Sports In The Year 2001

MAY 5

Today is the Kentucky Derby, and Jim McKay, looking not a day over 90, along with Jack Whitaker, looking not a day over 115, are nattering on about the agony of defeat as they stand in front of the spires at Churchill Downs. Through my Home Betting Window (HBW) service I have punched up my usual $5 hunch bet on the Derby—a nag named Demmie's Delight at 8-1. HBW also allows me to participate fully in the parimutuel systems of all the tracks around the country. Each morning before I go to work, I place a $1 bet on an extreme long shot that the Tele-Tout Service has selected for me. I like all tipsters. Tele-Tout is flawed, and I have cashed no more than one or two big winners over the years.

Of course, there is heavy national betting on all sports—not only game results but all sorts of side bets and long-odds wagers. Anything that does not involve track betting is operated through the National Gambling Network—nicknamed Robo-Bookie by its fans. Sprawled here in my armchair, I can receive the latest point spreads and place instant bets on every major game being played on any given day. Robo-Bookie will happily calculate the odds for and lay off the most intricate and specific of bets. For example, during a Yankees-Tigers game I can bet on whether Mike Kelly will hit a home run off Brien Taylor, what kind of a pitch Kelly will hit, and what the count will be when he hits it.

Sports gambling is now legal in all 52 states and is heavily taxed by the federal government, bringing in $30 billion a year that was unavailable back when most betting was outlawed. These days, the government encourages gambling. There is a new Department of Bookmaking & Wagers in the U.S. Cabinet, headed by the Bookmaker General. Bookmaking & Wagers oversees the whole American gambling system and will install Home Betting Window, Robo-Bookie and Tele-Tout free in any American home. The money collected from gambling is earmarked only for the most worthy causes, such as elder care, abused children and world hunger. Thus, betting on sports is actually considered a charitable act.

JUNE-JULY-AUGUST

The NBA season is now year-round, with the playoffs spanning most of the three summer months. It is the global game with 128 teams in 30 countries and is more popular than soccer ever was. The NBA's expansion is also years ahead of the NFL's puny growth abroad, and in terms of popularity is an infinity beyond Export Baseball, which is a watered-down, simplified version of the game played with one strike, two balls, one out and three innings—the result of market research that indicates that the baseball attention span of baffled foreigners will never be more than 20 minutes.

The NBA master web utilizes a unique mix of tier programming over its 12-month season. Telecasts in the first nine months of the season carry a full complement of fully paid advertising with the usual 30-second spots; there is no pay-per-view TV. Sounds like old-fashioned free TV, you say? No, it's better than free: For every commercial-filled quarter of every NBA game I watch during the regular season, I get a 25-cent PPV NBA Playoff Credit that will be applied against the cost of the full pay-per-view programming that the NBA offers during the climactic three months of playoffs.

Say I've watched 50 games—200 quarters—during the nine-month regular season. That's a $50 credit in my Tele-Pay account that I can apply to playoff charges. A $50 credit doesn't go as far as you might suppose, however, because the NBA's price scale is the highest in sports. It ranges from a reasonable $3 for the first-round elimination games up to $15 for each of the first five games in the best-of-nine championship matchup. Then it increases $5 more per game until the high-anxiety, all-or-nothing ninth game, which costs $35 to watch. A full nine-game final will be viewed in perhaps 200 million homes worldwide, meaning the NBA's PPV take can be well over $29 billion just for the championship series. Because of the vast reach of the NBA and the enormous amounts of money it collects ($50 billion in a good year), the United Nations takes a 15% cut off the top for UNICEF before the 30 individual NBA nations take their various tax bites.

I think it is worth noting for the record that the rules of pro basketball are essentially the same as in 1991. However, there is one major change, which was advanced by former Marquette coach and NBC analyst Al McGuire: There is now a composite height rule requiring that all teams in the league compete within a relatively equal Total Tallness Quotient (TTQ). This means that if a team starts, say, four players at 7'5", it must bring in a man shorter than 5'8" in order not to surpass the league's overall average TTQ. (This, of course, is similar to the NFL's Total Steroids Quotient—TSQ—which limits a 50-man team to no more than 25 players who test positive for steroids at any one time during the season.)

AUGUST 12