Gridiron Gamblers Bet on Having Fun
Daniel Miles has a lot of time with his own thoughts at his job.
Each day, from late afternoon and into the early morning, the Tennessee native drives a UPS truck across America’s vast tangle of roads, giving him plenty of opportunities to dissect the numerous football bets he plans to make each week during the season.
Not that he needs it.
“I’m doing a 17-game parlay, or however many they’ll let me do,” Miles said. “That’s too many games to really think about in your head. Really on Thursday or Friday, I’ll just kind of go down the games and pick which ones I think will either cover or win the money line.”
For many amateur gamblers, the end of the Super Bowl usually marks the transition from football betting to the sports of springtime. After Tom Brady inevitably hoists the Lombardi Trophy over his perfectly-coiffed head in early February, millions of American bettors seamlessly flow into putting money on the other in-season action—from popular U.S. pastimes like baseball and basketball to more esoteric sports in North America like cricket and rugby. An estimated 38 million Americans planned to gamble on football this past season, according to the American Gaming Association, and millions of them won’t stop there.
But Miles is part of a unique sect of amateur gamblers whose betting season ends as soon as the confetti falls after The Big Game. You won’t catch him chasing with some midnight Turkish handball or praying for a backdoor cover on the Tuesday TNT basketball broadcast.
Miles bets weekly during the NFL season, and when it’s over, he simply stops.
“Every weekend during football season, I’ll do 15 or 16 games—as many as [the book] will let me,” he said. “My schedule doesn’t allow me to watch a whole lot of basketball, which plays into kind of how much I care about what I bet on.”
It might sound crazy to the dedicated amateur who can’t fathom such a lengthy pause from the adrenaline-inducing rush that is sports gambling. It can be seen as akin to a dedicated skydiver hanging up the parachute for six months every year before hopping back in the plane.
But Miles is far from alone.
“To me, I would compare it to taxes,” fellow football-only gambler Zachary Hodge said. “You get your tax refund and you’re like, ‘OK, what do I want to do with this money?’ For me, it’s like ‘Football season is about to start.' I need to save up $500 to $1,000 to be able to play with this year and see what I can do with it.”
Hodge, a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, puts down his betting apps once football season subsides and moves forward with life, albeit with the occasional tinge of reluctance.
“I do get that itch,” he said. “There’s always temptation there, but it’s not worth it to me. I couldn’t care less about really anything other than football, honestly.”
If Hodge sounds like a betting enigma, his passion for football flows from a similar sui generis place. The Volunteer State native dons purple and gold on Sundays as an East Tennessee Minnesota Vikings fan, thanks to his grandfather’s attraction to their sartorial elegance. He liked their uniforms so much that he became a fan, passing his passion down to Hodge’s dad and himself.
“It’s a huge part of our life now,” Hodge. “It’s actually kind of cool. You’re a fringe fan of something in a place where there aren’t many, and then you’ll find out where all these Vikings fans are hanging out in East Tennessee on a Sunday afternoon.”
A deep love of the sport seems to bind much of the football-only gambling community more than just a lust for potential quick cash. For even the game’s ardent casual fans, an appreciation for football provides the backdrop for their self-limited habit.
“I’ve never really had a connection to any team, but I kind of like that,” Maryville native Mason Cantrell said. “I can watch any game and not have any true emotional investment in the outcome. I can just enjoy the league as a whole.”
Like his counterparts, Cantrell spends his money gambling specifically on the gridiron. His first love is baseball, but he doesn’t have any plans to put any cash behind it anytime soon—even if he could sit down to watch a random AL East game with rapturous enthusiasm.
“I really don’t know why I don’t get into baseball in terms of betting,” he said. “I guess it’s just the injuries and having to keep up with everything so much makes it not enjoyable.”
Football brings forth the gambling inhibition for these American bettors, but the captivation of the sport itself is a specter that looms larger than the ability to place a bet. When the brassy notes of a college football fight song flood the air in late August, it’s football’s magnetic pull—not that of gambling—that gives them goosebumps.
“It’s definitely a Christmas morning-type feeling," Hodge said of when football season is about to start. “It’s almost better than Christmas, because this one lasts for six months.”
But like the joys of the holiday season, the end can force contemplation over the ephemeral nature of our most sacred rituals.
“It is like Christmas,” Miles said. “It takes forever to get here, and it’s gone before you know it.”