Would People Watch Football As Much If. . .

it weren't so easy to bet on?

You can bet once a week, and the point spreads are easy enough for a third-grader to understand. That's a whole lot different from betting on baseball, basketball or hockey.

There are all sorts of ways to bet, at a sports book, on-line, and with someone who is Tony Soprano's third cousin twice removed.

My view is that a significant (and by significant, I mean at least 10%) portion of the football fan population wouldn't watch the game if it weren't so easy to bet on. Now that doesn't mean I want to outlaw sports betting. All I'm doing is calling into question the depth of knowledge and sincerity of the average football fan.

About 40 years ago, horse racing was one of the most popular sports in the country and people bought tickets to the Irish Sweepstakes because lotteries weren't present for the most part in the U.S. and the track was the one plac where you could make a legal bet. Today, almost every state has some form of legalized gambling, you can bet off-shore, you can bet on-line, and there are lotteries everywhere. Horse racing is all but dead (yes, the big events are draws, but the attendance is very small otherwise), and who buys Irish lottery tickets in the U.S. anymore. The reasons are simple -- the evolution of gambling has been such that you don't need to play the ponies or pony up for Irish Sweepstakes tickets any more. It's that simple.

My father before he died cautioned that among the things Gibbon wrote about in "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" as a cause of the downfall of Rome were that lotteries had sprung up. My guess is that the Romans had not figured out how to create a one-armed bandit and there was no such game as Seven Hills Hold 'Em, but I could be wrong. My other surmise is that there are so many temptations in our country that it would be hard to argue that any single one could cause the downfall of America, and I'm not suggesting that sports betting is.

Sorry for the digression. I now return to my initial premise -- how many people watch football (solely or primarily) because they can bet on it and because they can easily understand the betting?

Probably more than you think. (I believe I read somewhere recently -- perhaps ESPN the Magazine -- that football represents a large majority of sports betting in Las Vegas, and I'm going to do more research here).

And, remember, up until Jose Canseco spoke out, there were only a handful of baseball players who took steroids.

Just remember this, how many people talked about spreads or odds when the Cardinals were beating the Tigers in the World Series last fall, or when the Heat beat the Mavericks in the NBA Finals?

But everyone knows what the spread currently is for the Super Bowl, don't they?

Except me.