A headline last week was about betting being halted on Australian of the year. My first thought was, people bet on who will be Australian of the year? My second thought was, have they considered getting a life? My third thought was, no one else seems perturbed but me.
As I sat stewing on that, a fourth thought (which is pretty much my quota for the month) smacked me on the head: hey Bozo, have you not paid attention to sport on television, radio and newspapers over recent years? Betting is sport is betting is sport is life.
All summer Channel Nine has urged us to bet, on anything really, throughout its cricket broadcast and even had the sainted Richie Benaud all but carrying the bookie's bag and shilling for an online betting firm. (Hardly new, I know, with all networks having long used commentators to plug, sometimes with embarrassing incongruities, coming shows. I certainly believe that Richie and Daphne settle down with a backyard renovation show and a CSI in their Nice apartment between seasons.)
It doesn't end there, of course. Newspapers like this one routinely give you the odds on any sport and regularly include the bookmakers' opinions on anything from whether batsman X will retire to the chances of rain. It's a lead story when someone's late announcement of an injury throws betting out of whack in a football game. Even the ABC updates us through the day on the variations in betting. Everyone does it.
Well, since when does that make it OK? And how does that make it sensible? I'll stay away from the basic question of whether gambling is just legalised theft for now, but when you can bet on who will lose, when you can wager on variations within a game, when you have an incentive, if you have the wherewithal, to influence said result, how does a game like cricket benefit?
Was Hansie Cronje really the last cricketer to throw a game? Can the Indian Premier League be pure? Will a respect for the game's traditions deter influencing the domestic 20/20 competition? Believe that and I've got a weapon of mass destruction I'd like to sell you.
Sports organisations desperate for cash have always been cheap tarts, happily slipping into bed with cancer-stick makers until embarrassed out from under the sheets, for example. Governments will take money from anyone able to pay a tax and most media beg for advertising.
But maybe the press, radio and television can show a level of restraint and not be so in the thrall of the bookmakers, the wagerers and the exploiters. What if we don't report on the odds at all? What if we covered sport as sport and not as the pea-in-the-shell game?
Yeah, I know, what am I on? That's one thought too many this month. (Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)
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