THE FOOTBALL CARD Well, the gamblin’ but bit a lot of men But what it’s done fo me is a rotten sin 1 was on the job and workin' hard When a man comes a'long with a football card. And said try your luck boy. all your friends have won I've bet myself clean out of house and home. Cuz there ain't nothin’ this side of hell Like tryin’ to pick a winner in the NFL So I played the thing for a week or two And got a little behind like most folks do. Especially when your luck is goin’ wrong And started doublin' up That's when they popped me, son. Well. I lost my furniture on a Denver bet And Oakland got my new Corvette And the Rams are the reason I cashed five hot checks. The Cardinals took my bank account And the Redskins got a similar amount That I borrowed from a finance company on a 90 day note. Then Dallas put me in a hell of a fix 1 gave up 7 and they won by 6 You'd think that Staubach personally hated me. The Green Bay Packers were doin fine Til they had to go into overtime And when you got plus 1. you're dead when they win by 3 Then, along come the Baltimore Colts For another stack of the cool ’C notes. © Flagship Music Inc. (BN1). Nashville. Tenn. It seems 1 can't win no matter what I try. Bert Jones might be their franchise But the way he bloodshot these old eyes Is enough to make a grown man sit and cry. Well, the Pittsburgh Steelers left no choice But for my poor wife to file for divorce On the simple grounds of football cruelty. Then 1 heard somewhere that the Bears were hot So with them I took another shot And you guessed it pal, the Falcons beat 'em 40 to 3. The Seattle and the cool Jim Zorn Made me wish I'd never been born I even let Tampa Bay take a shot at me But I’ve got the Bengals and the Chargers to thank For the losers that drove me to rob that bank Even the cop that arrested me Looked like a referee. Now here I sit with a stupid grin And the jury’s just now cornin' back in. And the foreman and the judge are lookin at me real hard And I know in my heart what they’re gonna say They gonna put me away where I can’t play That American Dream of tryin' to beat that Football Card. Football. I can't win. I think I’ll give it one more shot in the playoffs Maybe I can win the Superbowl Football 1 hate it. I love it. Mercy. Curing B-Ball’s Ills By Lenny D. As we start another agonizingly long NBA season, it’s time that the league’s czars start catering to the true nature of your red, white, and green American sports fan. A sport that has athletes with the skill and power of a Kareem or Dr. J. should not have television ratings below the Carmen Salvinos and Marshall Holmans of bowling. While all the polls show that basketball is the favorite game of the under- 35 set—George Gallup and the like never include gambling in their survey of the sporting public. And whether it’s $5 or $5,000, friendly poker players or high rollers at the track, a little action on a Sunday game can make the adrenalin rush as if every play was the bottom of the ninth, two out and the bases loaded in the seventh game of the World Series. Professional team sports have lost fan identity ever since Walter O’Malley followed Horace Greeley’s advice and moved Brooklyn’s beloved Dodgers west to Los Angeles (imagine how we would feel if the Blazers moved to Honolulu). Since then, fans have watched greedy owners follow the quick buck from Boston to Milwaukee to Atlanta (baseball’s Braves) or Milwaukee to St. Louis to Atlanta (basketball’s Hawks). This franchise musical chairs has been topped off by stars like Truck Robinson jumping from city to city as if escaping the plague (in the last three years Truck has done some trucking and played for Washington, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Phoenix). Needless to say, these fast-buck artists have created a situation where the home team success carries much less weight than in days of yore, but let the fan put $10 on the home team and you have an avid rooter once again. While many Americans are unable to afford the cost of season tickets, pushing the point spread produces $5 betters at bars and coffee shops and creates fan interest broader than the class of people able to shell out a couple hundred bucks for season tickets. A Billion-Dollar Industry An astronomical amount of money is bet every year on professional football—estimates range from $1.0 to $1.5 billion. The Super Bowl alone generates $100 million worth of wagers. With the point spread, no matter how wide the margin, the spread usually ensures interest through the most one-sided of ballgames. The last Super Bowl, with the spread ranging from 3 to 4¥2 points, had everyone on the edge of their seats as the Cowboys were marching against the Steelers to a meaningless 4th-quarter touchdown as far as the outcome, but for millions of gamblers those last few minutes caused many a skipped heartbeat. Those folks who collect the bets and can hardly speak English took an awful beating on the last Super Bowl. Pittsburgh opened favored by 3 points —a bundle came in on them and the bookies raised the spread to 3¥2 points —even more came in on Pittsburgh— they raised it to 4 points for a little while to try and attract some action on Dallas and finally went to 4¥2 and 5 to successfully bring some money in on Dallas. So most of the Pittsburgh bettors gave 3 to 3¥2 points and most of the Dallas bettors took 4¥2 to 5 points. The final score was 35-31 Pittsburgh, and the bookies got caught right in the middle on that last “meaningless” Dallas touchdown. The National Gambling League Pro basketball, with its long schedule, is unable to create the same kind of gambling fervor for the fans and, as a result, basketball betting is probably l/25th the size of football betting. It’s time for the NBA to get with it and realize that Pete Rozelle is, as sports columnist Larry Merchant says, the commissioner of the National Gambling League—if Larry O’Brien hopes to duplicate his success, then pro basketball must set up a structure more amenable to Americans’ gambling passion (rumor has it that the Greek’s favoring the Redcoats 7-5 in the Battle of Lexington was the decisive turn in firing up the undermanned Minutemen). To start, games twice a week, home and home would be a great incentive to your red-blooded sports fan to pay closer attention to pro basketball. With games only twice a week, each one becomes more important, so the bettor is assured of a maximum effort from well-rested players—as compared to the present lackadaisical play so prevalent in the NBA. The gambler would be given the incentive of rebounding from a road loss with a good percentage opportunity on the home court. Football betting is primarily done on televised games, and fans get to see their local favorites at least play 50 per cent of their games, while in basketball they’re lucky to catch l/10th of the local games on the tube. With the home and home weekly game format, each game would be televised and create maximum fan interest so that the pros and cons of the various cities’ studs would be as well known as the thoroughbreds are on Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs. Ratings would boom and the owners would more than make up in television revenue what they lost with a curtailed schedule. Pro basketball also needs its Jimmy the Greek, to provide a comprehensive betting analysis for each of the two weekly games—we’ll then get up-to- the-minute injury reports and spreads listed in every paper from Kalamazoo to Coconut Grove. Fans will hang with every play of the fourth quarter no matter the lead, for a few quick buckets can turn the once-insur- mountable lead into a gambler’s dream or nightmare. To help increase public interest, there needs to be a few rule changes to create a better game and provide the fan with more opportunity for strategy debates. Football has its pass and run,, basketball has its zone and man-to- man defenses—allow the zone and you can begin to have some of the fun that Billy Packer and Al McGuire have discussing strategy on the college game of the week. The NBA should also push the clock back to 30 seconds to allow more time to attack the zones and continue with the 3-point rule to let some mighty mites create havoc with the big boys. Five will get you ten that if the NBA was to follow these guidelines, the embarrassment of having bowling rate higher on the tube would seem like a distant nightmare, and pro basketball would begin in popularity to match the beauty and grace of pro sports’ most gifted athletes. 38
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz