sound more professional). Innumerable factors can determine a spread, from who is on the injured list to which player has a drug problem to which coach is getting canned. And taking all this into consideration has led me to hope some teams would lose, but not by a lot. Or that some teams win by two touchdowns and not just a field goal. I am no longer just enjoying a game and wishing the best team wins. Staring at the score updates is now as compelling as the game itself.
With sports betting, you exponentially increase your awareness of the goings-on throughout the NFL. For instance, you watch all the pregame shows, post-game shows, and “Inside the NFL.” You learn about Detroit Lions quarterback Joey Harrington’s having had a catheter ablation to treat an abnormal heartbeat. And the Giants’ Michael Strahan speculating that Warren Sapp is getting so fat he must be living next to McDonald’s.
But worst of all is the second-guessing. From the very opening of the season I racked my brain over how many points a team could score. Could the 49ers beat the Giants by at least 4 points? (No. They beat them by 3.) Could the Eagles crush the Houston Texans by more than 20 points? (No again. They beat them by only 18.) Is Champaign, Illinois, really home-field advantage for the Chicago Bears? After a couple of weeks, my overthinking landed me next to last place in the pool. This is when I had the epiphany.
There’s a sucker prize for last place, and I now found myself within reach of that. But I would have to switch strategies and pick losers instead of winners. So in the fifteenth week of the season, I decided to choose the exact opposite of whoever I thought would win. The problem is, there is something inherently wrong with hoping you lose, wishing not to get anything right. It goes against your every instinct. Nevertheless, I committed myself to this new way of thinking. The result? My wrong picks were mostly right: I got 11 out of 16 games correct, winning the week.
But where to from here? I could no longer tell which were my genuine picks and which the opposite: Did I really think the Saints could beat the Bengals by 8? (The Bengals upset the Saints instead.) And why couldn’t I get myself to pick Seattle or Carolina to win anything? By the final week, like my buddy Pete, I had been driven insane. I no longer trusted those bookmakers with their mystical odds. Surely I could predict better than they could.
Which brings me back to my seething at the Redskins. Indeed, it was great we broke the 10-game losing streak. And yes, it was touching to see Darrell Green bid a tearful farewell to the fans. But the Skins, who I picked to win, had to beat the Cowboys by at least 7 points. The final score: Redskins over Cowboys, 20-14.
Pete tells me he’s had it and that he won’t play next year. I’ll probably join him. Unless, of course, I get that itch again.
–Victorino Matus
