What’s wrong with making easy money?

Since this seems to be the week for scandal in sports, I figure it’s about time for me to join… Since this seems to be the week for scandal in sports, I figure it’s about time for me to join the fray. Because, throughout the Bowl Championship Series debacle, the numerous dubious NFL coaching decisions, and the strange and incomprehensible ranking system of NCAA basketball, I’ve been harboring a terrible secret of my own concerning the long-awaited Pete Rose confession.

I don’t see what is so wrong about betting on one’s own team.

I understand that it’s taboo and that Bud Selig doesn’t like it and all that, but, ethically speaking, what is it about gambling in favor of your team that makes it so problematic to admit Rose to the baseball Hall of Fame?

Forget for a minute that the current HOF hits leader, Ty Cobb, was not only a gambler, but also a murderer and an all-around terrible human being. Let’s just consider Rose’s infractions alone.

Gambling against one’s team – which Pete Rose vehemently denies – is certainly wrong, because you can affect the outcome in a manner other than you would normally. By throwing the game, you cheat your teammates, fans, employer and opponents out of the fair competition they are promised.

But what, exactly, is lost by betting on one’s own team? You’re not trying any less hard to win. If anything, you’d be more focused on the game and more competitive. Winning at all costs has been par for the course for many coaches and players for so long now that it’s hard to imagine how that could be construed as a negative in sports.

Let’s say, for a moment, that you are on a professional baseball team. You also have a sibling who is on one, and you two are scheduled to meet in a one-game playoff to determine the final wild-card playoff berth. You call up your sibling and say: “Hey, winner of the game gets a bottle of champagne from the other?” Your sibling, being healthily competitive and believing in his or her team, agrees.

Would anyone be appalled to hear that? Repeat the last paragraph with, instead of a bottle of champagne, a hundred bucks, less than the retail value of a nice bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Still no real problem, right? Neither of you is promising to hedge performances or affect the outcome of the game other more than you would normally. You’re just putting stakes on your performance.

Let’s put it another way. When Bobby Knight, an ethically questionable man, failed to lead his Texas Tech basketball team to success last year, he gave up his salary, saying that his performance had not been worth paying for. What is that but a bet with his employer? How many contracts are littered with “incentives” for sustained or excellent performance? How are those anything other than legal betting for an athlete? It’s essentially the team owner saying “I bet you won’t play 130 games this season” or “I bet you won’t be an all-star,” and putting hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.

Are stock options for CEOs bets? They can affect the performance of the stock. How about paying on commission? Tips for servers or drivers? We would say: “Of course not, that’s just capitalism. Payment based on performance. So shall ye work, so shall ye eat.” In fact, if a baseball player were to sign a contract based entirely on his performance – x number of dollars per home run, y number of dollars per RBI, etc. – he would be lauded for being unselfish and fair to a level never before seen in professional sports. Seeing a pattern here?

Some people have suggested to me that the problem is that he had an effect on the game whereas the other people gambling did not. This makes no sense to me on three levels. One, if someone’s bet was based on whether he was trying to win, then nothing changed, because he was already trying to win – it’s not like he would affect the game more because he bet. Two, gambling is inherently based on the premise that you know something the other bettors do not. Three, even if, somehow, his behavior could be construed as unfair to others betting on the same game, unfairness to gamblers is not cause to be kept out of the Hall of Fame.

Rose said in his autobiography that he gambled because he didn’t think he’d get caught, not because he thought it was okay. Well, why isn’t it okay? Because it’s technically illegal? Shall we start making a list of professional athletes with criminal records that are still eligible for the Hall?

When someone can tell me where the line is between those examples and telling a man with a book that you’re so confident in your team you’re willing to put your daily salary on it, I’ll join the petition to keep Rose out of the Hall. Until then, I’ll keep waiting for the all-time hits leader in baseball to join the pantheon in which he belongs.

Greg Heller-LaBelle is the editor in chief of The Pitt News, and he would bet on his staff doing a good job any day of the week. Wager with him at editor@pittnews.com.