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Showing posts from April, 2024

The NBA’s Jontay Porter scandal reveals just how bad it can—and will—get as gambling dollars flood into sports

In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a decades-old federal ban on sports betting, at last empowering state lawmakers to decide how free their constituents should be to wager their life savings on Jalen Hurts’s first-half rushing total. On the day of the decision, Tulane Law School professor Gabriel Feldman predicted a wave of “gamblization” that would render the American sports landscape unrecognizable. “Fans will become much more focused on gambling than following a team,” he told the New York Times. “It will make every second of every game of every week interesting to fans as it will give everyone something to root for.” If anything, Feldman’s prognosis was too cautious. Today, betting has become so integral to the fan experience that it’s hard to remember what it was like before, when the industry’s most significant incursion in mainstream sports programming was the occasional cryptic quip about the spread from Al Michaels in the waning moments of Sunday Night Football. Pregame sh

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley says ready for any potential blowback caused by her comments

Transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley said ahead of her team’s NCAA Tournament championship game. Staley made the comments during a news conference Saturday when asked by OutKick reporter Dan Zaksheske whether she believes “biological males” should be “included” in women’s sports. “I’m on the opinion of if you’re a woman you should play,” Staley said. “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion.” Staley was speaking to reporters ahead of South Carolina’s championship matchup against Iowa on Sunday. Iowa coach Lisa Bluder declined to answer the same question later on. “I understand it’s a topic that people are interested in, but today my focus is on the game tomorrow, my players,” Bluder said. “It’s an important game we have tomorrow and that’s what I want to be here to talk about, but I know it’s an important issue for anothe