Yesterday afternoon, ESPN made an announcement that was both unprecedented and expected. The sports-betting boom shows few signs of slowing. Much of the same is true in the dozens of other states that have legalized mobile sports betting, and gambling is even inescapable in the places where you can’t do it: Frank discussion of betting odds and point spreads has become a marquee feature of sports media, where the topic had long been forbidden. Advertisements for gaming apps had blanketed virtually every surface of the city as soon as their use had become legal. Signing up for a new DraftKings account got me a $100 free bet, and I put it on the Bengals moneyline. When I saw Burrow’s outfit, I knew what to do immediately, even though I’d never really contemplated betting on sports before. That man is not losing a football game today, I thought to myself. I had successfully ignored all of them until I saw Joe Burrow, the quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals, walk into Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City for the AFC Championship game wearing a sherpa coat, black turtleneck, huge gold chain, and rimless sunglasses.
It was late January 2022, and mobile-gaming apps had become legal in New York only a few weeks earlier. There’s no such thing as a smart sports bet, but the first one I ever made was, by any measure, particularly stupid.
