If I were a bettin' man...

When I was in the 7th or 8th grade I entered into two friendly wagers on the Superbowl. I chose the Buffalo Bills and my friends took the Dallas Cowboys (owned by Jerry Jones). The next Monday I had to borrow $15.00 from my Mom to pay $10.00 to Jerry McCauley and $5.00 to Jerry Bisom, lest I end up like Layne Meyers from the movie "Better Off Dead."

If I would have put the pieces together then I might have realized that guys named Jerry had my number. The bills played in both Superbowl's the years I was in Jr. High. They lost the first to the Washington Redskins and the second to the Dallas Cowboys. Here's the problem; I didn't have any business betting on sports. We didn't watch much football growing up. I knew the players and teams mostly through conversations at school and what little football I did watch. For example, I once created a football player Easter Bunny as a grade school art project. I wrote the name "Jim Montana" on the sweat band across his forehead in a botched attempt to honor Jim McMahon. My parents, teachers, and classmates who watched sports thought it was cool how I combined the names of two popular quarterbacks (Joe Montana and Jim McMahon). That was a relief because I had actually forgotten Jim McMahon's last name and realized my mistake only after the darned thing was already on the wall. I liked watching sports on TV it just didn't happen all that much in our house in the sticks of Northern Idaho.

Since that time I have had very little confidence in my ability to predict the outcomes of individual games, tournaments (March Madness), or seasons. Sports gambling does not increase my enjoyment of real sports. I work with several individuals who claim that interoffice pools and friendly wagers make sporting events much more exciting. Not so for me or for this kid named Andy, for us it creates anxiety. If I put money on sports I lose it. I don't like putting money in the garbage. I have a hard enough time holding onto money in the first place. It might be different if I had more time to devote to studying athletes, teams, and probabilities but I am not a big enough fan of anything to spend time breaking it down to it's minutiae like this blog post about the odds for this years World Cup Final. Las Vegas odds-makers make a ton of money because they take the time to understand the ins and outs of sports. That makes it easy for them to take money from flubs like me who don't know what they're talking about. I wonder how many odds-makers  are named Jerry?