General

When You Mess With the Delaware Majority Leader, You Get the Horns

Jul 29, 2009, 9:30 PM UTC

Delaware (state motto: “Remember us?”) is always looking for ways to siphon money from outsiders into its tiny state—there’s a reason zillions of corporations and credit card companies are headquartered there. Their latest gambit is legalizing sports gambling. Whatever, you can do it in Vegas or on the internet, right? â†µâ†µNot so much if you’re a professional sports league or the NCAA, all of whom decided the best way to tackle this was to sue Delaware’s pants off, claiming that ...â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥Delaware’s sports betting plan “would irreparably harm professional and amateur sports by fostering suspicion and skepticism that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition.”â†µâ†µâ†µIf you are a human who does not live under a rock you have probably sussed out a problem with this argument. It is a giant, neon-lit one full of slot machines where you can tease the second half of Hofstra-Johns Hopkins women’s water polo:â†µ

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â†µâ†µUnusually for a politician, Delaware majority leader Peter Schwartzkopf does not live under a rock. Nor does he take obviously hypocritical crap from anyone: â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥It is hard to imagine why moving forward with sports betting in Delaware will undermine the integrity of professional or college sports. Las Vegas has promoted sports betting for many years, so Delaware is not covering new ground here. When it comes to expanding state sponsored gaming, legitimate debate and discussion should continue among Delaware’s elected representatives and its citizens. But the self-serving, hypocritical pronouncements and legal threats by these for-profit sports leagues that have sued Delaware should be rejected.â†µâ†µâ†µOh, snap. And that goes double for the NCAA, which is threatening to prohibit postseason events in Delaware at the same time they do this:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥We also learned that the NCAA ... sponsored the Las Vegas Bowl last year, housing its players in hotel casinos where bets are taken on games.â†µâ†µâ†µI’m with Rush The Court here, hoping the NCAA and various professional sports leagues get housed in court. And also hoping to see Schwartzkopf on Around The Horn. He’s obviously better than any of the decrepit zombies currently babbling about this and that.â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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