ALL BETTING IS LEGAL LET’S GO

At last: With a 7-2 decision handed down this morning, the Supreme Court has given the all-clear for states to legalize and regulate sports gambling. The Supreme Court, for the record right now, will pretty much let you do anything as long as white people get to sell or manage said activity first. If that’s you, get your requests in immediately. The Purge will be handed to the states sometime in the next three months, and in advance let us say: we don’t talk enough about all the good The Purge does for our society.

This means a lot of things, but mostly this: It’s time to get these prop bets in and make some cold hard cash. INVEST NOW on these extremely entry-level bets.

Alabama will win ten games. The savings bond of bets. We’re here to keep our money and balance our portfolio by diversifying risk, and thanks to the steady, even returns offered by the Saban Management Group we can do that here. Their division schedule this year is the usual cast of Programs Recently Destroyed By Alabama, including three schools breaking in new regimes. The cross-divisional pulls from the SEC East are Tennessee (also under new management) and Missouri (Is Mizzou.) The out-of-conference pulls are Louisville without Lamar Jackson and Louisiana-Lafayettte.

Ten games is a bare minimum even if you think Alabama’s offense has a new coordinator, and is not in fact run by a complex algorithm programmed by hundreds of engineers at the Rand Corporation. But if it were run by a complex algorithm, wouldn’t it be smarter and more effective? Ah, but if you did it yourself, it would be cheaper and possibly as effective, and we can’t have that in a corporate scenario, now can we?

Dana Holgorsen will get ejected from a game. Again, not really a huge bet, but a safe one. Dana’s good for at least one or two redfaced spluttering fits per season. When they happen, the world is reminded that West Virginia’s coach looks like a crusty prospector just back from a tough stretch in the Klondike.

The easier bets are on the big louds like Ed Orgeron, but the connoisseur’s bet is on Dana.

Chip Kelly will win like six games max at UCLA. That is to say that this year will be clearing the forest of rotten trees. Without Josh Rosen UCLA is mostly a bunch of bad wood waiting for the compost pile, and now has a coach coming in who might want to see what color your pee is. Frankly, to establish any relationship where we’re going to be talking about the color of our pee requires a minimum of a year together, and that’s before we wonder out loud if Chip Kelly is kind of burnt out and maybe not quite what he was in the burning heyday of the no-huddle spread.

We will call for Dan Mullen to be fired four games into the season. This is insider trading, but go ahead and book it. It won’t be fair, it won’t be based on evidence, it won’t be rational, but something will happen in the Tennessee game because something always happens in the Tennessee game to make us yell about how everyone in the entire building should be fired, and then we’ll have to walk around the block for thirty minutes following it on our phone because WHO RUNS A SPEED OPTION TO THE SHORT SIDE OF THE FIELD WHEN EVERYONE AND THEIR DOG KNOWS IT’S COMING, DAN???? WHOOOOOOO???

We can deny this will happen and have someone take our phone and laptop pregame and we will still do it. Nothing will stop it, so go ahead and find someone to take the bet. It’s legal now. Everything is legal.

Herm Edwards will get something dreadfully wrong in a real-time game management situation. Again, we’re pretty sure this bet won’t make you money, but it won’t lose you money, though. To make it a little more dangerous, make the prop bet something more specific, something exotic like “Herm yells at ref for two-minute warning stoppage during the fourth quarter of the Michigan State game.”

Oh yeah, if you’re into baffling, no-stakes early season matchups this season? Michigan State and Arizona State play a football game on September 8th! In Tempe, because these two programs believe in home-and-homes and not playing neutral site games for ratings. SOME TEAMS STILL CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE. (Or decided that playing in St. Louis or Kansas City benefitted no one, and that they could not sell out said stadiums.) WE’LL STICK WITH STILL CARING ABOUT THE PEOPLE, THO, BECAUSE IT SOUNDS BETTER.

Bryce Love will run for another zillion yards and still not get a Heisman. Because it’s the Pac-12, and that’s the only real explanation we can give here. All Bryce Love will do is dazzle and pop off for 300 yards a game, and Heisman voters will still throw votes to someone like Drew Lock or Jake Fromm because they play most of their football before bedtime. It is not fair, but we are not here to wager money on fair. We’re here to wager money on what will likely happen, and what likely happens is often the opposite of fair or smart. (Like Bryce Love not getting a trophy that he actually had a pretty solid case for last year, if you’re into actual case-making and stuff.)

You will become a magnet for your most degenerate friends. You know who doesn’t really know whether Utah State will cover against Wyoming? You. You know who really, really doesn’t know, though, and has a five-team parlay riding on it? The guy we’ll call Dan, your most gambling-addicted friend who will at one point begin texting you about games you have very little clue about, yet feel like a total expert on compared to Dan. Dan does not know where Wyoming is, but he has money on the game, and it is never on the individual game—no, it’s part of a five-team chain, because Dan just can’t gamble. He’s got to chain these wagers together, lining up the coke on the back of a burro filled with balloons of heroin running in an unregulated mule race in West Memphis. Pending the results of that, a royal baby being named “Edward”, and a greyhound race in St. Pete, Dan has this whole parlay bet made.

That is, if you’re right about Utah State covering against Wyoming. You wish it were lower stakes than this. That is never how a parlay works. Dan will hit all of the improbable, and then lose the whole thing. He will blame you, which would be fine because Dan then wouldn’t call you anymore with his rent in one hand and a lit match in the other, and your friendship would be a lot less stressful.

But here’s the thing: DAN WILL ALWAYS PLACE ANOTHER STUPID PARLAY. And you’ll be a part of it whether you like it or not, even if you refuse to answer or just sit there. If he has to, he’ll read the silence. Saying nothing means Utah State definitely doesn’t cover. Got it. Dan is the worst. Be ready for him, because he’s going nowhere, and he’s definitely still going to use his unlicensed bookie even if all this is legal now.