You Can Never Go Home Again
It’s on! The first threat to Las Vegas lock on the domestic, legal sports betting market took place in Delaware June 6. William Hill opened the first full scale sportsbook outside Las Vegas. It’s ‘Las Vegas light’ but more than adequate and shows Delaware did their due diligence. Plenty of TVs although without the overkill of LV offerings. Digital odds boards with William Hills sharp numbers. Food, drinks and you get the idea.
Las Vegas casinos were granted race/sportsbooks in 1976 but then Las Vegas was self contained. We had a lock on domestic, legal gambling. Race/sportsbooks would only add to the LV experience and handle then. No way would they be a detriment.
It all changed with the Supremes sports betting decision. Now more states with racinos and casinos will add sports betting in some form. The smart move will be to partner with William Hill if they aren’t already home to a Las Vegas branded casino. Those two choices will be ignored by some bureaucrats and politicians who won’t cede any power or control. They’ll go up against the betting public with their egos and not much else. Two things will happen to these geniuses. They will cost their states bankroll to take a big hit and/or they will be forced to make their odds so outlandish they’ll have no business.
Back to 1976 when the Stardust unveiled their mega book. It was a magnificent facility as envisioned by Lefty Rosenthal. It was the template for today's ultra mega books found only in Las Vegas, USA. I was working at Churchill Downs sportsbook at the time and the smart money said the Stardust would put Churchill out of business. Guess what, we not only survived but had to hire additional writers.
In an ironic twist I ended up managing the Stardust from 1983 till 1991. Other hotels soon opened up bigger, and they thought better, race/sportsbooks to counter the Stardust’s phenomenal success. We kept ahead of them with ideas they considered bad for their sports betting bottom line. On my watch we began 24 hr cashiers, sports betting chips to legally counter the $10,000 Federal reporting requirement, safe deposit boxes for sports bettors, provided a free phone room so players would never have to leave the Stardust, our own huge phone betting business, we were the first to televise EVERY NFL game and tons of colleges thanks to K band technology we beat everyone else to.
Of course I had top shelf help from my employees and upper management left me alone. We left untouched what brought us to the dance e.g. our race and sports odds and results boards conceived by Lefty. We provided free racing forms and maybe the most radical move yet, we established The Sports Handicappers Library where we shared with our players every bit of information we used to make our Nationally followed, in house first out opening sports odds.
What can the super modern, technology driven Las Vegas books do today to maintain their lofty, well earned status? There’s not much more in the way of amenities they can provide. It’s a new game now and Las Vegas will remain the reinventing champions label they’ve earned.
It’s easy to envision the rise of e-gaming and the opportunity to outfit mega e-gaming facilities. The casinos who outsource their sports books and knowhow to the rest of the country will have to figure out how to lure those far flung players to Las Vegas. They must make those new players want to come to Las Vegas or begin downsizing in favor of e-gaming and other millennial leaning enticements.
Las Vegas gambling revenue went from number one to now playing second fiddle to entertainment, dining, shopping AND the nightclub scene. The rest of the country’s casinos and racinos can offer a complete copy of Las Vegas now by adding a sportsbook. It’ll be a poor quality copy but why go to Las Vegas.
It Can't Be Fixed
The NFL we grew up with and took so seriously is gone never to return. Games and teams we couldn't wait to watch have mostly become soap operas. The NFL brand of football is now a sideshow to circus like distractions.
NFL Owners have been running around the shower of unhappy fans without getting wet for a few years now. Fans beefs have been ignored because the Owners had a pat hand. No matter what the NFL put on the field their fans.were always be there, watching and spending. The networks and Owners winked at each other while the number of commercials grew to the point they affected the continuity of the game. Bad calls, phantom calls, concussions and a few unhinged savages intentionally injuring opponents without being kicked out of the league were ignored. Meanwhile adoring fans cynicism was building up over salaries and the perception of players eating Oatmeal and staring at a cement wall is no longer hush hush.
Those problems were fixable to a degree but the mother of all problems can't be fixed not even with the latest move of OK'ing male cheerleaders. There's no way out of the National Anthem protests no matter what band aid the League and Owners throw at it. Waiting it out ain't gonna work. Patriotic statements from the League office and fixes like giving these ungrateful mllionaires the choice to keep their sorry asses in the tunnel while fans stand and sing our National Anthem is going to backfire big time. The NFL Players Association is against that policy while former and current protesting players are already figuring out how to beat this new policy. These 15 watt bulbs will come up with a new form of protest and on it goes. Good luck dealing with these self absorbed knuckleheads some of whom can't spell cat.
One scenario that will fix this mess is for players who respect Our Flag and show it during the National Anthem banding together in a protest of their own against the un American, codeled and ungrateful malcontents. It would be ugly. They could refuse to play with them forcing the owners and the timid NFL to side with one group or the other. Siding with the protesting Patriotic players would be costly at first but the result would be a bigger more loyal fan base than ever imagined.
College football is heading for a bigger mess than the pro game finds itself in. The NFL has a workable number of owners and league officials and far less players to deal with. On the other hand the NCAA is staffed with uncomprehending twits. There are over one hundred DI teams, college presidents, athletic directors and powerful narcissistic coaches. Dealing with them will be nothing to dealing with thousands of players once they organise i.e. unionise. Multiply those folks with millions of alumni and it's a real mess. Finally facing the biggie in the room i.e. player compensation will be a game changer. Now that sports betting is OK'd there will be schools wanting a piece of the pie (action). What will most likely result is twenty or so schools giving the NCAA the middle digit and forming a Super Conference with two divisions. The NCAA will still be around but neutered. Hold on to your hats and BR's.
What Could Go Wrong
As the country breathlessly awaits the Surpremes blessings on sports betting more and more ‘experts’ are being given media space. Lazy journalists regurgitate this nonsense like giddy groupies. No need for fact checking or even running these stories past anyone, say a veteran bookie, to get an educated opinion. Nah, that would ruin the hype.
The most annoying, to me anyways, are the research company’s and their analysts who have never made or taken a bet. They only know the gross figures and few give a thought to the net. The gross sports betting figure used by these ‘experts’ to sensationalize their smiley face predictions comes in anywhere from $150 billion to $300 billion and they go from there.
Simple just pick any figure in that range, multiply it by 1%, 2% 4%, 10% and shazam you’ll get the tax bonanza the state will rake. Some want to dip into the win others want a cut of the gross. West Virginia want’s 10% of the gross. Good luck with that. More money for that black hole but what could go wrong since politicians and bureaucrats will be watching the action.
Forget bookmaking has an historic low, very low profit margin that can top out at around 4% over the years and combined sports seasons If all goes well.
Take of the rose colored glasses and figure in the 1% Integrity Fee the professional leagues want to extort. Aren’t their games and players playing with integrity now? That’s just the leagues rake. Now groups of players in addition to the Players Union have come, although late, to the trough. They want their cut in addition to the leagues Integrity Fee. Add another percentage point or two to the orgy.
These 15 watt bulbs want to dictate what games they will allow to be booked and at what odds, what ‘exotic’ bets they will allow and get this they want only stats and information they sanction to be used. This is a shot at the leagues as well as the owners. It’ll be a wonderful day in the neighborhood boys and girls.
A trend is becoming evident that will be the 800 lb gorilla in the room. Make that 2000 lb gorilla. The trend is to let homegrown lottery commissions, gaming commissions, racing commisssions and yet to be appointed panels to run the whole thing. Using Las Vegas expertise and established operations is rarely mentioned or considered in most of these plans. What is being discussed though is fantasy type pools and forms of pari mutual betting which is not conducive to sports betting.
They’ll recruit Las Vegas sports book personnel and then those afore mentioned politicians and bureaucrats will pile on and turn their jobs into a nightmare before the different schemes eventually go belly up or just become parlay card joints.
I’ll take fries with that parlay please.
Think It Through W VA
I see the state of West Virginia is getting ahead of the game and has legislation ready for the launching of sports betting in anticipation of the Supremes giving the OK.
Look back over my columns and web site and see why I have doubts as to the success of sports betting when politicians and rookie bookmakers are in on it. West Virginia is a classic example. They propose a 10% tax on the gross. What a great idea.
Nevada sportsbooks hold 4% and that’s with seasoned management. The leagues will demand at least 1% each so we’re up to at least 8% before the nut is even considered. If the WV books hold less than 4%, just plain lose or if the leagues want a bigger piece, which the NFL surely will, there won’t be enough beans to count.
Decades ago a 10% federal tax was levied on Nevada’s storefront race and sportsbooks long before hotel-casinos were granted licenses. It was to be paid up front by the players when making a bet. The books were expected to be tax collectors. Neither player nor bookie could overcome a 10% tax on race and sports bets.
The sportsbooks operated on maybe a 4% win. The sharpest player on the planet couldn’t survive paying a 10% tax, penalty, extortion, or whatever you call it. You couldn’t book or bet in a book that went along with this onerous tax.
So the books figured out a way to get around the 10% federal tax. For the bettors who were known and trusted, we would write an “R” on the bottom of their ticket. The “R,” just in case anybody would question, stood for “tax refund,” but it had a different meaning for us. LV books had their own system but essentially served the same end.
If a bettor was an “R” customer (known and trusted), we would write his ticket for 10% of the actual value, i.e., a $100 bet was written as $10 but with an R written on the bottom of the ticket. This way when we checked out and graded the ticket, the customer cashed for the full $100 wager if he won.
Writers, cashiers and in-house accountants all knew the ticket’s true value. To the outside bean counters and regulators, it was worth only $10 and when we were audited it would count as a $10 ticket. It had to be done to stay open.
Us writers and cashiers had to keep double tabs. At the end of the day, it was an adventure to tally up. Balancing your cash on the first pass was an upset. After all, you would take $500 from some bettors, write the ticket for $50, and put the “R” on the ticket. Sometimes, you might forget the “R” and checking out a balanced cash drawer would be impossible. When the bettor came up to cash the ticket, he’d be expecting a payout on a $500 bet not $50, so you had to be ready to pay off that real amount. It was very involved, and you really had to know what you were doing.
One enterprising customer, call him Harry, came up with an idea. Only problem was he had half of it figured correctly. It’s football 1977 when Harry comes to my window and bets $550 to win $500 and tells me he wants to pay the tax. Knowing he was an “R” customer, I try to write him an “R” ticket, but he insists on paying the tax. I reminded him he can get an “R” ticket, but he insists on paying the tax. He leaves with a $550 ticket, on the Broncos as I remember.
In a couple weeks, these guys come in from Denver and cash the ticket. Benny the cashier gives them $1,050, and they say the ticket was a $5,500 bet, and they have $10,500 coming.
Harry told them of the 10% deal he had, and they gave him $5,500 to bet. But he bet $550, gave them the ticket, told them it was actually worth $5,500 and pocketed the rest thinking it would lose.
It would have been the perfect scam if the ticket had lost, but it was a winner. Picking losers is just as difficult as picking winners. It was eventually straightened out.
Note: This practice ended in 1974 when Nevada Senator Howard Cannon got the tax reduced from 10% to 2% in October 1974. The press hailed him, but the books didn’t. Actually, we were better off with the 10% figure because it was compatible to writing “R” tickets while 2% was nearly impossible to work with on the fly. It stands at 0.25% today.
Here's An Idea
But it will never work because it infringes on the NCAA and their grip on college sports. Why not let a select group of handicappers fill the NCAA brackets. They certainly are more qualified than the Keystone Cop imitators that come up with their politically correct field every season. Oh well, it won't be long till the NCAA and their 15 watt bulb decision makers are relegated to the minors anyhow. A couple Super Leagues will be formed and a few college presidents will find some balls and make it happen.
Pessimist or Realist
Continuing with the expected OK of National sports betting there's a theme I've put forth expressing some downsides. I've discussed how impossible it will be to cut the pot with multiple leagues and how uncomprehending politicians will interfere, especially those who consider themselves sports experts.
Now let’s consider the physical impossibilities of trying to operate a legal sportsbook outside Nevada. Let's examine an extreme situation, New York City at post time when the Giants and Jets line up. Consider the popular idea of Las Vegas corporate bookmaking operations being OK'd to expand into the City, State or whatever.
Las Vegas can manage sports betting because it’s an island in the middle of nowhere. That makes it easy to monitor both the regulatory and bookmaking sides of the business. NYC is home to hundreds of thousands of sports bettors. They bet with “their man”, a local bookmaker who has a clientele he’s built up or off shore books. A local guy may book the bets himself, lay off some of his action to a bigger office or an off shore book. Now add layoff from around the rest of the country and the Las Vegas betting hubs could not handle this kind of action in their current configurations.
Using a conservative estimate let’s say there are a thousand local BMs in NYC each with fifty, or a hundred clients on up to many hundreds in bigger offices. Again using conservative estimates we might have 100,000 players, big and small, in NYC. The Giants vs the Jets would easily attract $50,000,000 and most would be on game day.
An educated guess tells me over half of NYC players will stay with their current local bookie. That would leave 30,000 - 40,000 players trying to get down in sports books on Giants vs Jets. A big Las Vegas chain of mega sports books could have 200 writers on an NFL Sunday in Las Vegas to accommodate an NFL schedule of games. In our Giants vs Jets scenario NYC sports books would need approximately 1500 writers for the same days action. That’s maybe 1500 honest citizens culled from the wiseguys of NYC. It’s a slam dunk the do gooder politicians and activists will insist half of them are from the victim class.
See where all this speculation is going. No solid research is behind these figures. I’m just going on well earned experience. It’s all just to get a point across.
We haven’t even got into limits and on what amount will they move a line or will they move on air. Wait till the first multi million dollar loss and watch the finger pointing and heads roll. “I knew that number was too low” from genius bureaucrats and politicians will fill the government halls. After a couple weeks of this and they will go to -120, then -130 etc. They’ll end up with just parlay cards or fantasy sports or some form of pari mutuel sports betting.
Pessimist or realist? Take your choice.
Surpremes part 2
In my Dec 1st Surpremes assessment below I revealed myself to be in the minority regarding the future of National sports betting. I wasn't against it but layed out with simple facts and predictions why, in my opinion, it won't work. Now the NBA, who were and still are for it and benefited with rave reviews from the hopeful sports betting masses, just put the joner on the whole thing.
Forbes:
"The NBA has undoubtedly been the strongest proponent of all major U.S.-based professional sports leagues for the abolition of a law that prohibits states (other than Nevada) from offering sports betting on individual match-ups. Yet, the support for a change in the law comes with one caveat. The NBA wants a piece of the action.
The league characterizes its commission request as an "integrity fee." It seeks 1% of the amount wagered on any events concerning NBA games and says that the fee should be coming out of the revenue received from sports betting operators that would be involved in the transaction".
If the NBA wants 1% the NFL wont play second fiddle and will expect maybe 3%. MLB will consider them selves a step above the NBA and the NHL will be happy with the scraps. Let's say, for our analysis purposes, the leagues rake maybe 6% of the handle. Follow that up with our politicians salivating over a new money pot to grab and of course TV will want a raise and on and on it goes. In a good year the Las Vegas sportsbooks will hold 4%. In their wildest dreams it ain't gonna work. Hint: they might settle for parlay cards and their 25% bottom line or maybe they think we'll lay -130 or -140 instead of -110. Good luck with that.
???
For what it's worth, a very smart gambler/poker player is spreading millions allover Las Vegas on the Eagles moneyline.
Gone
The first Super Bowl was played Jan. 15, 1967 in the LA Memorial Coliseum between the Packers and Chiefs.. The NFL and newer AFL weren’t yet merged. The two leagues and especially these two teams genuinely disliked each other. The Chiefs, owned by the lamar Hunt family, were the first team to pay their players what was then exorbitant salaries. By todays going rates they were still grossly underpaid. The NFL mantra was “the Hunts bought their team” whatever that meant. The Packers were publicly owned by the citizens of Green Bay and still are.
The underlying atmosphere behind Super Bowl 1 was a promoters dream. These players would have played the game for free just to get at each other. They almost did since the winner got $15,000 and the loser $7500. Vince Lombardi's Packers, -17 pt favorites, came through for their coach with a convincing 35-10 win. In the Trophy ceremony and press conference Lombardi wouldn’t knock the Chiefs till they hounded him into saying “OK we’re a better league.” The trophy today is named after Coach Lombardi.
Today’s kids won’t know a sports world that was a lot simpler, easier to watch and participate in with less showbiz and showboating. The self promoting pro influence is creeping into the college games and is slowly beginning to take hold in high schools. Screaming and pounding your chest after making a basket or tackle and mini end zone productions are glorified on TV. Soon if not already embedded in our kids vision of the games they play, this attitude will be as much a part of their game as discipline once was not so long ago.
Same with the Las Vegas race & sportsbooks. Millennials and younger will never know betting parlors that were not part of a hotel/casino. They once weren’t allowed, by regulation, in Las Vegas casinos. That regulation was changed in 1976 and all those nostalgic old, Spartan joints slowly disappeared one by one.
The characters who haunted those stand alone joints and the camaraderie that still exists among some of us old goats will be gone with us. Times change, change with them or get out of the way.
Super Duper Bowl
wiseguys.com is NOT a tout site nor will we ever charge for anything. However I came away from 40 years making odds and going up against the sharpest in LV with a well earned feel for the business. With that in mind I'll give my thoughts on the NFL games this weekend:
# Never go against the Patriots no matter what.
# A wounded team (Eagles/Wentz) is hard to beat.
Surpremes 12/1/18
Monday, December 4th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments for and against repealing the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). They could clear the way for single game sports wagering Country wide. If the PASPA Act goes down then it must be decided if it’s controlled State by State or on a Federal level. Their decision is expected to be announced in June.
Sports bettors nation wide are rooting for a repeal. If they get a PASPA repeal don’t expect a seamless Las Vegas betting style transition overnight. So, so many issues must be thought out before the first wager is taken.
The logical approach would be to welcome Las Vegas Corporations that are established in booking sports then stay out of business decisions, sit back and tax it. That makes too much sense. Fighting sentiment with logic is almost impossible. First consider that Las Vegas geography is a big reason for the happy medium between Nevada Regulators and privately owned Nevada based casinos. Don’t laugh, think about it. We’re an island contained by a desert. The Nevada Gaming Commission and Gaming Control Board can police, monitor and tax the business in an effective secure way because we’re contained in a small area that’s conducive to oversight. Put multiple sports betting operations in NYC and try to monitor them. What could possibly go wrong?
Say a State Government partners with a Las Vegas sports betting entity. Will the new sportsbooks simply keep out of the way or knowing politicians will they want their hands on the switch. Las Vegas casinos are obsessed with pleasing the Feds so they will leave us alone. So far it’s worked. That won’t be the case in the new rookie operations around the Country. Will the out of state sportsbooks be diligent in monitoring the action and bettors and filing the mountains of Suspicious Activity Reports and Casino Transaction Reports required by the Feds? Will Las Vegas casinos turn over partial control to another entity and risk losing their licence when and if something goes wrong and it will. Goes Wrong is the favorite.
Begin with politicians in control of Government, State or Federal, who consider themselves sports betting and handicapping geniuses or have “others” touting them. The second guessing begins with the first losing month. We’re not dealing with slots here, booking sports is a gamble i.e. you can lose. Now we have friction between LV sportsbooks and their out of state clients. A good month dealing sports will show around a 5% profit. Will the new States cut the pot right out of business? A 5% win is a very good month but booking sports is gambling not slots. It’ll be tempting for rookie politicians to misread the nature of the business, the profit margin is small and fragile. It can be taxed right out of business. We haven’t dealt with the professional players and the players union yet or the owners? And now the elephant in the room being college players wanting in on it AND believe me that’s going to happen.
Let’s end with this cheery thought: What a spot for sophisticated hackers and scammers both inside and out. They WILL find the weak spots.
Handicap This
A visitor to wiseguys.com relayed this brutal money line loss to me. UCSB scores to go up by two with one second on the clock. Cal Poly heaves an inbound pass to half court. The clock doesn’t start till another half court heave at the basket fails. Whistle, foul with .3 of a second on the homecourt clock. The Cal Poly heaver gets three foul shots and drains all three. Cal Poly wins 80-79. I have no answer how we handicap and overcome bad calls and no calls in baskets and football. That's both pros and colleges. Take a look:
http://www.ajc.com/sports/college/was-fixed-conspiracies-abound-over-alabama-win-over-georgia/ZpqErf1E5xuuzoi49190II/
It’s on! The first threat to Las Vegas lock on the domestic, legal sports betting market took place in Delaware June 6. William Hill opened the first full scale sportsbook outside Las Vegas. It’s ‘Las Vegas light’ but more than adequate and shows Delaware did their due diligence. Plenty of TVs although without the overkill of LV offerings. Digital odds boards with William Hills sharp numbers. Food, drinks and you get the idea.
Las Vegas casinos were granted race/sportsbooks in 1976 but then Las Vegas was self contained. We had a lock on domestic, legal gambling. Race/sportsbooks would only add to the LV experience and handle then. No way would they be a detriment.
It all changed with the Supremes sports betting decision. Now more states with racinos and casinos will add sports betting in some form. The smart move will be to partner with William Hill if they aren’t already home to a Las Vegas branded casino. Those two choices will be ignored by some bureaucrats and politicians who won’t cede any power or control. They’ll go up against the betting public with their egos and not much else. Two things will happen to these geniuses. They will cost their states bankroll to take a big hit and/or they will be forced to make their odds so outlandish they’ll have no business.
Back to 1976 when the Stardust unveiled their mega book. It was a magnificent facility as envisioned by Lefty Rosenthal. It was the template for today's ultra mega books found only in Las Vegas, USA. I was working at Churchill Downs sportsbook at the time and the smart money said the Stardust would put Churchill out of business. Guess what, we not only survived but had to hire additional writers.
In an ironic twist I ended up managing the Stardust from 1983 till 1991. Other hotels soon opened up bigger, and they thought better, race/sportsbooks to counter the Stardust’s phenomenal success. We kept ahead of them with ideas they considered bad for their sports betting bottom line. On my watch we began 24 hr cashiers, sports betting chips to legally counter the $10,000 Federal reporting requirement, safe deposit boxes for sports bettors, provided a free phone room so players would never have to leave the Stardust, our own huge phone betting business, we were the first to televise EVERY NFL game and tons of colleges thanks to K band technology we beat everyone else to.
Of course I had top shelf help from my employees and upper management left me alone. We left untouched what brought us to the dance e.g. our race and sports odds and results boards conceived by Lefty. We provided free racing forms and maybe the most radical move yet, we established The Sports Handicappers Library where we shared with our players every bit of information we used to make our Nationally followed, in house first out opening sports odds.
What can the super modern, technology driven Las Vegas books do today to maintain their lofty, well earned status? There’s not much more in the way of amenities they can provide. It’s a new game now and Las Vegas will remain the reinventing champions label they’ve earned.
It’s easy to envision the rise of e-gaming and the opportunity to outfit mega e-gaming facilities. The casinos who outsource their sports books and knowhow to the rest of the country will have to figure out how to lure those far flung players to Las Vegas. They must make those new players want to come to Las Vegas or begin downsizing in favor of e-gaming and other millennial leaning enticements.
Las Vegas gambling revenue went from number one to now playing second fiddle to entertainment, dining, shopping AND the nightclub scene. The rest of the country’s casinos and racinos can offer a complete copy of Las Vegas now by adding a sportsbook. It’ll be a poor quality copy but why go to Las Vegas.
It Can't Be Fixed
The NFL we grew up with and took so seriously is gone never to return. Games and teams we couldn't wait to watch have mostly become soap operas. The NFL brand of football is now a sideshow to circus like distractions.
NFL Owners have been running around the shower of unhappy fans without getting wet for a few years now. Fans beefs have been ignored because the Owners had a pat hand. No matter what the NFL put on the field their fans.were always be there, watching and spending. The networks and Owners winked at each other while the number of commercials grew to the point they affected the continuity of the game. Bad calls, phantom calls, concussions and a few unhinged savages intentionally injuring opponents without being kicked out of the league were ignored. Meanwhile adoring fans cynicism was building up over salaries and the perception of players eating Oatmeal and staring at a cement wall is no longer hush hush.
Those problems were fixable to a degree but the mother of all problems can't be fixed not even with the latest move of OK'ing male cheerleaders. There's no way out of the National Anthem protests no matter what band aid the League and Owners throw at it. Waiting it out ain't gonna work. Patriotic statements from the League office and fixes like giving these ungrateful mllionaires the choice to keep their sorry asses in the tunnel while fans stand and sing our National Anthem is going to backfire big time. The NFL Players Association is against that policy while former and current protesting players are already figuring out how to beat this new policy. These 15 watt bulbs will come up with a new form of protest and on it goes. Good luck dealing with these self absorbed knuckleheads some of whom can't spell cat.
One scenario that will fix this mess is for players who respect Our Flag and show it during the National Anthem banding together in a protest of their own against the un American, codeled and ungrateful malcontents. It would be ugly. They could refuse to play with them forcing the owners and the timid NFL to side with one group or the other. Siding with the protesting Patriotic players would be costly at first but the result would be a bigger more loyal fan base than ever imagined.
College football is heading for a bigger mess than the pro game finds itself in. The NFL has a workable number of owners and league officials and far less players to deal with. On the other hand the NCAA is staffed with uncomprehending twits. There are over one hundred DI teams, college presidents, athletic directors and powerful narcissistic coaches. Dealing with them will be nothing to dealing with thousands of players once they organise i.e. unionise. Multiply those folks with millions of alumni and it's a real mess. Finally facing the biggie in the room i.e. player compensation will be a game changer. Now that sports betting is OK'd there will be schools wanting a piece of the pie (action). What will most likely result is twenty or so schools giving the NCAA the middle digit and forming a Super Conference with two divisions. The NCAA will still be around but neutered. Hold on to your hats and BR's.
What Could Go Wrong
As the country breathlessly awaits the Surpremes blessings on sports betting more and more ‘experts’ are being given media space. Lazy journalists regurgitate this nonsense like giddy groupies. No need for fact checking or even running these stories past anyone, say a veteran bookie, to get an educated opinion. Nah, that would ruin the hype.
The most annoying, to me anyways, are the research company’s and their analysts who have never made or taken a bet. They only know the gross figures and few give a thought to the net. The gross sports betting figure used by these ‘experts’ to sensationalize their smiley face predictions comes in anywhere from $150 billion to $300 billion and they go from there.
Simple just pick any figure in that range, multiply it by 1%, 2% 4%, 10% and shazam you’ll get the tax bonanza the state will rake. Some want to dip into the win others want a cut of the gross. West Virginia want’s 10% of the gross. Good luck with that. More money for that black hole but what could go wrong since politicians and bureaucrats will be watching the action.
Forget bookmaking has an historic low, very low profit margin that can top out at around 4% over the years and combined sports seasons If all goes well.
Take of the rose colored glasses and figure in the 1% Integrity Fee the professional leagues want to extort. Aren’t their games and players playing with integrity now? That’s just the leagues rake. Now groups of players in addition to the Players Union have come, although late, to the trough. They want their cut in addition to the leagues Integrity Fee. Add another percentage point or two to the orgy.
These 15 watt bulbs want to dictate what games they will allow to be booked and at what odds, what ‘exotic’ bets they will allow and get this they want only stats and information they sanction to be used. This is a shot at the leagues as well as the owners. It’ll be a wonderful day in the neighborhood boys and girls.
A trend is becoming evident that will be the 800 lb gorilla in the room. Make that 2000 lb gorilla. The trend is to let homegrown lottery commissions, gaming commissions, racing commisssions and yet to be appointed panels to run the whole thing. Using Las Vegas expertise and established operations is rarely mentioned or considered in most of these plans. What is being discussed though is fantasy type pools and forms of pari mutual betting which is not conducive to sports betting.
They’ll recruit Las Vegas sports book personnel and then those afore mentioned politicians and bureaucrats will pile on and turn their jobs into a nightmare before the different schemes eventually go belly up or just become parlay card joints.
I’ll take fries with that parlay please.
Think It Through W VA
I see the state of West Virginia is getting ahead of the game and has legislation ready for the launching of sports betting in anticipation of the Supremes giving the OK.
Look back over my columns and web site and see why I have doubts as to the success of sports betting when politicians and rookie bookmakers are in on it. West Virginia is a classic example. They propose a 10% tax on the gross. What a great idea.
Nevada sportsbooks hold 4% and that’s with seasoned management. The leagues will demand at least 1% each so we’re up to at least 8% before the nut is even considered. If the WV books hold less than 4%, just plain lose or if the leagues want a bigger piece, which the NFL surely will, there won’t be enough beans to count.
Decades ago a 10% federal tax was levied on Nevada’s storefront race and sportsbooks long before hotel-casinos were granted licenses. It was to be paid up front by the players when making a bet. The books were expected to be tax collectors. Neither player nor bookie could overcome a 10% tax on race and sports bets.
The sportsbooks operated on maybe a 4% win. The sharpest player on the planet couldn’t survive paying a 10% tax, penalty, extortion, or whatever you call it. You couldn’t book or bet in a book that went along with this onerous tax.
So the books figured out a way to get around the 10% federal tax. For the bettors who were known and trusted, we would write an “R” on the bottom of their ticket. The “R,” just in case anybody would question, stood for “tax refund,” but it had a different meaning for us. LV books had their own system but essentially served the same end.
If a bettor was an “R” customer (known and trusted), we would write his ticket for 10% of the actual value, i.e., a $100 bet was written as $10 but with an R written on the bottom of the ticket. This way when we checked out and graded the ticket, the customer cashed for the full $100 wager if he won.
Writers, cashiers and in-house accountants all knew the ticket’s true value. To the outside bean counters and regulators, it was worth only $10 and when we were audited it would count as a $10 ticket. It had to be done to stay open.
Us writers and cashiers had to keep double tabs. At the end of the day, it was an adventure to tally up. Balancing your cash on the first pass was an upset. After all, you would take $500 from some bettors, write the ticket for $50, and put the “R” on the ticket. Sometimes, you might forget the “R” and checking out a balanced cash drawer would be impossible. When the bettor came up to cash the ticket, he’d be expecting a payout on a $500 bet not $50, so you had to be ready to pay off that real amount. It was very involved, and you really had to know what you were doing.
One enterprising customer, call him Harry, came up with an idea. Only problem was he had half of it figured correctly. It’s football 1977 when Harry comes to my window and bets $550 to win $500 and tells me he wants to pay the tax. Knowing he was an “R” customer, I try to write him an “R” ticket, but he insists on paying the tax. I reminded him he can get an “R” ticket, but he insists on paying the tax. He leaves with a $550 ticket, on the Broncos as I remember.
In a couple weeks, these guys come in from Denver and cash the ticket. Benny the cashier gives them $1,050, and they say the ticket was a $5,500 bet, and they have $10,500 coming.
Harry told them of the 10% deal he had, and they gave him $5,500 to bet. But he bet $550, gave them the ticket, told them it was actually worth $5,500 and pocketed the rest thinking it would lose.
It would have been the perfect scam if the ticket had lost, but it was a winner. Picking losers is just as difficult as picking winners. It was eventually straightened out.
Note: This practice ended in 1974 when Nevada Senator Howard Cannon got the tax reduced from 10% to 2% in October 1974. The press hailed him, but the books didn’t. Actually, we were better off with the 10% figure because it was compatible to writing “R” tickets while 2% was nearly impossible to work with on the fly. It stands at 0.25% today.
Here's An Idea
But it will never work because it infringes on the NCAA and their grip on college sports. Why not let a select group of handicappers fill the NCAA brackets. They certainly are more qualified than the Keystone Cop imitators that come up with their politically correct field every season. Oh well, it won't be long till the NCAA and their 15 watt bulb decision makers are relegated to the minors anyhow. A couple Super Leagues will be formed and a few college presidents will find some balls and make it happen.
Pessimist or Realist
Continuing with the expected OK of National sports betting there's a theme I've put forth expressing some downsides. I've discussed how impossible it will be to cut the pot with multiple leagues and how uncomprehending politicians will interfere, especially those who consider themselves sports experts.
Now let’s consider the physical impossibilities of trying to operate a legal sportsbook outside Nevada. Let's examine an extreme situation, New York City at post time when the Giants and Jets line up. Consider the popular idea of Las Vegas corporate bookmaking operations being OK'd to expand into the City, State or whatever.
Las Vegas can manage sports betting because it’s an island in the middle of nowhere. That makes it easy to monitor both the regulatory and bookmaking sides of the business. NYC is home to hundreds of thousands of sports bettors. They bet with “their man”, a local bookmaker who has a clientele he’s built up or off shore books. A local guy may book the bets himself, lay off some of his action to a bigger office or an off shore book. Now add layoff from around the rest of the country and the Las Vegas betting hubs could not handle this kind of action in their current configurations.
Using a conservative estimate let’s say there are a thousand local BMs in NYC each with fifty, or a hundred clients on up to many hundreds in bigger offices. Again using conservative estimates we might have 100,000 players, big and small, in NYC. The Giants vs the Jets would easily attract $50,000,000 and most would be on game day.
An educated guess tells me over half of NYC players will stay with their current local bookie. That would leave 30,000 - 40,000 players trying to get down in sports books on Giants vs Jets. A big Las Vegas chain of mega sports books could have 200 writers on an NFL Sunday in Las Vegas to accommodate an NFL schedule of games. In our Giants vs Jets scenario NYC sports books would need approximately 1500 writers for the same days action. That’s maybe 1500 honest citizens culled from the wiseguys of NYC. It’s a slam dunk the do gooder politicians and activists will insist half of them are from the victim class.
See where all this speculation is going. No solid research is behind these figures. I’m just going on well earned experience. It’s all just to get a point across.
We haven’t even got into limits and on what amount will they move a line or will they move on air. Wait till the first multi million dollar loss and watch the finger pointing and heads roll. “I knew that number was too low” from genius bureaucrats and politicians will fill the government halls. After a couple weeks of this and they will go to -120, then -130 etc. They’ll end up with just parlay cards or fantasy sports or some form of pari mutuel sports betting.
Pessimist or realist? Take your choice.
Surpremes part 2
In my Dec 1st Surpremes assessment below I revealed myself to be in the minority regarding the future of National sports betting. I wasn't against it but layed out with simple facts and predictions why, in my opinion, it won't work. Now the NBA, who were and still are for it and benefited with rave reviews from the hopeful sports betting masses, just put the joner on the whole thing.
Forbes:
"The NBA has undoubtedly been the strongest proponent of all major U.S.-based professional sports leagues for the abolition of a law that prohibits states (other than Nevada) from offering sports betting on individual match-ups. Yet, the support for a change in the law comes with one caveat. The NBA wants a piece of the action.
The league characterizes its commission request as an "integrity fee." It seeks 1% of the amount wagered on any events concerning NBA games and says that the fee should be coming out of the revenue received from sports betting operators that would be involved in the transaction".
If the NBA wants 1% the NFL wont play second fiddle and will expect maybe 3%. MLB will consider them selves a step above the NBA and the NHL will be happy with the scraps. Let's say, for our analysis purposes, the leagues rake maybe 6% of the handle. Follow that up with our politicians salivating over a new money pot to grab and of course TV will want a raise and on and on it goes. In a good year the Las Vegas sportsbooks will hold 4%. In their wildest dreams it ain't gonna work. Hint: they might settle for parlay cards and their 25% bottom line or maybe they think we'll lay -130 or -140 instead of -110. Good luck with that.
???
For what it's worth, a very smart gambler/poker player is spreading millions allover Las Vegas on the Eagles moneyline.
Gone
The first Super Bowl was played Jan. 15, 1967 in the LA Memorial Coliseum between the Packers and Chiefs.. The NFL and newer AFL weren’t yet merged. The two leagues and especially these two teams genuinely disliked each other. The Chiefs, owned by the lamar Hunt family, were the first team to pay their players what was then exorbitant salaries. By todays going rates they were still grossly underpaid. The NFL mantra was “the Hunts bought their team” whatever that meant. The Packers were publicly owned by the citizens of Green Bay and still are.
The underlying atmosphere behind Super Bowl 1 was a promoters dream. These players would have played the game for free just to get at each other. They almost did since the winner got $15,000 and the loser $7500. Vince Lombardi's Packers, -17 pt favorites, came through for their coach with a convincing 35-10 win. In the Trophy ceremony and press conference Lombardi wouldn’t knock the Chiefs till they hounded him into saying “OK we’re a better league.” The trophy today is named after Coach Lombardi.
Today’s kids won’t know a sports world that was a lot simpler, easier to watch and participate in with less showbiz and showboating. The self promoting pro influence is creeping into the college games and is slowly beginning to take hold in high schools. Screaming and pounding your chest after making a basket or tackle and mini end zone productions are glorified on TV. Soon if not already embedded in our kids vision of the games they play, this attitude will be as much a part of their game as discipline once was not so long ago.
Same with the Las Vegas race & sportsbooks. Millennials and younger will never know betting parlors that were not part of a hotel/casino. They once weren’t allowed, by regulation, in Las Vegas casinos. That regulation was changed in 1976 and all those nostalgic old, Spartan joints slowly disappeared one by one.
The characters who haunted those stand alone joints and the camaraderie that still exists among some of us old goats will be gone with us. Times change, change with them or get out of the way.
Super Duper Bowl
wiseguys.com is NOT a tout site nor will we ever charge for anything. However I came away from 40 years making odds and going up against the sharpest in LV with a well earned feel for the business. With that in mind I'll give my thoughts on the NFL games this weekend:
# Never go against the Patriots no matter what.
# A wounded team (Eagles/Wentz) is hard to beat.
Surpremes 12/1/18
Monday, December 4th, the Supreme Court will hear arguments for and against repealing the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA). They could clear the way for single game sports wagering Country wide. If the PASPA Act goes down then it must be decided if it’s controlled State by State or on a Federal level. Their decision is expected to be announced in June.
Sports bettors nation wide are rooting for a repeal. If they get a PASPA repeal don’t expect a seamless Las Vegas betting style transition overnight. So, so many issues must be thought out before the first wager is taken.
The logical approach would be to welcome Las Vegas Corporations that are established in booking sports then stay out of business decisions, sit back and tax it. That makes too much sense. Fighting sentiment with logic is almost impossible. First consider that Las Vegas geography is a big reason for the happy medium between Nevada Regulators and privately owned Nevada based casinos. Don’t laugh, think about it. We’re an island contained by a desert. The Nevada Gaming Commission and Gaming Control Board can police, monitor and tax the business in an effective secure way because we’re contained in a small area that’s conducive to oversight. Put multiple sports betting operations in NYC and try to monitor them. What could possibly go wrong?
Say a State Government partners with a Las Vegas sports betting entity. Will the new sportsbooks simply keep out of the way or knowing politicians will they want their hands on the switch. Las Vegas casinos are obsessed with pleasing the Feds so they will leave us alone. So far it’s worked. That won’t be the case in the new rookie operations around the Country. Will the out of state sportsbooks be diligent in monitoring the action and bettors and filing the mountains of Suspicious Activity Reports and Casino Transaction Reports required by the Feds? Will Las Vegas casinos turn over partial control to another entity and risk losing their licence when and if something goes wrong and it will. Goes Wrong is the favorite.
Begin with politicians in control of Government, State or Federal, who consider themselves sports betting and handicapping geniuses or have “others” touting them. The second guessing begins with the first losing month. We’re not dealing with slots here, booking sports is a gamble i.e. you can lose. Now we have friction between LV sportsbooks and their out of state clients. A good month dealing sports will show around a 5% profit. Will the new States cut the pot right out of business? A 5% win is a very good month but booking sports is gambling not slots. It’ll be tempting for rookie politicians to misread the nature of the business, the profit margin is small and fragile. It can be taxed right out of business. We haven’t dealt with the professional players and the players union yet or the owners? And now the elephant in the room being college players wanting in on it AND believe me that’s going to happen.
Let’s end with this cheery thought: What a spot for sophisticated hackers and scammers both inside and out. They WILL find the weak spots.
Handicap This
A visitor to wiseguys.com relayed this brutal money line loss to me. UCSB scores to go up by two with one second on the clock. Cal Poly heaves an inbound pass to half court. The clock doesn’t start till another half court heave at the basket fails. Whistle, foul with .3 of a second on the homecourt clock. The Cal Poly heaver gets three foul shots and drains all three. Cal Poly wins 80-79. I have no answer how we handicap and overcome bad calls and no calls in baskets and football. That's both pros and colleges. Take a look:
http://www.ajc.com/sports/college/was-fixed-conspiracies-abound-over-alabama-win-over-georgia/ZpqErf1E5xuuzoi49190II/
Once again Kentucky's 'Rent a Team' Wildcats fall to UCLA. Kentucky has one player on their roster from Kentucky and he's seen one minute of action this season. He does bring up the team grade point average though and he looks good in airports.
The Pittsburgh game followed by the Buffalo game keeps the NY replay officials connections with the Patriots alive.
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Why bother to handicap the phony boloney good time rock and roll NFL when crap like we saw in Pittsburgh make it all meaningless.
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The ARMY NAVY Game
If there’s a single game or sporting event that produces the correct winner it’s the annual Army Navy game. It’s a handicappers delight. These two teams are equal in recruiting policies, player amenities, focus and outlooks.
Every kid every play gives his best with minimal mental mistakes or emotional outbursts. Bad beats and questionable calls that can’t be handicapped into the winner almost never figure in the payoff of this game. If you back the loser here you shouldn’t be left with a bad taste.
The Army Navy game is well worth the wait every year. Un ashamed and proud patriotism everywhere. Hands over hearts for a rousing National Anthem and never a knee to the ground.
We don't have to be agitated by player celebrations or watching delusional coaches with oversized headphones screaming at referees or even their own players. Bonehead penalties are rare and you'll never see an un sportsman like conduct penalty, never. No players in full gear pretending they're fighting. Injuries seem to be minimal, Hint: these kids are in awesome shape and just might be a bit tougher than civilian teams(my terminology). These players are up at 4:30 am daily, both teams. They must pass difficult courses and grades are for real. When the game is over mutual respect for their brothers on the other team takes the place of pumped up egos. In fact in last games interview the first thing out of the winning Army coach was to wish the seriously ill child of a Navy coach his best wishes for his recovery.
This game actually means something to a lot of us. Let's hope kids all over this great country of ours imitate these players instead of what they're fed on TV. Maybe they could even look forward to and work to play in it someday.
I’ll leave it with the image of the crowd, the fans. No “adults” painted up and dressed in costumes making fools of themselves. Both teams and their followers pay respect to each other and mean it.
I wish neither had to lose.
Never A Bad Beat
There’s a sport that leaves nothing to blame on bad beats, bad calls/no calls, turnovers, bizarre play calling etc. There's a sport that produces
true and correct winners almost every time and that sport is high school and college wrestling.
No expanding and contracting strike zones, no safe judgment calls. No crazy bounces from an oblong football, no missed interference calls. No flags on phantom holding and interference calls to kill a drive. No goofy plays or decisions from coaches. No mistaking a charge from a block. No going to the foul line 30 times while their visiting opponent has three trips to the line. No players playing at half speed because of “foul trouble.”
No having to watch some NFL seven watt bulb do a dance after making a “play” they’re supposed to make. Or an aircraft carrier sized basketball player scream at the rafters while grabbing his jersey number because he made a basket.
There's zero time for grandstanding during a wrestling match. No timeouts to get oxygen like in the NFL or ask to be taken out after a 25 yard run. It’s just you and an equally determined opponent on the mat. Rarely, if ever, is the wrong wrestler’s hand held up in victory. Rarely does a ref make a bad call. The winner is the winner without the bad beats to overcome. You can recognize a dedicated, hard working wrestler. He’s the kid with the cauliflower ears and eyebrows and maybe a crooked nose. He’s also refreshingly polite and humble. Wrestlers willingly endure the hardest workout regimens and sacrifice the most to stay in incredible shape.
Wrestling is the perfect sport to handicap and book. The stats and records reflect actual strengths and capabilities of the opponents, be it an individual match or a team result. There’s an array of propositions that are true to the sport without the silliness of Super Bowl props. Wrestling is perfect for money lines, rounds, full outcomes, over and unders, etc. In-progress betting would be hard to accommodate because the action is so fast. There’s a minute at most between the three rounds (3,2,2 minutes) and maybe a minute between matches. If all 10 weight classes go the distance that’s 70 minutes of nonstop action. The whole event is over in 85-90 minutes, including a brief half time. You can count on the correct decisions be it individual or team outcomes and avoid the stench of a bad beat. Wrestling is the purest Western sport.
The Enemy
Standing with arms linked is not standing with your hand over your heart. It's still meant to show disrespect but in a cowardly way. The United States does NOT tip our flag to any other nation or cause. The NFL and the networks have chosen to tip our flag to the protesting players by hiding our National Anthem from view and earshot before games. Kneeling for our National Anthem on foreign soil (London) while standing for God Save The Queen makes the NFL an enemy of the United States. Now the 15 watt bulbs hope we're stupid enough to fall for their feel good nonsense before games instead of our National Anthem.
What happened
Let’s put the NFL protesters aside for a moment and take a look at other reasons the professional game is tanking in a self inflicted spiral to the back of the pack.
Time was when a game was scheduled for say 1:00 o’clock you tune in at 1:00 and their it was. No pre game show biz panel of has been players and coaches shouting and giggling. No pre game country western/rock music spectacular needed to attract you, after all you were already tuned in. No non ending looks of vicious hits and spectacular catches were needed. The only draw was an impending football game featuring the best players on the planet.
It’s possible of course to tune out the Hollywood show biz leadup to today’s games but we can’t escape the theatrics that blend in and continue with the antics of today’s players. After almost every play we’re treated to a showboating, self absorbed player doing a dance or a shuffle because he made a play that he’s getting paid to make and is supposed to make. What a treat to see a player losing by 30 points finally sack a QB then do a dance. We saw you buddy and we also saw that same QB make you look inept for most of the game.
Penalty flag after flag is now part of the show but not on most pass plays where interference could be called on a majority of passes.
Those players on the other team who know how to find the end zone aren’t to be out showbizzed either. The 15 watt bulbs in the league boardrooms have encouraged end zone “celebrations” this season. Just what we need when we have no shot at covering. Now between the beer, truck and erectile disfunction commercials come the nail biting halts to the flow of the game while someone in a far, far away place reviews the play to see if he actually did fumble or if his big was toe in or out. A referee stands and stares into a hand held monitor but he has nothing to say about the decision for which we see from every angle possible.
There’s approximately 13 minutes of actual action in a game. The line between those 13 minutes and the unnecessary added nonsense are blurred by the geniuses who have inherited the once proud NFL brand. They were handed the keys to a Rolls Royce and all they had to do was drive it without wrecking it.
Reap What You Sow
The NFL finds itself in a no win situation of their own making and a sizeable portion of the Country is rooting against them. Another portion is now emboldened by recent media exposer. In the simplest of terms we have NFL players who sit or kneel during our National Anthem vs those who oppose them and their actions.
Up until now the League and team owners could largely ignore the situation hoping it goes away. No more. The NFL is now an ideological battleground. They’ve drawn that famous line in the sand provoked by President Trump.
Like him or not President Trump has forced them into a struggle with passionate Americans who will defend their beliefs just like the protesting players are defending theirs. Other players are now given cover to jump in riding the fashionable wave of those who dislike the President.
The League is misreading their once high status. Look no further than NFL Commissioner Goodells response to President Trump’s call for owners to fire players who kneel during the national anthem and also encouraging fans to walk out in protest or just stay away from the games altogether. Goodells response to President Trump in part: “ Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players, and a failure to understand the overwhelming force for good our clubs and players represent in our communities.” HUH?
NBA deep thinkers like Lebron James and Stephen Curry jumped in with name calling and even an MLB player sheepishly took a knee while another brave soul put his hand on his shoulder.
Who’s going to blink first. It won’t be the fans who will learn first hand they can do very well without this mess and those who caused it.
Dear NCAA, Forgedabowdit
How can it get any goofier? Now the 15watt bulbs in the NCAA front office are proposing a suicide pill to stave off an inevitable uprising. College athletes are heading for unionization or some form of collective protection. They want their piece of the money pie they provide with what they perceive as not enough compensation. They do get an education if they take advantage. The NCAA rules are being loosened up but maybe a bit too late to stave off the inevitable
With a food stipend they no longer have to eat hamburger while the coaching the staff eats steak and lobster. They can fly home on the colleges dime now and “enjoy” other loosening of archaic rules. The NCAA is the first to blink. They are going all out to create the ultimate stopgap rule to delay the inevitable which is a team saying we’re not going to play in the Rose Bowl Game or the Cotton Bowl Game unless we’re cut in on the gravy.
What’s this brainstorm the NCAA is contemplating? In broad terms any kid can transfer anywhere they want, if they are welcome of course, and play immediately with no need to sit out a year.
All that’s required is the school they’re transferring into has the same or equal course they are leaving. An athlete taking basket weaving at Potluck U, after an exceptional season, can transfer to Mortons Steak House and play immediately. Some schools will remain academically honest of course but the bandit schools will take advantage and bring down others with them so they can remain competitive.
Basketball with 13 man rosters will be especially vulnerable. A kid transfers out to start immediately at a school who will then cut a kid to make room. That kid will now transfer to another school who will have to make room and on and on. What about a successful team that now has three kids looking to take advantage of their good season and transfer individually or together. Together is not out of the question. See where this is going if the NCAA goes through with this or some form of it.
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