NFL Wars: The League Duels Delaware On Gambling

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. ~ Mark Twain

The NFL, like Clemenza in The Godfather, is going to the mattresses with Delaware over sports gambling.

Clemenza used a sawed-off shotgun but the NFL has more wicked weapons with its venal lobbyists and vicious lawyers.

Cranky Clemenza had his faults of course, but unlike the NFL he wasn't a hypocrite; jihading dear old Delaware, the first state, on the same week the league jumped into the lottery ticket market.

Believe me Bubba, a football bet isn't a great investment, then again what is these days, but trying your luck on a lottery ticket win is south of a slots spin. 

The lottery is not far from a fixed faro wheel in the old West, except a smiling Doctor Henry Holliday isn't staring back at ye with a stacked pair of Smith and Wessons.

Still its your choice to roll the dice. Roll those bones with General Motors stock, a slot spin, or the Ravens plus four. Roll, its your right. America used a lottery to fund the revolution and to raise money for a broke Thomas Jefferson.

But today, as old bitter Bierce once said, the gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

So the big billion buck boys that back, and own, the NFL can play the Hedge Fund Wheel of Fortune with our banks and mortgages, but still shake a disgusted finger if the great unwashed wish to wager on a football game.

Play that 401K away, but no action on Sunday football showdowns.

The rub here be that the NFL feels the need to try to legislate morals to the fans that feed its flames. The folks that pay the way for the stars of today.

So if Delaware's citizens, Governor, and government say they want sports betting, who is Roger Goodell to say no you can't do that?

Is Roger our Big Brother? Is the NFL more powerful then Delaware?

In most civilized nations, gambling on sports, and elections for that matter, is legal and taxed. Does the NFL think we be such soft brains, so feeble-minded, that a sports betting parlor at a Dover race track would lead to mass fixing of NFL games?

The integrity of the game is at stake Goodell will say, but gambling on games is available in Las Vegas and on countless Caribbean based Internet accounts, and the game survives.

So why not legalize and tax it. Is a sports bet worse than an NFL lottery ticket? Worse than Keno and Powerball? Worse then the racetrack or the dog track?

Who has the money to bribe an NFL player anyway? Even the backups make millions, so what type of monetary offer do you make to a key player to throw a game?

Maybe a multimillion dollar divorce would shake a player's financial base, but a person that can produce those type of blackmail pictures does not need to lay off bets at a racetrack in the Delaware countryside.

The folks that would gamble on sports at a racetrack are unlikely to be folks able to catch a Super Bowl quarterback in a compromising picture position with a playboy bunny, page boy Jose, or both.

That type of blackmail would affect the integrity of the game, not a racetrack football parlay by a run down Charles Bukowski type track fly. 

The NFL can't be every player's watch dog and it certainly shouldn't be every citizen's Big Brother. The NFL should not lean on Delaware with its lecherous lobbyists and leech like lawyers.

Lobbyists and lawyers that are paid by funds generated by sweet taxpayer-paid-for stadium deals.

The NFL does not need to get in to the habit of reforming its fans' habits.

The NFL is here to entertain us, not rule us through its big dollar dogs in DC.

Fans should not be afraid of the NFL. The NFL should be afraid of its fans.

The fans have to send the NFL a message it can't refuse.

Don't dog Delaware.