by James Singh

Created on: January 23, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

An athlete gambling on professional sports is the equivalent of insider trading or counting cards in Vegas. To add on to that, an athlete could actually affect the outcome of something he's betting on. We send people to jail for trading inside information and casinos put lifetime bans on individuals that count cards and figure out the system. Ultimately, it just messes up the integrity of the game. Athletes already make an obscene amount of money and it is absolutely ludicrous for them to attempt to make more money exploiting the very sport that they have worked so hard to get to. I think that it's worse than using steroids or hgh(human growth hormone). Athletes use those drugs to enhance their performance and gain glory and accolade based on that performance. An athlete that gambles is not doing it to get better; he's throwing games or hoping for a bad performance. It's much easier to not perform up to par than it is to exceed expectations.

We look to sports to escape the grind of our daily lives and the one of the strongholds of sports is the pure essence of "that's why they play the game." Anything can happen, but if an athlete is gambling on that, he begins to degrade that integrity and robs the average American of his temporary escape from the daily grind. Furthermore, it causes us to question the athletes and their intentions and selfish natures. Not all athletes are bad, in fact, most play by the rules, but one bad egg can tarnish and entire team and bring a whole sport into question.

League offices need to act swiftly with gambling and make sure that its painfully clesr that they're isolated incidents. If it were seen as a league wide conspiracy, then that Americans that support it would vanish and focus their support, attention, and financial backing elsewhere. It could be fixed but we, as fans, don't react well when money is an issue in sports. We don't take strikes well and imagine if it became rumored that athletes were making money playing these sports and making even more money by gambling on it and throwing games. The business aspect of that sport would be shattered.

Gambling in sports should not even be allowed to become an issue in sports, it's bad enough that steroids talk dominates headlines as of late. When it's all said and done we want our sports like we want out children: innocent, pure, real.

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