BadBetting: The Answer is NOT Prohibition.

Game Fixing and Rumors of Game Fixing. American Sports, it seems, is breaking, already broken or just hopelessly doomed to be caught up in scandal.

Unsurprisingly, the most oft-called for fix is prohibition.

Americans have always loved them some prohibition. There's nothing that Americans don't like that they don't petition the government to ban. Never mind that other people might enjoy it harmlessly, or that a vast majority of sports bettors partake in the entertainment relatively harmlessly, although very seldom profitably it should be noted. Nope, let's just ban it because I don't like it.

Alternatively, Trump's Big Beautiful Bill created an unfair tax burden by limiting the deductions of gambling losses to 90%. What this creates is a situation where a gambler could be taxed on "winnings" that they never actually won.

Let me explain.  Let's say you play on a slot machine and you get very lucky and win a jackpot of $2000. You are happy, the machine locks up and you have to wait, provide some identification, sign some paperwork (a W2-G usually) and then a nice slot attendant comes out and pays you $2000 in cash. They then stand there and it is customary to tip them (at least $20) for that service. If you're sitting at a bar, say, a video poker machine, then it's also customary to tip the bar staff for your win. (Irony, under the One Big Beautiful Bill those tips are not considered taxable income).

Then, you continue to gamble and, given the laws of advantage and the house edge, you continue to play but lose that $2000 back to the casino.  You go home happy because of the gambler's fallacy, you remember the win and the adrenaline rush that it caused, the congratulations of those around you as you're paid out, the rush of having the machine lock up, then you go home and go back about your life.

Then, tax day comes and you realize just much that jackpot is going to cost you. First, you have to enter that W2-G as income. $2000 worth. If you take the standard deduction, which many do, then you are pretty much shit out of luck because prior tax changes made the deduction of gambling losses below the line calculations. That means that you cannot deduct said losses UNLESS you itemize.

But, here's the kicker, when you take your losses (which will often be more than the wins that you claim) you can only take $1800 of them by law.  That means that you are taxed on $200 of income that you never really "won". Think about that for a minute, and the fairness of it.

This is a simple, and low, example but, for many gamblers, the tax on unearned income could be four, five or even six figures given volumes and win. 

Here's where things get tricky. Many Americans are OK with this unfair taxation because it's a tax on gambling which many consider to be a "sin". So, Americans have a long history of punishing things unfairly that they take personal issue with.

If the response is not to punish it (through higher taxation at times, sometimes punitive) then the playbook for the USA has historically been to ban it.

And that has not worked out well over the years.

Prohibition of alcohol led to a massive underground market that was controlled by the mafia. Prohibition of drugs led to the rise of the cartels. Prohibition of sports gambling (prior to the Supreme Court's PASPA decision) led to the rise of massive offshore gambling rings that still operate today. Even the legalization of sports gaming however did not end the illegal market. In fact, in many ways, the underground betting market has thrived since sports betting became "legal".

Clearly then, the answer is not as simple as a sports betting prohibition. Nor is it as clear-cut as legalization in all 50 States. The problem is not that sports gambling exists, it's HOW the books are allowed to operate, and the regulatory agencies (State Gaming Control Boards) that are in place to govern them.

Dennis Miller once had a great line regarding prohibition. "You can outlaw all of the bad things in the world and people will still spin around on their lawn until the see God." The key is not prohibiting things we don't like. it's ensuring that legal things with the potential for harm, are regulated in a safe, simple, meaningful way.

I understand that, for people of a certain political ilk, regulation is viewed as a "bad thing" which should be avoided at all cost and, for people of another political ilk, there's no such thing as "too much" regulation even if said regulation is nonsensical and messy.

But I believe that good regulation can happen, provided it's done thoughtfully and designed to be implemented simply.  Here are a few ideas on how to start* fixing this issue.

1. Advertising restrictions.  We currently have restrictions on the advertisement of a host of things. From alcohol to cigarettes to almost whatever else you can think of. Putting guardrails around how and when a sports book can advertise seems a reasonable step that's pretty easy to enforce.

2. A stop to predatory practices. If you're a bartender you have an obligation to not overserve your clientele and let them get into a car. If you're a sports book you should be under the same obligation to not overserve your clients. Unfortunately the model for modern sports books is "block or bankrupt" where they plan to just limit or refuse the bets of bettors who might win, and bankrupt the poor souls who cannot. They do this through VIP services and retention bonuses for those who try and step away. Putting a stop to this practice would not be difficult.  I will say this however, limiting or banning is a stickier wicket. by outlawing that practice books would be forced to reduce their betting menus which would be horrible for bettors, reducing choice and limiting lines where weaknesses can be found.

3. Implement gaming control boards who are more than just rubber stamps for the books. Almost every week there is a new story of a book refusing to honor a bet or cancelling wagers because they claim it was "an obvious error". In many cases however these errors were not obvious until after the fact. In some cases the books just don't want to pay out grossly negative outcomes. In almost all of these cases the local gaming control agencies side with the books and allow them to void the bets, or not pay out. Strengthening the mission of the Gaming Control Boards to include gambler's rights could go a long way in preventing this.

4. A more robust tracking system for problem gaming. This should go without saying. With all of the AI and algorithms these books use identifying potential problem gamblers is not difficult. It's time to stop allowing these books (and casinos FWIW) to pay lip-service to responsible gambling and forcing them to start taking it seriously.

Of course, there are several other steps that could be taken which I'm not going to go in here, as I said earlier, the above suggestions are just a "start*" not a full on subscription for a fix. The problem people have is thinking that you can just ban something and the issue goes away. If anything, now that people have started gambling, if you outlaw legal gambling the illegal problem will get worse.

The issue with that? In MOST (not all but most) cases the alleged improprieties and fixing has been discovered through internal investigations of unusual betting patterns, self-reported by legal sports books. Illegal books, or bookies, would be highly unlikely to report the same, leaving the bad actors unreported and, in many cases, undiscovered. They would just move on to another unregulated shop to continue the scam.

Sports betting is something that needs to be fixed to the extent possible, not prohibited. Sadly, there will always be people who have their lives ruined by it, just as there are those whose lives are ruined by alcohol, drugs, junk food you name it. The key is to limit the damage as much as possible, and have resources available to help those that want out.

News Round-Up (01/07/2026)

To start, Happy New Year!!  With 2025 (thankfully) in our rearview mirrors hopefully the New Year brings us less shittery than we witnessed last year.  I doubt it, but one can hope.  Not a promising start however......

Restaurants you never heard of, and will probably never visit, continue to open and close in Houston Heights - Most of the time the phrase "exciting new concept" can be met with a yawn and a 1-2year lifespan expectation.

Houston Sports Bar Loft18 closes citing crime as a factor. - Houston is crumbling. I went to Loft18 once and it was, to be fair, pretty busy. Changes in leadership are the obvious solution but too many keep voting in the same cast of idiots.

So, the Ed Board thinks that the "solution" to the bodies in the Bayous problem is to appoint a Czar. No, just no. Yet another log on the "Shutter the Ed Board" smoldering fire.

The media's EV delusion still continues to amaze me. Tesla, despite Elon Musk's political divisiveness, continues to do OK, but the future is going to be in the Hybrid space. The Chron's growing army of Child Reporters seem incapable of performing this type of market analysis.

Calling the Texans defense "once elite" based on one game where the Colts scored primarily against the backups is rich. The Texans still have an elite defense, battling the Seahawks for the best in the league. Certainly they are the best in the AFC. The Texans offense on the other hand.......

Nebraska signs former UNLV QB Colandrea - Colandrea announced that he was entering the Portal only two days after saying he was going to stay in Las Vegas. His announcement came before the Portal opened, suggesting that someone had tampered with him. Was it Nebraska? Who knows, because they did pivot to him after losing out on the former Notre Dame QB. Still, College Football is a wasteland right now and their are really no rules because they're not being enforced.

MOAR Police on patrol. Houston's roads are rules optional right now. Almost as bad as College Football. Red Lights are suggestions, spatial awareness is all but gone, and line-cutting is at epidemic proportions. Never mind the uninsured drivers and unsafe vehicles littering the road. Dedicated Traffic Divisions could help, but not solve, this problem.

Chris Hollins is running his pre-campaign through the media. - He thinks shenanigans like this paint him in a positive light. They don't.

I, for one, will be glad to see this "Dry January" trend come to an end. - If you want a drink, have a drink. If you don't, then don't. Simple.  As for me, I'm off to have a bourbon tonight.

And finally....

'We're the Government and we're here to help" - All your base are belong to us ha ha ha.

Cheaters calling cheaters....Cheaters!!!! (The State of College Football in 2025)

 Sherrone Moore is out. (And in jail)

It's been quite the wild 24 hours in Ann Arbor and the surrounding communities. Former Coach Moore has been fired with cause, and he's been arrested, accused of assault in a case where the details are still, admittedly, somewhat sketchy.

The alleged affair with the staffer seems to be fairly cut and dried and, if you can believe what some in the media are reporting, somewhat known for some time now? It's possible that a lot in the media knew about this, and remained silent. It's not like it doesn't happen in media across the land. To the point now that the media openly admit it. Then use it after the fact to try and gain engagement bait and clicks. Such is the media landscape in which we live.

And then there is the schadenfreude, other schools' fans pointing and laughing, breathless exclamations that "Michigan is the dirtiest program of the last 5 years" (Uh, OK. Only if you ignore several other goings-on at certain schools) and people just having a good old time pretending that their programs are lily white in an age where almost everyone is covered in a deep-dark layer of soot.

LSU is apparently already tampering. With LSU alum Mathieu openly courting Michigan QB Bryce Underwood to come to his alma mater. And I'm sure there are many other schools approaching Michigan players using back-channels and mutual agents etc. College football these days is the Wild West after all. You might not want to look to closely under the hood of the school you root for is what I'm saying.

Lost in all of this, in the fervor to heap scorn on Michigan, is that Moore's wife and 3 children are being ran publicly out into the square to be displayed as trophy victims. It's horrible for the family that this is going on. They didn't do anything wrong.

And yes, the staffer with whom the alleged affair occurred has been outed and is now a meme, although I will admit to feeling a little less sorry for her, having known full well she was with a married man and all.

But the vast majority of the blame, should all of this be proven true, lies on the shoulders of Sherrone Moore full stop. That's not to say there is some ancillary blame to be passed around. Michigan should take a hard look at Athletic Director Warde Manuel for instance, as he made the decision to hire Moore without interviewing other coaches or, apparently, conducting anything that would constitute due diligence. If nothing else that raises questions of negligence to one's job responsibilities.

Then there are the players, who now have to prepare for a bowl game against UT-Austin under now-interim head coach Biff Poggi (who's been the IHC before, when Moore was suspended for two games due to recruiting violations) and are already receiving (probably) dozens of texts and unsolicited offers to leave the Big House and go play elsewhere next season.

At the end of all of this Michigan Football will be OK. Eventually. Yes, they have some rot that they need to cut out from their program and they need to rebuild some integrity and goodwill with the fan base. Don't worry about rebuilding with the rest of the Nation because, eventually, they are going to have their own scandals to deal with and, to be quite frank, they don't care.

All that the rest of the College Football World cares about right now is that it is not their school in the cross-hairs of scandal. So they're going to keep piling on, even after their school gets caught because that is what people do. Michigan could hire Jesus Christ as their next coach and Ohio State would accuse him of using his omnipotence to illegally predict plays. That's how College Football fandom works.

Michigan DOES need to pick the right coach in this hire however, because not doing so will mean another decade in the wilderness and falling further behind a B1G Conference that is starting to gain some serious momentum. Especially the rival, Ohio State.

College Football is broken. The CFP is as close to a sham as you can get, the Bowl System is wheezing along and looking more and more likely to collapse soon, and the powers that be seem to be clueless on how to do anything about it. Everyone is cheating, only the dumb get caught.

And that is where Michigan finds itself today. They are not the "dirtiest" program over the last 5 years, they are the dumbest. Because they keep getting caught where others are better at hiding their transgressions.

But there's not, and there should not be, any coverup of a coach that, again allegedly, cheated on his wife with a staffer and then got arrested on suspicion of assault. That has little to do with the rot of the program and more to do with the personal failing of the man. A man that probably never should have been the Head Coach of one of the prestige programs in College Football.

That his wife and children have to suffer publicly for this is the greatest travesty of them all.

Social Media "Influencers" are the worst people in the world.

 In short: She lied

There was no 'hungry baby' and there was no food crisis. So what she did was take up time and resources from those people who might actually need something for clicks.

And this is influencers today.

When they're not hawking scammy Memecoins they're putting on performance art designed to flame outrage from people who have a very low cognizant ability to detect bullshit. They want free shit, attention and, to be honest, I'm not really sure what else.

Full Disclosure: I don't have the Tik Tok app on my phone. I'm aged out of that demographic.  Fortunately there are Youtube channels built solely around mocking these people and going down that rabbit hole is a descent into mild insanity.

Did you know that there are Tik Tok influencers who make videos telling women how to use men to get them to dump their entire "fortunes" (for lack of a better word) on them before dumping them and moving on (only to do it again)? It's called the "Sprinkle, Sprinkle" movement and it's disgusting.

While doing some research for this post I watched some of these videos and what I found was a) disgusting, b) mildly disturbing and c) pretty damn depressing. The Boss (My wife for those of you who don't follow me on Xitter) and I watched a couple together and her takeaway was "Shit, I'm glad we're married" and that was my feeling as well.

Social media influencers have made dating a hellscape for both men and women. Far beyond what is termed The Incel Movement by the Left is a generation of young men who have just......given up. They've quit on the dating and relationship world and they've largely done it in response to women who, driven by these influencers, go out with men with the express intent of milking them dry and then moving on, if they don't film an instant reaction video mocking them for being desperate, for the simple act of say, complimenting them on their looks that evening.

It's not a Battle of the Sexes if one side has just thrown in the towel and given up, and a LOT of young men have.

Of course, now the Influencer discourse has moved to anger. Anger that young, available men aren't approaching them any more, not complimenting them, not offering to buy drinks. Men are pushing back on women who demand to be taken to five-star restaurants on the first date and ordering the most expensive thing on the menu. (Supposedly, to test how much the man "cares"). The reaction videos of these angry people after their date just up and walks out (which seems to happen frequently) are treated as funny but they're really not. They're sad.

I've often stated, not on here, but to friends and on Xitter, that the Pandemic has broken society. From drivers running red lights or ignoring traffic laws, to line cutters on the highway, to just general anti-social behavior, COVID broke things that I'm not sure can ever be fixed. I believe that influencers are an extreme symptom of the disease. While on lockdown they immersed themselves in the Kardashians* and came to view it not as entertainment, but as an instruction guide for life. Never mind that Kim & Co are extremely toxic and very unlikely to be very duplicative. 

In other words, you're not going to be the Kardashians, have their wealth, their fame, and their overpriced product lines. Instead you're going to have a Tik-Tok or Instagram channel and some deep regret at the end of it all when your 15 minutes of fame runs it's course.

This is not to defend Lakewood Church (an institution which with I have several issues, both theological and practical) but the fact is this lady did not call into the proper channels. I did some checking and Lakewood does have Benevolence arms, they do charitable work. The correct place to contact would have been one of the ministries they support who provide this aid. What this influencer basically did was set the Church up to fail. She did not do it as some grand experience on Religion, she did it for clickbait. She did it to probably try and extend her 15 minutes of fame which is rapidly expiring.

And shame on the media for providing her with a platform, never forgetting that "Click2Houston" was also doing this for clicks.

The only way to solve this issue is to just start tuning out. Remove the politics and other items from it and starvation is the best, and only solution to the problem. The principles of free speech say that these influencers are allowed to spew their venom but they also give us the ability to ignore them and let them die on the vine.

Until we do this, the harm to society is going to continue to grow.

Update: Houston's Middling Regional Daily weighs in.

At least they provide some context, allowing the Church to admit that the operator did make an error not directing her to the food services and charities that they support who would have formula available immediately.

This is much like calling the corporate office for a restaurant chain and demanding a reservation at a specific location instead of directly calling the restaurant in question. Of course they're not going to be able to do that, nor would they have specific information about availability at any one specific location for any given evening. This should be called out but......OUTRAGE!!!!!!

*FWIW: I've proudly never watched a second of the Kardashians show, nor any of their spin-offs, and I don't really know all that much about them except for what I've read 2nd hand from other sources. 

The Biggest Political Lie that You Believe

As the Government Shutdown Grinds on and Federal Employees Continue to not Receive Paychecks......

Well, not your Congressional Representatives and Senators, THEY continue to get paid, the media continues to allow one of the biggest political whoppers, typically uttered by sub-par Congressional members, to continue apace.....

“It would be very strange for the American people to have weighed in, in support of Democrats standing up and fighting for them, and within days for us to surrender without having achieved any of the things that we’ve been fighting for,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. (Emphasis mine)

They're not "fighting". Full stop. No politician "fights". They bloviate, they sit together and eat caviar and drink sparkling wine, they go to fundraisers masked as dinner parties, they stroll around D.C. laughing with their families and friends, but they don't 'fight'.

The myth of the brave, fighting Pol is one of straight fantasy. And it leads us to poor government and even poorer representation. It draws focus from statesmanship and quality leadership to silly things like red tennis shoes. And the creaking, aging media eats it right the eff up. Honestly, they love this shit. It gives them the vapors.

But the uneducated, useful idiot loves it. From further down in the article....

“Moderate Senate Democrats who are looking for an off-ramp right now are completely missing the moment,” said Katie Bethell, political director of MoveOn, a progressive group. “Voters have sent a resounding message: We want leaders who fight for us, and we want solutions that make life more affordable.” (Again, Emphasis mine)

Of COURSE you do Ms. Bethell.  Because you're stupid, shallow and don't understand that they're not "fighting" for you, they're working to increase their power base, regain control of the Houses of Congress and maybe score some choice committee positions that will help them attain their true goal of rewarding their political patronage.

Yes, you want "solutions" that will make life more affordable. Yet you probably supported the pandemic subsidies that (in part, not in whole) led us into this mess in the first place. You want affordability without having a basic understanding of how things work. You want Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, filibustering so hard that he passes out on the Senate floor. What you get instead is Chris Murphy, with his hairdo and make-up applied for the camera, regurgitating words that some staffer gave him to say.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: We get the government that we ask for, and we get it good and hard. In this case we get it without lubrication.

I've no doubt that, eventually, this government shut-down is going to end. The end will not come, however, as the result of some brave "fight" put up by a milquetoast. It will come when both sides start to feel the wrath of an electorate that's had enough and then one side or the other will choose to just stop "fighting" (read: showboating for the cameras) and will be forced to capitulate.

The other side will then claim victory and will cast their "opponents" (read: co-conspirators) as weaklings who lacked the strength of courage to continue keeping on. They will then all congratulate themselves on a job well done and retire to wherever it is that they meet up to smoke cigars and sip Brandy.

Of course the media will eat this up and the cycle will continue.

News Round-up (11/06/2025)

 Kind of a hodge-podge in my return to this thing......

ESPN Bet is no more. DraftKings and FanDuel continue to take over the sports betting world.  Look, ESPN Bet was a bad, really bad book.  But DraftKings and FanDuel are the worst. Losing competition in the space is going to be bad for bettors as the "Bankrupt or Ban" method of bookmaking becomes commonplace.  If you're a serious bettor you should continue to keep rooting for, and patronizing Circa.

I feel for the TSA agents, I really do. I also feel for the flight controllers. But this mess is just another reason to go ahead and grit your teeth and sign up with Clear. (It's also an argument for privatizing airport security.)

Supermoons are cool. I do wonder this however: If crime rises during a full moon, does it rise even more during a Supermoon?

Beware the tendency to read too much into low-turnout elections. Outdated institutions that should be shuttered LOVE to do this.

I'm not sure how much of this is legitimate "analysis" and how much of it is wishful thinking. One thing I do know, Tomlinson is another resource the Chron should jettison and replace with news reporting resources.

Wild Goings on at Couchatta. Greed, shots fired (and, tragically, a minor's life put in jeopardy) and a whole bunch of shenanigans. Damn.

Sound cameras? As with any proposal to try and fix a societal ill through "simple" technology I find that the proposed solution is neither simple, nor is it a grand slam that it will be effective.

Menefee makes the CD 18 run-off despite having the WORST political ad in recorded history. What was he burning in that grill? Legal briefings?

Nancy Pelosi announces she's (finally) done. Well......bye.  The problem is that now the historical revisionism will commence and she'll eventually have some obscure airport in California named after her.

Tomorrow starts Flightmageddon. Supposedly both Houston airports will be affected, as will most of the major hubs in the US.  If you don't have to fly right now, probably a good idea to not. On the bright side it appears most major airlines will offer refunds.

And finally....

Jordon Bennington trying to hide the puck from Ovechkin's 900th goal is the funniest thing you'll see today.