Payback is a Bitch

Seems like I’m talking a lot about the vices in sports these days, but seeing as how I understand gambling on a deep and personal level, I can shed some light on the Tim Donaghy situation for you.

Let’s say you’re an NBA referee, and like most people, you like to bet on sports. You could fly to Vegas or bet online, but you know some people who are willing to book your bets and will let you settle up after you’ve played for a while.

You bet on several sports and eventually find yourself down $5,000. Problem is, you’ve already overextended yourself to buy a nice house, next to a country club, in a good school district for your daughter, filled with nice things for your wife and adorned with a BMW in the driveway for yourself. You don’t have an extra $5,000 lying around.

Your friends need to make their money one way or another. But there’s a solution. If you fix a game so that they win more than $5,000, they’ll call it even.

This is called the “payback” fix, and any time any athlete or official in any sport bets on any other sport, he or she makes himself or herself vulnerable to it. This is why no athlete or official can be allowed to bet on any sport.

This affects more than the gamblers. Pro sports is a multi-billion-dollar business, and its credibility rests entirely and solely on the notion that all participants are trying to determine the outcome on the best efforts of the players. This is what jabberjocks mean when they refer to “the integrity of the game.” For the survival of the sport, any actions contrary to that integrity must be dealt with swiftly and severely.