News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Mar. 22, 2013: So the President once again has decided an important issue.
No doubt it is very important to him. I would not doubt if he gave it more attention than many other decisions he makes. Obama has chosen Indiana to win the NCAA Basketball Championship for 2013, AKA March Madness. Indeed it is!
Think President Obama placed a bet? Most everyone else does. The NCAA basketball Championship hypocrisy gone wild. The biggest betting event on Earth!
MADNESS since Obama doesn’t have a clue or doesn’t want to. Sports betting is illegal of course, especially in the United States, except in Las Vegas. And worst of all in college sports God forbid. Yet, millions upon millions of Americans and now “sports fans” (sic) around, the world bet on the NCAA tournament. Last March, almost $300 million was bet legally in Las Vegas on March Madness. The Associated Press estimates that more than $12 Billion will in fact be bet worldwide this March, most of it illegally.
So is President Obama promoting gambling with his very public choice in the NCAA Championship as pictured above? What do you think?
What is my point? It is very different. Although insidiously related to college, sports betting March madness is a massive Money Machine for the NCAA and colleges. It is the most successful money making event by far for the NCAA. Betting is the foundation for that distinction. Ninety percent of more who fill out their bracket sheets and place their bets, whether professionally with bookies or at sometimes very sophisticated office pools, 90 percent of those betting know virtually nothing about these teams and have never seen most of them play either live or in person. It is a giant lottery. Needless to say if any of the players are ever caught betting on this lottery, the consequences will be dire for them.
By the way this may not include President Obama, who is a big sports fan and watches plenty of college basketball games. You can bet on the fact that he will be watching tournament games in his Very Big Jet Plane on the long-trip back from Israel this week.
But that is not my point. It is about the scam named the NCAA, which Obama is clearly a big, big fan of, just as it is. In reality, it should remind him of slavery. All these thousands of college athletes playing for nothing in this tournament worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the NCAA and member colleges!
The NCAA Basketball Championship is also the biggest advertising revenue event of all; yes bigger than the Super Bowl by far. Add up all those 64 teams in the tournament and the month-long schedule and you will see why it far out distances the Super Bowl in betting and advertising revenue.
So here is the point.
Even when it comes to sport, ours supposed Change Master, the formerly new President who promised he would be so much different than all the rest, isn’t! The idea that President Obama would criticize the NCAA and colleges for making college students play for free when the NCAA is using this tournament to print money – the idea Obama would ever criticize them – is ludicrous let alone propose basic changes in this scam.
President Obama likes all sports. How about golf? He has played over 100 rounds of golf since becoming President. He has no problem at all getting on Air Force One at our tax payer expense and flying off to play on the best courses money can buy as he did during Presidents Week in February, after sequestering everyone else. That trip cost us all quite a few millions. I hear President Obama enjoyed himself staying on a luxurious private golf course, getting lessons from the best pros and playing with Tiger Woods.
Think President Obama might be disappointed, let alone concerned, that on the PGA Tour, Tiger Woods was the only African American on the Tour when he first became a pro almost 20 years ago, and almost two decades later, Tiger Woods is still the only African American on the PGA Tour?
We don’t even see Black caddies any more. Those who caddy for PGA tour players make out very, very well and they are now all White as a result.
Don’t expect to see President Obama challenging golf or the PGA, specifically to make sure more African Americans can reach the tour level or admonish Tiger Woods for not doing more, really nothing, to bring more Blacks into golf. Not our Status Quo President!
How about football? Sure Obama loves football. Did you doubt it?
So football is the most troubling of all sports today, even with its run away popularity in America both college and NFL football. The problem as everyone now knows is the epidemic that had been hidden for decades and is now in the wide open head trauma. Millions of young boys playing youth football, then young men playing college and pro football, are damaging their brains with hundreds and thousands of hits to the head, both minor and severe, as they play football year after year. There are now thousands of law suits against the NFL, and soon college football, seeking damages for all this head trauma.
Have you heard President Obama calling for a National Commission to fully study the problems and propose changes to football to end this epidemic? Of course not!
One more issue! I don’t have time for a very long commentary this week as sports deserves, even if I get my editor mad at me as much as I fear disappointing her. Let’s bring the budget deficit and the ridiculous U.S. tax code into the picture, also known as legal theft for those with power and money.
Most of the money spent on all these sports: basketball, football, golf and all the rest by Corporate America in the many billions of dollars, all of it is not being taxed either, because all these colleges are tax exempt as not-for-profits (sic) ; so at the professional level, corporations write all these luxury boxes, hospitality suits, tickets off as business expenses. Ha, Ha! The joke is on the rest of us.
Let me end with this point.
No President in all of American history has been as synonymous with sports as is President Barack Obama. None! Not by a long shot. So with this kind of interest in sports and knowledge of sports and more access to more decision makers in sports than any previous U.S. President what has Barack Obama done to change and improve sports?
Surprise!!! Absolutely nothing!
We are certainly not surprised here in Obama’s America.
We never are by President Barack Obama.
Here you get the Truth.
Until next week and another dose of reality!
About The Writer: Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
