ONE SAFE BET
Stance against gambling untouched by outside influence
DEE-fense! Dee-fense! Forgive this self-indulgence, but it’s time to respond to some FAQs — frequently asked questions worthy of answers. Placed on the defensive, I’ll answer.
The most often asked question/ accusation I’ve faced is whether, given the content of The Post’s sports section, I’m a hypocrite for taking such a thumbs-down position on sports gambling, before and after it became legal. Short answer: No. Long answer: Would readers hold me in greater regard if I allowed The Post’s content, especially outside sports gambling advertisers or any advertisers, to dictate or in any way shape my opinions? I trust not.
Thus, through multiple Post ownerships, I’ve been allowed the freedom to write as I wish and feel about sports gambling, including the ruin it so often inflicts on its asseen-on-TV primary targets: young, vulnerable, self-convinced men.
I cherish the ability to write what I feel to be a columnist’s obligation: My version of the truth. In Constitutional terms, “Everyone’s entitled to my opinion.”
Readers likely also note that the weekly results of The Post’s onstaff “touts” — often tasked with “playing the board” on NFL games, as if picking two-out-of-three winners isn’t hard enough — are listed in this section for readers’ approval, disapproval, perusal and mockery. The results speak for themselves as anti-gambling reminders.
My history at The Post, as it relates to sports gambling, is extensive. With nothing more than silly gags attached to minimal info, I weekly selected USFL games in the mid-1980s.
That ended after I received a postcard from a Syracuse University student claiming he’d made a big score on one of my best bet picks. He apparently took my picks seriously. I didn’t want anyone’s ruin on my hands.
It was about then that I began to examine, investigate then write about touts who were buying ads in The Post promising guaranteed riches while making highly dubious — ridiculous — claims about their weekly success rates as game handicappers. Knowing they were in the business of suckering suckers, The Post allowed me to reveal their con artistry.
I even concocted a word for such crooks still in use: scamdicappers.
And with The Post’s tacit permission, I drove hundreds of thousands of dollars in scamdicappers’ advertising out of The Post and into the eager arms of the rival Daily News.
The only sports gambling I’ve indulged, but certainly not blindly, is on horse racing — an industry predicated and gauged on wagering for 150 years.
Hypocrite? Nah. I’ve been consistent on the matter since 1985, but, still, a damned good question.
The only other issue that Post readers largely don’t understand is that reporters and columnists generally don’t write the headlines, choose the photos or write the captions that accompany the photos. Editors do that.
It still galls me that a journalism professor at Pace University had his entire class write me nasty letters objecting to “my” suicide-insensitive use of “Bridge-Jumper” in a headline above a column about a horse racing gambler who bet a ton on the odds-on favorite to show — finish no worse than third — in the hope/likelihood he’d win 10 cents on every two dollars he bet.
When that favorite ran out of the money, the editor who wrote the headline reasonably applied the track-slang “Bridge Jumper” — that’s what they call such wagerers — above the column.
I shortly learned that this journalism prof had no idea that daily newspaper writers don’t write their headlines. I was politely appalled. But he graciously invited me to speak to his class on the matter, and a good time was had by all.
Those are my stories and I’m stuck to them. Tune in next week for Infrequently Asked Questions.