Viva, Las Vegas

Hopefully, some of you will remember some of the issues college and professional sports had with gamblers and gambling in general. There was the college basketball point shaving scandal of the 1950s, Paul Hornung’s one year suspension from the NFL for gambling, Pete Rose’s banishment for life from Major League baseball for gambling on baseball while managing a Major League team. Of course the biggest baseball gambling debacle was the Chicago ‘Black Sox’ scandal that banned 8 members of the Chicago White Sox for throwing the 1919 World Series. Want to know more then find the movie “8 men out” and it will tell you everything you need to know as to why Major League baseball has no fondness for gambling.

With that being said it is also quite interesting that the city known for its gambling prowess and power has become the favorite place for team movement and expansion. Yes, Las Vegas, Nevada has been the fastest growing city in the USA and a place that has seen important changes as to the powers that be are concerned.

I’m hoping that I’m not the only one that remembers when the owners of professional sports franchises stated that they would not allow a team to move to Vegas for fear that big time gambling would ruin the game, any game. But maybe there was a change of heart when most every state legalized sports betting, college and professional. There is something about getting tax revenue from a problem like gambling that will make a politician smile knowing many taxpayers don’t have a problem with it at all.

Now we all know that professional athletes and coaches are not supposed to gamble but if they really want to it might be difficult to follow the money. I would think the biggest gamble would be losing million dollar pay checks and other revenue just to maybe make several thousand dollars betting on a game. Remember Pete Rose was banned for life even though he said he never bet against his team to lose only to win. So if that was the case he would have had no reason to throw a game in which his team was playing. But gambling is gambling.

In the last few years Las Vegas has lured the WNBA to place the Aces there, this year’s champion; the NHL’s Golden Knights that recently became the Stanley Cup champions; the NFL Raiders left Oakland and their stadium and maybe just maybe baseball’s Oakland Athletics may also be loading up the semis to move one state east.

Now I know that a lot of people frown on the possibility that a city is held for ransom with the words ‘Build us a new stadium or we will move out of here!” I don’t think that Oakland can afford to build a new stadium for only one team.

Remember that the Raiders shared the Oakland Coliseum with the A’s but now there is only one team in Oakland since the Golden State Warriors left for San Francisco in 2019. Revenue is really important to the owners and the players so moving a franchise to Las Vegas when the city is more than happy to build a state of the art facility who wouldn’t want to get out of Oakland. I saw a baseball game there in August of 1967 and the Coliseum wasn’t special then.

So if Major League baseball welcomes baseball to the gambling mecca of the USA then I guess they still need to explain why the big change in heart. Don’t expect that only think revenue is what makes the world go around and people need to be entertained when they aren’t watching their favorite team play and gambling and entertainment is definitely Las Vegas.

Now something else was brought up in the last week or so and that was the possibility of the NBA expanding to two more teams and those cities mentioned were Las Vegas and Seattle.

Yes, there may be a chance that the Supersonics will once again have an NBA franchise. I believe that the success and fan base of the Seattle Kraken opened a lot of eyes in the NBA world and Seattle supported the Sonics when they had an ownership that wanted to have a winning team in the northwest.

But Sonics’ fans can also thank Las Vegas for having the kind of success it has had. It would only be smart to add two teams in the west and Seattle’s history is important. So if it happens I say, “Viva, Las Vegas!”

Sorry Elvis.

— Dale Anderson is a sports columnist from Ritzville. To contact him, email [email protected].