Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Squares/Brackets

Blog #2
Squares/brackets
I decided to focus my super bowl blog on the gambling aspect of it. Not the fantasy football end of it-the final brackets that involve the last two teams standing. Why? Because someone I know won 20,000 dollars yesterday all because of pure luck (in my opinion). From what I understand and read in an article, people get themselves involved in brackets. Within the brackets, you pick two numbers (or more than two depending on how much you are willing to gamble). For example, the numbers you pick is what you think the final score of the football game will be. But you can also pick numbers on what you predict the score will be at half time. Each one of them cost a certain amount. The article I read told me, a winner is usually determined at the end of the 1st quarter, 2nd quarter, 3rd quarter, and final game score. The winner is determined by looking at the last number in each of the teams' score, and then matching those numbers on the grid and seeing which square intersects those two numbers (Footballsqaures.net). The part that leaves me with an uneasy feeling is the amount of money people put forward in order to give them a change to win. I may sound selfish and stubborn saying this, but I believe it is all luck. For instance, my friend who won 20,000 dollars last night played the numbers 4, for the Broncos and 0 for the Panthers. Those were his final numbers. And in this case he won because the final score was 24-10, Broncos. The question is how much money did he put forward in order to win that $20,000?
I understand the fun in gambling and living on edge throughout the whole four hours of the game but the money that is going into America's most violent sport is absurd to me. There are acts of violence from the second the game begins to the end. From the coin toss, to body slamming the opposite team, to sacking the quarterback, to pushing and shoving, to horse collars, to even dumping the bucket of gaterode over the coach when you win- the violence never ends. Everyone is watching it with their own two eyes and betting money on this type of sport?!?! Insane. Although I enjoyed watching the game, I always cringe and get Goosebumps every time someone gets hurt. It seems like the whole point of the game is this violence and people get so excited over people hurting each other. Did someone say concussion?? The defending team loves to sack the quarterback-I HATE seeing that happen. The violent aspect is what football is all about-sad to say, but its true. With that being said, I would never want to participate in any type of gambling that supports this violence act of a sport. 
           

Bethany Gencarella 

2 comments:

  1. I wonder if you might write more about what is the "fun" in gambling, and what are the cultural norms that support gambling (at sporting events or elsewhere?)...

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  2. It's so weird that gambling is such a huge aspect of things like the Super Bowl. Supposedly it's all supposed to be a game of chance. The best team should be the one that's winning but it's not always true. So we live in a society where people will put their money on the line for chance. And football happens to be one of the biggest sports in America so gambling in it is supporting all of the positives and negatives of the sport. The positives being teamwork and cooperation and the negatives being the patriarchal views, hyper-masculinity, violence, etc.

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