I’m not a gambler, except for the occasional March Madness office pool in the past, where I tried my luck at picking the college basketball brackets. We know how that can turn out for most of us. Just look at the upsets this year in the first round. Kentucky Wildcat fans can really relate to this.

I think it is hypocritical for so many national sports networks to cover stories about gambling and the current controversy with All-Star baseball player Shohei Ohtani. If you are not familiar with it, his “interpreter” allegedly stole millions of dollars from him to pay off gambling debts out in California. He had access to Ohtani’s bank account.

The firing of his close “friend” after these allegations of illegal gambling and theft from the Japanese baseball player is bringing renewed attention to the compulsive gambling problem.

Naturally, sports networks will cover it. However, they need to look in the mirror. They constantly run the lines on games – both professional and college. They even have daily shows talking about gambling on sports contests.

This has to add to the problem.

Gambling can be a serious addiction, as bad as someone hooked on drugs or who suffers from alcoholism.

Remember, there is no such thing as a sure bet unless a game has been fixed. How many of you who filled out an NCAA tournament bracket saw that on the first day of competition?

Problem gambling is a reality and unfortunately, some gamblers do not know when to stop. They lose their life savings and homes and break up their families.

This can lead to depression and anxiety. A lot of people aren’t able to handle losses, which sometimes can lead to serious mental and physical health concerns.

Now, most people are not going to lose millions of dollars like Ohtani, but they could lose a lot.

The National Council on Problem Gambling defines gambling addiction as “gambling behavior that is damaging to a person or their family, often disrupting their daily life and career.”

Gambling addiction is a recognized mental health diagnosis, and the group says anyone who gambles can be at risk for developing a problem.

I read in an Associated Press story, “About 2.5 million adults in the U.S. meet the criteria of having a severe gambling problem. Another 5 million to 8 million people are considered to have mild or moderate gambling problems.”

At the same time, currently 38 states (plus Washington and Puerto Rico) offer legal sports betting in some format. Thirty states have online sports betting via either smartphone apps or websites. So that means someone can be in the stands at a game and be placing bets at the same time. Folks, this can’t be a good thing.

Players are suspended if it is found out they are gambling. But I’m sure there are ways around this. They can get friends and family to make bets for them. Could referees and officials be gambling too?

Let’s look at some of the negative history of sports gambling.

In perhaps the greatest American match-fixing scheme in history, eight players on the Chicago White Sox allegedly fixed the World Series, purposely losing to the Cincinnati Reds for large payouts on the bets they placed on their own game.

One of the greatest baseball players of all time, Pete Rose, was banned from baseball after an investigation by the MLB uncovered the fact that Rose bet on his own games as a manager for the Cincinnati Reds. It never appeared that he fixed any of his own games, but the fact that he bet on them has continued to shadow his career. Rose, the all-time leader in career hits, still is not in the Hall of Fame.

There was the CCNY (City College of New York) point-shaving scandal of 1950–51, where a college basketball point-shaving gambling scandal involved seven American schools in all, with four in the New York metropolitan area.

And then there was 2007 when NBA referee Tim Donaghy was caught helping a friend gamble large sums of money on the games he refereed. Donaghy continues to deny that he ever made calls to fix games.

Even if sports gambling is legal now in most states it does not mean that these types of things cannot happen again.

Times have changed dramatically since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for states to legalize sports betting. The practice has moved out from the shadows and into the limelight daily on television and other outlets.

Let us hope and pray that things do not get worse and that more stories like what happened in the past and recently with Ohtani do not occur. But I think they have opened up a big Pandora’s box and it may be too late.

(Kyle Lovern is a longtime journalist in the Tug Valley. He is now a retired freelance writer and columnist for the Mountain Citizen.)