Well said.
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Just when you thought D-I football and basketball could not get any more tainted, distasteful, ESPN to launch online sports gambling.
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Actually, since the PAC 8 
This article is a pretty good post-mortem
FTFO!
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Gambling and now booze sold all over Disneyland. Walt is rolling over in his grave.
FTFO!
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Gee wiz, no potential for conflict of interest here, is there?
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So when does CFB turn into the WWE?
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Something quite wrong with that
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It’s only in two locations at Disneyland and besides Walt was already planning for WDW to have it served. I’m sure he would have been fine with gambling on a Sports Network. The man was a known anti-union capitalist. He wasn’t above selling naming rights to rides.
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Remember the Monsanto Science ride?
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My buddy was 16, he drove us to Disneyland. I had to be 15 because I didn’t have a drivers license yet. We happened to meet two girls from Long Beach in the line of Monsanto’s Adventure thru Inner Space. We paired up and went though the ride in separate cars. I recall his girl was a little bit cuter, but not by much. On the other hand, mine turned out to be much more loving than his. After that we mostly went on other dark rides like Mr. Toad, Alice in Wonderland, Haunted Mansion, etc.
Growing up near Disneyland I visited the park countless times. A rite of passage for a young man was to steal the apple from the Snow White ride. I was about 10 years old, my buddy and I went thru once for reconnaissance, determining there were three instances of an apple along the ride. We went through again for the attack. I slid out of the car, which was easy for a 10 year old, grabbed and pulled at the first apple, it wasn’t going anywhere, seemingly bolted into position. For some reason I didn’t attempt the second apple. A few moments later, here comes the third and last apple. A witch drops out of a fire place and holds the apple out in front of herself. The apple seemed to only be held in place by a small wire (the stem) and was pulled away easily, I popped it in my pocket, but also thought, this is a set up, that was a trip wire. A few seconds later we made a 90 degree turn and exited out into daylight. We probably had seriously guilty looks staring at the operator down at the far end. Decades later, upon coming home from work a few weeks after getting married my wife informed me, seeing that the apple was stolen merchandise, she mailed it back to Disneyland.
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That’s awesome.
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What I love most about this story is that your wife felt guilt, maybe you too. Maybe some fear as well.
But whoever got that apple at Disney probably muttered “what a ■■■■■■■ moron” and either threw it away or sold it on eBay for some walking around cash. Lol. Awesome.
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ESPN Is About To Get Much More Annoying
By Tom Ley
ESPN announced on Tuesday that it was making a billion-dollar deal with casino company Penn Entertainment. Over the next 10 years, Penn will pay ESPN $2 billion in exchange for the right to slap ESPN’s name on its sportsbook, and for the ability to market that sportsbook through ESPN’s various media channels. This is going to suck.
The legalization of sports gambling has made being a sports fan much more annoying. Over the last few years, the entire sports media industry has been steadily and increasingly underwritten by advertising dollars from sportsbooks, who have made deals with as many leagues, publications, and broadcasters as possible in order to get more bettors onto their apps. Not so long ago, you could watch an NBA broadcast on TNT without Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith interrupting the action to tell you about an exciting new parlay available on whatever stupid gambling app they are in bed with, but that time has passed. To watch, listen, and read about sports now is to be assaulted by advertising for a product meant to separate you from your money as quickly as possible.
ESPN was never excluded from this—it had previously signed sponsorship deals with Caesars and DraftKings—but its hesitance to truly go all in on sports betting, an industry that Disney CEO Bob Iger used to make a lot of noise about not wanting to get too cozy with, offered some measure of respite. That’s over now. This Penn deal makes sports gambling not just something that ESPN is adjacent to, but a core part of its business going forward. And because ESPN owns the broadcast rights to so many sports, we are all about to be hit in the face with a firehose of gambling-related content. Get ready for a whole afternoon block of programming dedicated to betting; prepare to hear Stephen A. Smith shout, “The over/under on this game is a DISGRACE!” several times throughout his 18 hours of daily airtime; make peace with the fact that Mike Breen and Doris Burke will be forced to talk over the action of Game 3 of the NBA Finals in order to tell viewers about how you can get your first five bets free when you sign up for the ESPN BET app.
If there’s any silver lining here, it can be found in the opportunity to laugh at Penn Entertainment’s corporate stumbling. Up until yesterday, Penn already owned an in-house media company meant to market its branded sportsbook to potential gamblers around the country. In 2020, Penn bought 36 percent of Barstool Sports for $163 million in cash and stock. Just a few months ago, Penn took full ownership of the company for another $388 million. The idea behind that purchase was identical to the one behind this new ESPN deal: Penn wanted to put Barstool’s branding on its sportsbook and rely on Barstool’s personalities to turn their audience into gamblers. That didn’t really work out, evidenced not just by the fact that the Barstool-branded sportsbook failed to offer any real competition to the likes of FanDuel and DraftKings, but in Penn’s willingness to return Barstool Sports to its original owner at essentially no charge in order to replace it with ESPN as quickly as possible.
A company the size of Penn doesn’t just give away a $500 million asset in exchange for some non-competes unless a bunch of high-paid consultants have gotten together and determined that the asset in question is more or less worthless to the company’s bottom line. As it turns out, spending half-a-billion dollars on a bunch of white guys on the wrong side of 40 whose careers have been dedicated to fostering parasocial relationships with the world’s most maladjusted New Englanders and cat-killers is not the key to meaningful market capture in the gambling industry. Lesson learned.
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Oh no! Fantastic story.
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This is about to get really shady, really fast. It’s bad enough that Iowa and Iowa State have an ongoing investigation into players who were betting on games, now the enablers will be sponsoring the broadcasts. Soon all the stories of the degenerates openly influencing the game results ala ASU will be back. In the end, we will likely start looking at College sports the same way we look at Boxing - a sport where unless you are on the inside, you don’t know if the results you are seeing are authentic.
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It was an Iowa punter betting the under. That’s just a smart investment from a player who knows his offense. Also, the gambling aspect of paying off players still exists before this so it doesn’t really change much.
https://x.com/brett_mcmurphy/status/1690167108825481216?s=46&t=uVJSfJx5SZFU4gJqFfMgxg
Getting brutal for “The Leftovers.”
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Hmmmm. What could possibly go wrong with this? 
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Avoiding a logistical nightmare makes sense, but it sucks for ‘Furd and Cal to be stuck on the outside looking in. Then again, it equally sucks for the Beavs and Cougs to be in that boat, too.
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Betting on your team win should be allowed. Heck, it should be encouraged. NIL deals and pro payments kicking in only for winning games would not be the worst thing in the world. It would improve the competition.
Betting on your team to lose or not cover the spread is another story.
I’ve never been attracted much to gambling as it obviously puts you in a statistically disadvantaged position where the more frequently you bet, the more likely you are to lose. Why do that?
Furthermore, Ive never been able to be rational about betting on the Utes. I just don’t seem capable of it. Why would I want to bet on other teams that I don’t follow or care about? No attraction there.
Because of all of this I don’t seem to generate much indignation about sports betting. Whatevs.