CLEVELAND — Whenever I scroll through the highlights of a lifetime spent playing and watching sports, Franz Klammer’s searing gold medal run in the 1976 Innsbruck Winter Olympics soars above all the rest.
If you were around then, and saw it, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Klammer was a downhill ski racer, the best of his era, competing in his home country of Austria. He was the last racer to go, chasing a seemingly uncatchable time achieved by defending Olympic champion Bernhard Russi. But on the treacherous course, slicked and rutted by the racers who had gone before, he attacked the 1.95-mile run with fearless, reckless, almost unbelievable aggression, skidding and flying on the edge of losing control, and flashed across the finish line less than a second under Russi’s time.
I’ve never been on skis and cannot name a current downhill racer, but even now, 48 years later, I can’t think about Klammer’s exhilarating performance without getting goose bumps.
That’s despite the fact that I didn’t have a bet down on who would win that year’s downhill.
And I feel sorry for the increasing numbers of people who couldn’t have enjoyed it without having money on the winner. Sorry, and more than a bit angry at the infestation of legalized gambling that is overwhelming our collective ability to enjoy sports for their own sake. As a result, the purity and integrity of competitive athletics are slowly disintegrating, for participants and non-betting spectators alike.
The culprits are easily counted and identified: Last year in Ohio there were 936,000,000 of them.
That’s how many dollars in tax revenue the state took in from the $7.65 billion wagered on sporting events in our first year of legalized gambling.
That was the price of the Ohio legislature’s soul – sold to the gamblers and gambling interests that are turning the joy of sports into greed and anger – when in late 2021 it joined the other lemmings around the country and passed the law that legalized a staggering variety of ways to lose your money by wagering on games. A virtual casino is no farther away than your cellphone, but there are also kiosks all over the state – almost a thousand at last count – in stadiums and casinos and arenas; taverns; grocery stores; family centers and restaurants.
The broken families, lost jobs, foreclosed houses, and laws broken to pay (and collect) gambling debts remain uncounted.
Proponents will argue that the revenue is for the good … that the bulk of the money will be used for education, with about 2% going to programs aimed at helping problem gamblers. That’s always struck me as a bit odd: Create a problem in pursuit of profit, and then use a chunk of it to try to fix the problem you’ve created.
Wagering has always been with us, particularly in athletic competition. But no one could plausibly argue that it didn’t explode into the scourge it has become after May 14, 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the existing federal ban on state authorization of sports betting, tearing open the Pandora’s Box that had somewhat kept gambling’s tentacles confined.
Since then, 38 states have officially legalized sports wagering, with six more actively pursuing legislation that would make it legal. The only state where it is expressly forbidden is California, of all places. Sports betting is oppressive. And it is everywhere.
Indiana Pacers star guard Tyrese Haliburton recently spoke for many athletes about his view of gambling in an interview about his decision to work with a sports psychologist:
“To half the world, I’m just helping them make money on DraftKings or whatever. I’m a prop.”
Stories about the proliferation of gambling in sports abound:
* In a Page One story last Sunday, Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff told cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor about phone threats he and his family have received from out-of-control gamblers, and about their overwhelming presence.
“I’m standing up there and we may have a 10-point lead and the spread is 11 and people are yelling at me to leave the guys in so that we can cover the spread,” he said.
* In the same story, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told of a fan screaming at one of his players in the minutes after a Heat win because the player didn’t try a three-point shot at the end of the game that would have covered the spot.
* Baseball’s biggest current star, pitcher/slugger Shohei Ohtani, is currently embroiled in a mess created by his friend and interpreter, who was fired after using millions of Ohtani’s money to pay gambling debts.
* Former Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud’s mother told a Sports Illustrated reporter that her son had received death threats after the Buckeyes’ 2022 upset loss to Michigan.
* And just Monday, NBA officials confirmed that Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors is sitting out some games while they investigate some suspicious betting involving his play.
In a bit of unintended hilarity, a spokesman for the DraftKings Sportsbook bragged that the investigation into the suspicious activity was “one of the many benefits of legal and regulated sports betting.”
Yeah … and the fox should be praised for guarding the henhouse.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
For reasons someone smarter than I will have to unravel, our species has a disheartening capacity to take the most enriching experiences that life has to offer, and turn them into something ugly: Love. Sex. Friendship. Loyalty. Accomplishment. Art.
The beauty of sports is certainly one of these – where too many of us cannot simply enjoy and admire the stunning artistry of athletic excellence for its own sake, without turning it into an avaricious quest for profit.
Former Cavaliers’ all-star Kyrie Irving has had some bizarre takes on the world he lives in, but he got this one right:
“Gambling and sports betting has completely taken the purity and the fun away from the game at times,” he wrote in an online post last year. “There’s a difference between being a diehard fan and supporting your team and loving your team vs somebody that’s betting on a parlay or somebody that wants to hit.”
The law the Supreme Court overturned in 2018 was co-sponsored in 1992 by U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley, former Princeton and New York Knicks basketball star.
“State-sanctioned sports betting puts the imprimatur of the state on this activity. It conveys the message that sports are more about money than personal achievement and sportsmanship,” he wrote in passionate support of the bill.
“In these days of scandal and disillusionment, it is important that our youngsters not receive this message. Athletes are not roulette chips, but sports gambling treats them as such. If the dangers of state sponsored sports betting are not confronted, the character of sports and youngsters view of them could be seriously threatened.”
In their ruling, the Supreme Court justices were true to the Constitution, leaving gambling decisions in the hands of the 50 states. That left no room for them to rule on whether Bradley’s pleas were persuasive.
But the state legislatures, including Ohio’s, could have, and chose not to.
The resulting mess is squarely their responsibility.
Ted Diadiun is a member of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
To reach Ted Diadiun: [email protected]
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