Anything for a Buck - Part Two

You have more, you want more

Now that the NFL is legally cleared to get in the lottery game, would the Redskins play it as an investment in the community, or as Dollar Days at the used car lot? Curly R's two part series on the lottery and the Redskins concludes.

Part One: The Lottery Is a Regressive Tax on the Poor
Part Two: "Redskins fans and lottery fans have an awful lot in common"

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The Redskins were the second team to announce a partnership with a state lottery agency, behind the New England Patriots by a day which I am sure infuriated Dan Snyder, and in making the announcement the team played the event as it would an impact player signing or new coaching hire, with Super Bowl trophies and cheerleaders on display.

There were even Redskins players on hand, the two mentioned by the Washington Post's Dan Steinberg were tailback Clinton Portis and tight end Chris Cooley.

The lottery game itself, if you can call a scratch off card a game, is called Redskins Mania and it costs twenty dollars (op. cit.). The prizes range from twenty dollars to one million dollars, if you exclude zero dollars as a prize that is. According to the announcement on the team's website the odds of winning a million dollars are one in 1.3 million, with the overall odds of winning any cash prize one in 2.78. Second chance drawings, in other words drawings for those non winning tickets, include a bevy of prizes, from season tickets to a road trip with the team to Dallas to a luxury suite and more.

According to the Post, five percent, or one dollar, of the twenty dollar cost of the ticket is to pay for overhead (op. cit.). The NFL licensing cost was not called out in the break down, I would assume that cost is a part of overhead, so the team gets some part of a dollar with every ticket sold in Virginia.

And the funny thing is, as usual, the team and the league tried to play it straight and yielded no hint of irony in the coverage, no sense of awareness that any remaining shreds of morality on gambling issues had burned off and that all that remained was rank hypocrisy.

Wait, I take that back, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell telling a reporter that the league does not want to be all quote high and mighty unquote about gambling is a bit ironic, Roger and the league now want to parse words Bill Clinton style, the meaning of the word is is kind of stuff, see the league wants to discourage betting of the type the is dependent upon the outcome of a game and well, these scratchers are just games of chance with no connection to actual on the field action of the NFL.

Except for Nevada where you can sit all day in a sports book and bet on NFL games, straight up, against the spread, in a parlay, over/under, the list goes on. Shit if you are in a Nevada sports book on Super Bowl Sunday you can bet on who wins the coin toss and whether the first play from scrimmage is a run or a pass.

So what is good for Nevada is not good for the rest of the country. Why then do we not see or hear the league railing against the spread makers? Surely the league does not pretend that the ESPN and Yahoo pick 'em pools around the country are run for fun, do they?

Note to the NFL: you worry about your players and the quality of the product, I will worry about whether betting on a game is a good idea.


There were also some tasteless comments from the Redskins players in attendance, even if they were said in jest and the medium of the written word adjusted for Dan Steinberg's delivery does not convey this sense, these rich young men should know where to draw the line in comments.

When a question in the Redskins press conference asked about the absence of player likenesses on the ticket, both Clinton Portis and Chris Cooley lobbied for the endorsement and the money that would come with it. Clinton even went on to say he needed to scratch himself a winner so he can give it all up and move to some remote island and live in luxury.

In a time when national umployment is rounding ten percent these two guys, Clinton's 2009 salary number is over six million dollars, Chris's is over three million dollars, the median income in 2007, the last year nationwide numbers were available, was just over fifty thousand dollars, meaning Chris' salary number this year is 60 times what the average American makes and Clinton's is 120x, these guys are out there joking about using the NFL's partnership with a public entity to score some endorsement dollars and pretend at needing a lotto score to give it all up and lead the good life.

Dudes, you already won the lottery, you are star NFL players. There is a whole class of people in this country that play the lottery every day out of desperation and you are making fun of them.


Note to Redskins officials re: code of conduct for any and all events featuring players and or team officials where economic disparities between league entities and players and the fans that enjoy the sport or the target audience of the next shiny object with a licensed NFL logo on it may be highlighted: make them wear dark suits, stand silently for the event and if there is any opportunity for the representative to speak, words should be limited to benefits accrued to the community and public causes through the team's engagement. References to money, having lots and or needing more should be avoided.



Altered Virginia Lottery logo from here.