P๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ก ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ .
As we enter the greatest sporting weeks of the year, with the Super Bowl on Sunday and the commencement of the better of our twin olympics, the Winter games, tonight, I can't help but wonder if we're in some kind of decadence akin to the splendor of ancient Rome's fall. Bread and circuses: the former brought to us by our chiseled, sunburnt Kennedy, the latter by our billionaires.In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon highlights the Roman obsession with spectacle and hedonism as a sign of its inner decay. When the barbarians invade from the north, they find an empire much weakened from its glory days. (Which Gibbon, who like any good biographer, has fallen in love with, remarking that the best time for a man to have been alive would have been in the 3rd century.) The Romans lost their sense of virtue, of civic responsibility, and cared only for "just two thingsโBread and Circuses!". Roman life became defined by a "drive for personal pleasure" and an intense, almost desperate need for entertainment. For some spectators, gambling on gladiatorial matches consumed all of their passion. Gibbon connects the focus on luxurious pleasure and gambling as a sign of the deep moral decay of Roman society, where "bizarreness masqueraded as creativity." Really, you should read the whole thing: it's only a million and a half words over 3700 pages.
I'm not one of the scolds, though. Ask me and I'll regale you with tales of the silly wagers I've placed on player performances in and the outcome of the Super Bowl. It's not all good, though. Some not insignificant fraction of our population is hopelessly and life-ruiningly addicted to gambling. By making the sports books "legitimate", we've made it easier for those people to ruin their lives. If you care about sport itself, then you'll be worried by the number of players and coaches already publicly caught up in gambling scandalsโjust the ones we know about cover all major sports and among the mug shots are some superstars. Opening our reading this week there's a chronicle of just that. (I'm most of the way through this month's Harper's essay on the same topic, but I don't like to link you to things I haven't finished.) The best analogy to gambling is probably liquor or divorce: prohibitions didn't work and most often harmed the most those people who could least absorb the damage. The analogy works the other way, too: liquor stores and bars on every corner don't help much with virtue, responsibility, or really any of the things Gibbon used the ancient Romans to warn us about.
But, sports! The best Olympics are almost here. Last night, we watched some downhill skiing training runs, a curling match (decided on the final end on a dramatic Norwegian mistake! USA!), and I caught a cool documentary about the US Biathlon team. If you can't get excited about skiing fast and shooting straight, then perhaps you're not motivated by 'bizarreness masquerading as creativity.' On the other hand, biathlon entered the Chamonix Olympics a hundred years ago as a sport called "military patrol." Even Gibbon would approve of that.
Reading
Gambling Is Killing Sports and Consuming America
Gambling doesn't just sponsor sports games. It shapes them, deciding which matchups are worth watching and how players are covered. Gambling doesn't just buy ads. It owns sports networks, producing shows that prod fans to bet ever more.
The Greatest Heist
Mike Tirico's Super Bowl-sized decision that transformed sports TV.
Mikaela Shiffrin Is Skiingโs GOAT. Can She Get Her Olympic Revenge?
In a sport where margins are dictated by who stays composed under pressure, the Alpine skiing legend is using every trick at her disposal to take gold at Milan Cortina.