Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 419: Two for the Money (w/ Special Guest: Manny Fidel)

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Aaron and Tom are joined by writer, producer, and podcaster Manny Fidel to discuss the proliferation of online sports betting and its implications on society in the context of a US economy that's increasingly immaterial in conjunction with the "male loneliness epidemic." Manny's GQ piece can be found here: https://www.gq.com/story/online-gambling-is-ruining-sports-bars Preorder Manny's forthcoming book "Colored People Time (A Case for Casual Rebellion)" here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740001/colored-people-time-by-manny-fidel/ Check out Manny's podcast "NO SUCH THING" here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-such-thing/id1780210954 Subscribe to our Patreon here: https://patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

and welcome everybody once again, and welcome everybody once again to Trailbillies for the week of Thursday, November the 20th. I am your host, Tom Sexton, joined, as always, by the new CEO, Tractor Supply Company. My man's moved to North Carolina to the hinterlands and has went to NATO. I'm the first black man that's ever stepped foot into a Tractor Supply, Brother. No, I'd actually be... No, no, no, no, you go ahead. No, I was saying me and my partner were actually watching TV, one of them streaming services,

and they had, you know, all the... ads are like geo tagged or localized I guess to your region your area so there was a tractor supply commercial and there was a brother on it and since there are very many few at least that I've seen black people here in West North Carolina near the Asheville area specifically I'm always one to point out when I see another you know fellow brother you know or sister you know or they them you know what I mean that's right that's right got to be all inclusive, you know, the black community, you know what I'm saying? Well, you know, I, for the longest time, Western North Carolina, the guy I always thought of about Western North Carolina is Rashad McCanns. Y'all remember Rashad McCanns, play with North Carolina? He was a bad man in the Met Otts, but he was, you know, he was the King Asheville for a little while. Joining us today, all the way from Brooklyn, New York City, Mr. Manny Fidel, who is a, I'm going to shamelessly jack your.

GQ Sports bio here, but please. If you're not familiar with me, he is a Brooklyn-based writer and producer who covers a range of topics like politics, culture, and sports. He's the author of Colored People Time, a book of essays under Penguin Random House's One World imprint, which is coming out this year. Or is it out yet? No, March. March, it's coming out in March.

It was going to come out in January, but I'm having a baby, actually. I pushed the date a little bit just to make sure I'm not bouncing as soon as the baby comes. Also, formerly a producer at MSNBC, Business Insire's written for The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Sherwood, and the ever popular. Many, many more. Many, thanks for being with us, man. It's a pleasure. I've been listening to you guys for a long time, so thanks for the invite. Well, we're having you on today.

We're going to be jumping around a lot, but you wrote this piece called Online, gambling is ruining sports bars. And this, I think, rare is the opportunity that I get to sort of, you know, merge, you know, sports talk with this. But I feel like this dovetails nicely with, you know, the scourge of sort of the vapor economics of the United States and the vaunted male loneliness epidemic that we hear so much about. So, but before we get into that, I got to start with the state of the Commonwealth. Kentucky basketball fans, we're not in a good place this morning. You know, we got drum by Michigan State by 17 the other night.

Before that, we got handled at Louisville, which wouldn't be, you know, it would seem fairly innocuous had we not spent $22 million on our NIL roster or, you know, far more than the nearest competitor. And so I just want to acknowledge that to the Katz fans out there that, you know, I'm thinking about you also in this, you know, trying an uncertain time, and I hope you're doing the same for me. But I wanted to kick it off of that question, too, like, what do y'all make of the NIL era? Like, I guess my position, like, I'm glad the kids are finally getting paid because all

these schools and the NCAA in particular as a governing body have made Buku money off of these kids for generations and generations. But there's also, like, I'm trying to figure out how to talk about it, how, like, also with that good development, like, some of the life has been kind of. of sucked out of college sports a little bit. I'm just curious what you all think about it, you know. I agree. I mean, but to be clear, for years I had been like, get these guys paid. It doesn't make any sense that these schools are making all the money and they're not, they don't even get stipends sometimes. At least it didn't used to be the case. So now everyone's

getting paid. Well, not everyone, I guess is the problem. I guess it would be, it would make more sense, I think, if there was kind of a salary that the school was giving to the players. course it doesn't work like that basically all the money's going to like the best athletes um it creates kind of a weird uh semi professional vibe to it and um in college football it's really kind of messed with your usual conference dynamics so now that nil is a thing we've started to see a little bit of a decline in the SEC yeah and in the in the one kind of insight you can take from that is that players were getting paid through other means. I'll go ahead and tell you, we're not handling this well at all either, especially when we eat

shit during the bowl season and the Big Ten excels, because I don't know if you've probably noticed this man. He's been an Ohio State guy, but there's been this, like, tension between the SEC of Big Ten, and it's caused us to almost take a, like, an insult to one team as an insult to the whole league. And I've been saber-rattling with Big Ten guys for, like, years now. And now I'm just now getting around to the point where I'm having to like, you know, looks You're starting to see uncomfortable truths in the face. So Tom, I just want to touch on something that she said, these players getting paid in other ways. And maybe both of you guys, because I'm not a sports fan as much as time.

Actually, not at all. Not nearly as much as time is. But I do remember us talking about how players are encouraged to sort of cultivate their own brand. brand as influencers, right, where they pretty much, you know, sell their image online, right? And in concert with brands, sportswear brands. So do you think that that also creates this sort of semi-professional league where other highly sought-after players who have a bigger brand, who have more followers on social media and have all of these deals?

Do you think that that, yeah, again, that creates even a more sort of, how can I put it, sort of tiered semi-professional league when all these players should be getting paid, especially if their likenesses are being used in video games and on ads and shit like that, that they might not even be aware about it. Yeah. So I think what we're seeing in the past couple of years is college football, you know, college football is very traditional. There's a culture of tradition.

is there's a lot of things in the sport that makes it different than the NFL, for example, where there's a lot of pride, I think, in the team that you get recruited to. Typically, you would stay there for the four years. Now we're starting to see, you know, big-time players go to different teams because of the NIL package. They'll just, like, Ohio State's quarterback right now is Julian saying he's like this monster, but he used to be at Alabama and now he switched over, I think, because there was a better package deal for him. And so, yeah, I think you're right.

We're totally seeing the kind of professionalization of college sports. I don't know if that's a real word, but we're going with it. It is, yeah, that is kind of an interesting point because it's like, I think, like, to me, I think either we need to, like, dispense with the notion of amateurism altogether or like we need to view the kids as like university employees rather than and like a part of the benefit of that package is we'll pay for your school if you choose to be a student but like what I hate is the sort of like wishy-washy like middle ground of like are these student athletes and we sort of like treat them as that but like now these kids are getting paid like

millions you know in some cases hundreds of thousands you know at least in in certain instances and it's like I don't know it I can see where you said that it it almost mirrors like soccer or like a more international game I feel like where you have like lower leagues that are still good leagues but let's say you're not playing in the premiership anymore but you go to like the the German Bundesliga or somewhere else and it's like still a good league you're still making good money but it's not like the premier league or cream of the crop yeah even in England they have like under premier league is like the champion league I think it's called which and which go ahead man sorry to interrupt you go no no you're good I just mean that there's

overseas, it seems like there's a lot more options for different levels of professionalism or different levels of, you know, amateurism, I guess. And you can be in the champion league in England, for example, and still make a living and buy a house and shit. We don't really have that in the United States. It's like it's you're pro or you're not. Right, right. I wanted to make the joke, man, that I, shamefully enough, have watched Ted Lassow.

A lot of people rid me for that all the time. but there's that kind of a comment or aside because it's all these we all experienced seasonal depression in 2020 that show was a boy lifeline brother man but like for my depression but like you know there's that joke that um the how is the premier league i guess um lower in tier or status or professionalism than the championship league anyway whatever but i wanted to ask though really um kind of going back to um you know these uh college players is and because i'm ignorant um as to this fact um are there any barriers what barriers are there to the players i mean i know there are a lot same the same barriers that exist for like you know service uh workers workers in the united states but what are the barriers

to unionization right possible unionization or collectivization um among the players is it are there are similar barriers to the nba or is it because they are as tom sort of said they're alluded to are implied as university employees so there are certain things that they can't do within that i guess um role as like a student you know trying to think i like i know that the ncaa i think prohibits that kind of behavior like it's there isn't i don't to my to my best of my knowledge there's not like a players association for college football at least there was the attempt from missouri right like didn't the university missouri's football team a few years ago and i think northwestern's football team tried it at a certain point but this was before

before the Nile era. Yeah, you know what, you're right. I think Northwestern did succeed in creating a union. But, you know, these are two cases out of the thousands of teams. Yeah, I remember that Mizzou story. They basically organized together. I can't remember the exact reason, but I think it was about like facility, quality of facilities or something like that.

And it ended up being a national news story. There were protests and a lot of coverage on that. I'm trying to, but I don't think there's like a national unionization effort for college football athletes. Yeah. And at the pro level, I remember during the bubble year in 2020 of the NBA playoffs, there was that push in the wake of George Floyd protests where there was this brief moment where the NBPA really could have just like went on strike. and Barack Obama calls Chris Paul, who was at the time the president of the NBA, like the NBA's union,

and kind of shut it down because they were like, if you recall, there was like a little wave of like, we're not going to play. And this is at a time when everybody's like at home locked down and we're all dying for something to watch because we've been, you know, like in season two of Ted Lassel and shit.

And I feel like there was a moment there. And the thing that struck me so much about that moment, other than C.J. McCollum making a bundle off of his wine bar and coffee bar in the bubble, was that you see in America, like, how it takes, like, extremely well-compensated workers to withhold their labor before, like, we're moved. I feel like we're just so, like, you know, relatively spoiled compared to other places, like, where it's, like, more, you know, blue-collar workers and stuff like that that could shut down those, like, means of production. but in America, it's like, oh, if the NFL Players Association went on strike,

you would see unrest in the streets, I think. Well, that's the interesting thing about it, too, with Obama kind of putting his thumb on the scales, you know, and tipping that in favor of, like, the powers that be, is that you see the way that, you know, maybe this is, like, really facile point, but you see the way that, like, people like Barack Obama want to sort of obfuscate, right? Like, the relation between capital and workers, you know, the boss and the boss and the, the worker because imagine if there were I'm not saying that this was spark like a you know a Soviet revolution in the United States but imagine all these people sitting at home at COVID when

they're realizing that the government can actually do well for them right at least in the form in the form of these like stimulus checks and they're sitting at home realizing that the government could do well good shit for me and also these players they're calling the central workers at the same time to enforce us to go back to work and these players are not playing you know like I'm just saying like that kind of seed of an idea I could imagine how that was would be seen as dangerous in sports in America, which are especially seen as depoliticized, right? Or if it was a different vessel, like if it was Senator Tom Cotton, it would have decidedly shut up and dribble tone to it. But because Obama's this great orator, and because

he did have a great symbolic victory, but was kind of disappointing when he was in office, is like it kind of rings a little bit differently, especially in that moment, too. But yeah, that's a good pointer. And just to correct. the record, something I said earlier, there is actually a players association for college football players, but the latest news is that because the Trump administration took over the NRLB, they just don't really have a ton of power at the moment. So those are the roadblocks for them. Yeah. You mentioned something earlier, maybe about how like NIL sort of affected conference realignment. There's just something I think that's funny about like you getting on a plane in Westwood

in Los Angeles and then flying to, you know, Urbana, champagne to playing University of Illinois in, like, December. Now that feels like, you know, like, usually these were, like, historically, all these schools were grouped together like geographically, you know, anything below the Ohio River, you know, that SEC country, anything above. It doesn't make a ton of sense. Yeah. And I've always been someone who, you know, I think the SEC, to be fair, and I'm going to get,

I'm going to get killed for this from my fellow Big Ten football fans. it is of course more competitive on average I think right like the the what's happening maybe maybe the top half of the league yeah perhaps or the bar rather I'm sorry the bottom half of the league but right but then you get when you get yeah exactly it's like the tiers I think are is or what's being kind of uh they're equitable now they're more equitable yeah yeah yeah totally totally so you know the reason I've convened this uh group of minds today Jim and is because Manny wrote something in GQ this past week, basically talking about the how the rise of the betting apps

and the proliferation of sports betting in general has not only altered the wholesale experience of watching sports on TV, but the little peccadillos of it have begun to slip into our social life a little bit. I thought it was, I mean, I thought it was great, Manny, but like maybe you could jump in here and kind of tell us kind of what prompt to this and everything. I got some, I got some thoughts about it. Okay. Yeah, so, you know, here in New York, there are like a handful of sports bars that, that, it's funny. In New York, the sports bar does not usually play the audio for the game, which is a completely different vibe than the Midwest where

I'm from, like where the audio for the game is always on. And so that means there are a couple of places that I found that will put the audio on for you. And in these places, I've started to notice a little bit, a changing of the demographic of people that occupy those sports bars. Used to be the case, you go there because your team is on, you are emotionally invested in the game, it's very clear who you're rooting for. I feel like more and more I'm in these sports bars and I'm seeing people who come there to watch a game that they bet on, which is not illegal or anything, like that's fine to do. My beef has been kind of the behavior of those people when the bets go south and as we know the general math of casinos is that 90% of the

chance 90% of the time your bet is going south and so it just meant it has meant that like i'm in in these bars around people who have become really bad hangs essentially and so that's what my piece uh and in gq was about and to be fair it's it's extremely anecdotal right like it's possible that i'm going to bars where this is happening but that it's not a widespread thing happening in New York City. But I'd be willing to bet that like more and more people are going to the bar, the sports bar with financial stakes instead of just emotional stakes, which is what sports should be about. So many, let me, let me ask you a question. Do you think that you start with, you start the article with talking about a commercial an ad that John Hamm was actually

hawking this betting app, which I just have to say, it's, it's really, I don't know if I could say it's disappointing to anyone who has like a level of fame that I personally will never reach, right? At some point, like there should be some law that these people are going to disappoint you, right? In order to continue to enrich themselves, right? It's like seeing Larry David hawking crypto, right, during the Super Bowl a couple of years ago. A crazy thing about that to me is that like, you know, the diesel shack is famously never said no to a check and even he turned down that commercial, which is saying. Yeah, yeah, but he, he, he, also was to be a sheriff somewhere of georgia so like you know he's got his own thing but at least that's no disrespect to the diesel i'm just saying i've seen him hot a lot a lot you know down market of that stuff but betty what i want to ask though like about this app do you think that all right so like is your problem that the ubiquity of the app and the ubiquity of smartphones and the fact that everyone's going to be at the bar with a phone and in real time um especially given, you know, being licked up that people will act in ways that they might not otherwise have,

especially with the proliferation of this betting app in this social setting where, again, everyone has a smartphone. Do you think that how differently would it have been, like, say, 40 years ago, you know, before the advent of the smartphone and these really exploitative kind of apps? Yeah, it used to be the case that if you wanted to bet, like sports betting has been around forever. You know, it's only these apps that are kind of the, novel thing that's happening right now. But it used to be the case that, you know, if you were in, if you were in the northeast of the United States and you wanted to bet on a game, you either had to have a bookie or you would drive your ass down to like Atlantic City or whatever, go to the

casino and do it there. Now, I guess, my, kind of my beef is that it's become way too easy to, like, throw your kind of life savings away. And I think they knew that. I think a lot of these betting sports books and companies that are coming about that's part of their business plan and so now there's yeah the ubiquity of it there there's an insidious kind of dynamic where there are celebrities telling us to do this now that I just find really disturbing I'm not sure I'm for like a total ban of sports betting like I say in the article I engage here and there like it's it's a fun thing to do if you want to throw the price of a coffee that you usually get on a little bet

on a little Lakers parley you know I'm not against that but I think what's happened is that these companies have created a scenario where people are really throwing a lot of money away and there's a lot of studies and research that has been done to prove

how detrimental this has been for the country at whole I mean as you as you said for we jumped into this you know and again this is strictly anecdotal but I think I shared this on an episode of guys but I I'll re-share it here, and I'll redact the names, but... The gambling episode?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a great episode, by the way. People should check that out. My cousin is a professional poker player. He's, like, considered one of the best Omaha players in the world. He finished, like, sixth at the World Series event this year. Wow. And so he's like a dog.

And he was called me. That's been, I guess, several months ago. And he was like, man, it's like, you're the only person that appreciate the gravity of this. But we're all the time talking about how, like, the gambling apps are kind of, and we've been doing that, like, I've been, like, sports betting online since, like, bow dog was a thing, you know, when you had to, like, go get, like, a shifty, like, prepaid, like, visa from the gas station and then, like, put it on there because you couldn't use an American, like, banking institution to do it,

you know. And I've had my own personal losses. I'm probably the only man in left podcasting that's attended a Gambler's Anonymous meeting. But more on that later. So he says to me, he goes, you know, this guy, blank, who we both know who's married to a friend of ours from college, called me the other day on a whim and asked me if he could borrow $100,000. And like, like, that's like, like, just a normal thing that people do, you know what I mean?

And like, my cousin does well, but like not well enough to be like, yeah, you can have like $100,000 and just whenever you get a chance, get that back to me, you know. his wife would kill him and he was like man like i don't know like i could probably like give you like 10 grand or something like if you had to have it like and that would be you know like the most i could do and he's like man listen like i'm in a really bad way here and uh he's at my cousin said what's going on he's like well my wife redacted had this fun that she had been contributed to for years she's a dentist and like it's that's kind of freed him up to kind of work his side job and like more or less take care of the kids and stuff like that and um she'd save like

half a million dollars in this fun they were going to you know live the suburban dream of you know getting the in-ground pool and like i'm so afraid of where this story's yeah the buck guys come into play let me tell you okay and just just just just draft kings okay and just just just just the one app and had over time started dipping into that account and at first it was like little bets and stuff like that and then gradually over time he had amassed basically a quarter million dollars in losses on on the apps not getting in hawk to you know some guy named butch in calam yeah you know this is not owing someone money no no no no no no no this is like just straight up losses. And this had piled up over a period of like six months. And the thing that's like

that's kind of crazy to me is like, one, embezzling money from your wife is not a good strategy for keeping your marriage intact. But the other part to that is, it's like waking up every day and knowing she could just look at that account and see that. And then, like, you know, like, I think I would happen at any moment. I would have to go to her and just throw myself on her Merce and be like, I'm a huge piece of shit. I'll figure out some way to make this right. But not only the scene, I think the thing, Tom, is that, and this goes back into like the sort of ubiquity and the insidious sense of the apps is that I think it's like, you know,

it's not even just, you know, gambling is an addiction, right, you know. It's also, I think that, and tell me, man, you let me know if I'm right or wrong here and maybe, Tom, sorry, Tom, you do too, especially with the, um, the, what is it, the draft king's app, but is it sort of gamified and even the way that the UI is presented to you. It's not like you actually have to physically get on a bus or a train to go see a bookie, right? Or to take your ass to a casino or anything like that. Right. Exactly. You don't have to physically do something. So even just like the ubiquity, but the game of the gamification of it, you know, the Uberization of vice. Yes, yes. The fact that the UI is so sleek and

smooth and slick, you know, and I think like, and this is maybe a dopamine thing that also kind relates to our like doom scrolling, our addiction to social media. I just think that the UI itself is sort of inviting and gratifying in and of itself you have the double frat gratification of making the bet right and that quote sort of suspension right which is really the addicting thing I guess right of whether or not you're actually going to hit but then it's on top of it is like you you're you're like a little kid man you know you're like my little my little nephew with his leapfrog thing you know what I mean just tapping buttons and press to get gratified from it you know what I read yeah you're you're totally right it's it is uh you know these apps the UI on these apps are not sleek for the

betterment of the user, right? Like you get, obviously UI and UX is very important in video gaming or whatever, just to make people's lives easier. Here it is, it's designed to keep you on the app, first of all. There's a lot of similarities between these apps and like Instagram, for example. The purpose is to keep you on there. The purpose is to get these dopamine rushes hitting. Even when you lose, they'll come back and be like, well, here's 10 free dollars if you want to,

you know, throw this on something else. It's like it is a total loop. You've already flushed your marriage, but here's a little something to help, a little salve. That's like the one time I used, I used Hitch for like one time, Only Man, and like whatsoever.

It never works for me personally. But I think like once you exhaust, like the amount of hearts or something that they give you, they give you like a couple more towards getting more so that you can look through it all plans. And I was like, hey, how many people found the love of their life on them bonus hearts though?

You know what I mean? It might have been Zoron, yeah. Yeah, man. So it's totally, you're totally right. You hit the nail on the head. It's designed in a way to keep you on there. And like you were saying, you know, the story you just told Tom, that used to happen, you know, 30, 40 years ago as well. Now in this new scenario that we have, it's just more and more common.

You don't have to leave your couch. Well, here's the thing, though. It gets worse. So a couple weeks after that, okay, my cousin's like, you know, and I think he gave him like 10 grand, just to buy him some goodwill like here, just be like, look, I'll just like put every dime that I have toward putting that back and throw yourself on her murder. And she was willing to like figure something out with him, which is crazy to me. But he got the lifeline, okay? And then he thought there's just no way the Notre Dame fighting Irish are going to lose

to the last month as a national championship game. This past January, like that game? That game. Oh my God. Wasn't Notre Dame the underdog? Well, I think, you know, the Vegas underdog? You know, being an Irish Catholic might have played some rolling to it or something like that.

I don't know. He's playing for ethnic pride at that point. But so here's what happened. As we've, as many will tell you, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish did not win the national championship this past. I saw it in person. And in what we're talking about, it's like, you know, the UI you all are discussing, but also too, this concept of this dopamine release that happens in psychology they call it loss chasing, you know. I heard like the poker player, Phil Helmuth say one time that his favorite thing to do was to play poker and win money. And his second favorite thing to do is to play poker and lose money.

He creates a dare to be great situation in his head. As a lot of these guys that we're talking about for man, he's piece too, I think that's part of the whole thing. I think that's part of why they, you know, throw shoes and whatever and act out in public. But as we just said, Notre Dame lost Ohio State One, he had put the rest of the, the money of that account. He drained it. And she found out because it like overdrafted by like eight bucks and she got a text about it. Oh.

Eight bucks, dude. I can't imagine. I mean, it's nightmare fuel. Like, it is nightmare fuel to just flush your whole life away on that. Yeah. And just permanently destroy trust with your wife. And like basically a like a handful of bad decisions that transpired over the course. of a year.

Yeah. The thing, too, about those dopamine hits, it doesn't, in those apps, it doesn't occur just from winning. When you place the bet, they make it nice and, they make it look nice. Here's your total payout in big green numbers. They show you digital confetti. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's how much you can win.

But that, the story, I mean, I can't believe that. I mean, it's, but the thing is, too, it's like, all right, this new data shows that one in five people have online sports bet with money that comes from a savings account. And I think this would qualify. And I think it's one in four people have sports bet with money that was meant to be used to pay bills. And so immediately after the legalization of some of these apps in the U.S., we're starting to see a very quick turnaround of like the detrimental aspects of it. And the most disturbing stat that I've seen is that there is a correlation between the legalization of online sports betting and an increase in domestic violence that happens in the United States.

And I'll send you guys a study. It's not a simple case of like correlation is not causation. This is, it's like kind of direct. Like you can draw straight line between domestic violence and like really fresh in the sports out. Exactly. I mean, what it is that, I mean, like, just kind of distill it. It's like, you know, people already feel like they live in a society in which gambling, you know, or chance or luck is already, like, a feature of their lives no matter how hard they work, no matter. I mean, I guess it's different if you were born into money.

But if you weren't, or if you get in a car accident and you get injured, you know, and you have these sky high hospital bills. And it's like, well, you know, I can dip into money. to pay its savings to pay it off, or I could dip into my savings so I can spend that money gambling so that I can win a beggar payout so that I can completely erase my debt. So I'm just saying it's like gambling upon gambling. And the society that's already kind of predicated upon that, it's even just more predatory. And people just end up sort of exhausting any savings that they have any at all, you know, that are meant for things like, you know, emergencies and whatnot.

Yeah. The word you just used there is the exact way to describe this. it's predatory like these companies are doing everything they are preying on you know men in their young 20s to early 30s who have a little bit of extra money that they could throw around and uh then they are betting on those guys to get stuck in the apps um it's weird because i mentioned in my article that sports betting in some the tiny silver lining has been that a lot of men have like met each other and are now friends and they've created these many communities where there's, you know, a lot of camaraderie and like in a world that is decreasing in those options for men. And so when the

legalization first happened, you know, I started getting added to these group chats on these discords. And I met a lot of friends and we're still cool online. And, you know, that was an ask, that was a layer of it that I thought, wow, this is kind of cool. Some of those group chats have turned into complete, like, you know, lost chasing nightmares. Like, it, like, started off with some optimism and now it's kind of devolved. Well, Mani, I want to ask you a question to speak on those darker, the darkest side of sports betting and to kind of playoff of something that Tom you had mentioned about that anecdote you had given instead of, I guess, betting based off of ethnic pride, which is bad

in the end of itself, right? Like, little, uh, little, uh, little, don't have name humor there. I think, I think, uh, I think, uh, I think that would lend to a lot of hooliganism that you see in UK, uh, UK soccer. Um, but, um, a lot of it is racism, right. Um, racial, racial, uh, animosity. But, um, you mentioned, you mentioned this really interesting psychological, this dikes, the dark psychological, um, kind of like, um, turn, right? with people betting against their teams that they actually like you talk about this guy

like getting really upset and what's truly darky right is watching someone root against their own team their own joy because of the potential payout you know so can you can you talk about like why that is I mean the only analogy that I could give not being a sports guy but sort of being into I dare to say fandom right but I mean I'm a nerd right

and like Star Trek and you know seeing certain fandoms become very toxic when they seem, Star Trek has always been pretty, pretty dope. But, you know, seeing these fandoms become sort of toxic, like, it just sort of, like, or even seeing it kind of, um, um, capitalized and prophetize in a way that Andrew Garfield spoke about with all these super hero movies, something that used to actually be enjoyable for, uh, for people, you know, even if it was a childhood pleasure. But how, how does, how is that for you personally sort of soured, not? I don't know, maybe not, maybe sports betting, but even just sports in general.

And like, yeah, can you just talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I have a lot of, uh, fandoms, like, in terms of sports, like, being from Ohio, I'm pretty much a fan of every team that comes out of Ohio in a passive way. But there's one team that I'm like a diehard fan of. That's Ohio State college football. And I have a rule. I don't bet on Ohio State football because to me that is a, that would be a direct violation of like the joy that I draw from the sport and from watching them.

And I think a lot of people have not... Does that include even betting for them? Yeah, I really, I don't. Oh, interesting, interesting. You would think if you're betting, because then you get mad at them for shit. Oh, some Pete Rose shit. Yeah.

Like, I won't, I really won't bet, like, Ohio State to win the money line either, even though I'm rooting for that anyway, because if they lose, I'm mad at them for a separate reason than why they lost. When you throw money into it, when you make it, when you, when you imply or impugn any sort of transactionalism, especially when it comes to like money, like, of course you're going to be like

not even just personally invested that point, you're financially invested. So you're going to be pissed off at them. Yeah, I want to be upset at Ohio State because they run the fucking screenplay too much, not because they lost me $100. So, so yeah, in the article, I was at this sports bar i didn't i didn't name them in the article because i don't know i was afraid but i can name them here it's a kelly sports bar in the lower east side and i like that spot it's got a lot of tvs uh it has a pool table in the basement so i like going there a lot so this is nothing on them but yeah i've noticed there a lot of younger kids and when i say kids i mean like 24 25 um um i'm in my 30s now so i like to feel a little bit older but um yeah they're little motherfuckers yeah they're little

friends. And so yeah, there was a guy that came here recently graduated from Miami University and he had this kind of crazy parlay bet where, I don't know, there was like prop bets where like certain players needed to catch a certain amount of catches. And like, I just see him getting pissed off at his own team. And he's wearing a Miami jersey. And eventually Miami starts to pull away. They're playing Florida State. This is a huge rivalry game. Like you're supposed to really be locked in if you're a fan. And, uh, and he's just, belligerently upset screaming at the TV and I just thought it was such a dark scene like I was I was watching that and I was like this is really a violation of what sports is supposed to be for

people it's supposed to be kind of a unifying concept of course before sports betting we of course there's anger in sports we get mad at teams all the time but something insidious about being that upset at your own team when they won they won the game by a couple of touchdowns but you lost your ticket and so you lost but he lost a ticket so he's upset and I was like this this this is not a sustainable way to watch sports you know what's what's what's and I want to be out of comments on this because I don't know anything about the sports world sports better as I keep saying but what's really troubling to me is that it's one thing like I mean and this is not the troubling part right stats right like um and sort of

speculating on how a player is going to perform one season you know all these stats that to me look like, you know, the sort of choose your character screen in a video game when they have all their, you know, strength, dexterity, and all that, right? That's one thing, right? Because, I mean, these are actual people and you don't know how, sure, they may be paid a lot of money to throw a ball, but you don't know how they're going to react, right, when they get on the field or on the court, you know. So to kind of like, to kind of like make it that exact like that, it's kind of weird to me. It's kind of really, I don't want to use the word objectifying, but that's kind of what it feels like, right? Yeah. But, but whatever, these guys get paid

lost money right but to actually bet on whether or not they're going to make certain plays like that gets to a point where it's like it's once again like you're not even hating the player for like not like because you see him you know not catching the ball or doing a play that you want to it's because it's going to connected to you making money off of that and maybe that reflects on how you judge a player and how you judge the whole sport entirely you know yeah it's like they they offer these kind of in the weeds bets because they know that they're going to lose. I mean, you know, a couple of people, like a very small percentage of people hit on those bets and that's great. And I've hit on those bets before and it's felt really good. But the like 99% of them lose because they're adding

all these things to it. And they wouldn't offer, these sports books would not offer these types of bets if they were like winners. Obviously. There's a reason parley's pay out so well. It's because they're hard to hit. Their lottery. It's lottery. It's lottery. Esk, even something that seems, that might seem doable if I have a five-leg parlay of all these players hitting 10 points in the Lakers or whatever, the chances are actually way lower than you think. Yeah, right. And yeah, it's kind of, it's just kind of a, you know, really dark way to look at sports, something that's supposed to entertain you.

Well, it's also like the other dark part of it, too, that really is, like, kind of crazy is now you have just like more access to players and stuff, particularly in college. and you got like grown men cussing out 19 year old kids like on Instagram DMs about like something they didn't do because they didn't make their you know their parlay and whatever Jimmy Butler actually just got pressed by some fan when he was walking down the street some guy walked up to him and started cussing him out about a parlay and uh and you know they this has been happening on X with Kevin Durant obviously when you when you are compelled to seek out the player themselves.

Yeah. That's when it gets really good. You save that shit for politicians. You know what I'm saying? You have restaurants and shit like that. I mean, again, this seems to be like, and now, maybe we could, maybe you could like kind of like, like pull this into a larger narrative.

But it just seems like at a time when Tom used this word a lot, we live in such a disenchanted world, a disenchanted country, you know, where people, like people's sort of ability to channel their, you know, know anger or their confusion or whatever into other outlets is increasingly becoming rare or increasingly dangerous fanatical conspiratorial and you would hope that something like sports you know i mean on the opposite side of this i guess this is what trump is doing by trying to house the ufc on the white house law or something like that you know what i mean but like you would hope that at the top like this that

sports could as you said man it could be a unifying thing or maybe even a clarative sort of um you know cloud thing because you know not to not to run it back too much but i just think about like how sort of dope it was to see people kneel right and i know that's a performative symbolic thing but even that sort of like that sort of awareness of that idea of community or some sort of expression right you know of something bigger than like just getting at angry at another team you know what i mean yeah i don't know i just feel like we're sorely bereft of that you know totally yeah to that point you saw what happened to capper next for that and you see how the NFL makes all those success oh it's a football ball decision like the motherfucker didn't just lead the 49ers to the Super Bowl two years before

that right but you know way the guy's way less talented than him still keep a job interesting well I think to sort of put a bow on all this too is like in something I kind of wanted to bring up about the nature of like gambling and American society in general is like and you know I think it speaks also to like the way that you know we talk about the AI bubble and stuff stuff like that and how, you know, currently the, you know, I don't know, the stock market lost a trillion dollars the other day, so I've not saw what the movement is, being that I don't understand financial instruments like I should. I understand like art and chairs and stuff, you know. Yeah.

But at a time when just like a month ago, like 84% of the U.S. economy was wrapped up in the AI bubble, and only of that 84%, only 14% of it was sort of, for lack of a better term, monetizable, that they could see like an actual way they can make, generate money for shareholders and stuff off 14% of that 84%. So you got 74% of the U.S. economy that's just essentially vapor, right? And also, as you know, to have any dignity in retirement, because especially with, you know, Social Security getting cut, cut, cut, cut, and cut by the time we're old enough to draw, that seems like who the fuck knows where that's going to be at, you know. Our dignity and retirement is predicated on essentially a form of gambling where we entrust,

nine rich dickheads with all of our money for decades in advance and trust them to be good stewards over that and make the right decisions for that while they also enrich themselves in that process where we're not really enriched they give us crumbs off of that right it's like a sort of it's like a you know it's not I don't want to call it a pyramid scheme or anything like that but it's not dissimilar from an MLM you can see how like like sports betting has been allowed to become like such a toehold. And, you know, when Manny mentioned the domestic violence tie-in, that is the grimmest statistic I've heard.

Before I heard that, I thought the grimace statistic was 82 percent, 82 percent of college-aged men, say 18 to 24 or something like that, were on the gambling apps. Mm-hmm. 82 percent. Can you all think of anything else in American life where you got an 82 percent consensus on something. Yeah, that is, it's unbelievable. It's like unfathomable.

And then it's like, it's like, and I promise I'm going somewhere with this. But it's also like, I remember like when, you know, obviously I've read you're riding on it in the places you've appeared on and other guys like Jay Caspian Kang have written meaningfully about this stuff. Like, I remember when the gambling apps were trying to get footholds in the States and they were going state by state. And I remember reading something. I'm going to botch some figures here, but like the essence of this is true.

They had brought this prospectus before the state of New Jersey. Basically, you know, I don't want to besmirch New Jersey and call them a commuter state from New York. But, you know, a very small state will say. As a New York or I will. Okay. Well, I'll let you. I'll let you.

I'll fucking hate New Jersey. A small state like New Jersey, they essentially thought they, they want to and they brought this to them, like MGM or whoever it was. So we basically think this will add $15 or so million to your coffers every year. It's worth doing all that kind of thing. What the state could draw off of this could expect to get their piece of this. A year later, that figure was in the billions with a B, just in New Jersey. And so you think about the scope of this.

And it makes me wonder, is this going to be one of those things like smoking, you know, we're like years and years later, if we're going to find out we've been lied to have manipulated into doing this with those numbers so staggering like that, you know, what, like, what does the future hold and what does that mean for, you know, our long-term prospects? I don't know.

It's a great question. I've seen some people smarter than me argue that like Democrats, for example, should take the kind of haul, monitor stance here and be like, look, guys, we got to, we got to rein this back a little bit. I've seen some arguments that are like, okay, let's allow online sports betting, but just money line. Just bet on who the team, what team you think is going to win instead of kind of the more in the weed stuff that you can really lose money on. So I don't know. Like, I don't know

which one of those paths I feel like is the right way or actually the most likely. There's just a powerful lobby for it now there's a powerful lobby for for sports gambling and i think like not to get conspiratorial but like it's anytime the powers that be could see a mode where like regular people can lose money and be more dependent on them i feel like has a good shot at sticking around yeah i mean especially if i mean like also if they were in cahoots with these betting companies right you know And, you know, in concert with lobbyists and shit like that, you know. And they are. And the controls keep getting more lax.

Like I just saw something the other day. The NCAA voted to allow student athletes to bet as long as they don't bet on their own sport. Okay. Now, that seems like a fairly innocuous thing, except for when you zoom out and you see, like, how certain NBA players, Michael Porter Jr.'s brother is like lifetime ban from the NBA. Terry Rozier seems to be in hot water. There's like, there's edits of Terry Rozier playing like, you know,

me at my Monday not pickup game. Like in games where it's like, he's one of the best two guards in the league. And it's like he's playing like a bum. And it's like, oh, and then you see he's implicated in this thing with Chauncey belts and all this stuff.

It's hard, it's a hard thing that is like something that's prudder naturally rigged slightly against you, in this case, like rigged heavily against you because like, man, you know 90 something percent of people are losers of this but i mean it's emblematic of

america too right like there's all these like little controls the same thing with the stock market's like what rich people understand that like we don't as on mass is the time value of money like there's greater benefit in having 300 million people give you a little bit of their money and you get to like decide what to do with that right now today versus like how it gets back to us where like in a good year we get eight to 12 percent back on the stock market like if we're just like invested in like the overall u.s market or something like that you know and like indexes and stuff like that and we're that's a like that's considered like it's reliable sure but it's sort of a pittance compared to what we do for them in advance and it's the same thing with sports

betting where it's like there are all these things that like people don't i think it's something i don't think people understand about it the same cousin that there's the subject of the story about a guy losing his wife's savings account. He used to work for this guy named Billy Walters, who wrote this book called Gambler. Something notes from a life at risk came out a couple years ago. Billy Walters is from Kentucky. He'll Billy from Montferville, Kentucky.

So we're predator-naturally disposed of this stuff. But my cousin went and worked for this guy for a while. And what Billy would do, Billy is the world's most successful gambler. There's like a 60 Minutes piece or 48 hours, something like that piece about Billy from several years ago where the casinos basically quit taking his action because he was so good. But his strategy was line manipulation. So what he would do is he would figure out where he wanted that line to be and he would put a bunch of money on it, just this influx of cash one way to push it to where he wanted and then he'd put even more money once it got there. and so like when they figured this out you know they basically put the kibosh to him and like you know he was friends with all these casino owners and all these athletes and stuff like that

and like he basically kind of became a pariah a little bit and then ended up going to jail for insider trading that was somehow facilitated by Phil Mickelson now that's wow but my cousin was his guy in Cincinnati and what he would do is he had basically a syndicate of guys all over the country at any city where that was big enough to host a pro sports team so he had a guy in Cincinnati guy in Columbus guy in Cleveland guys you know that's just in Ohio he had guys all over place this guy and I'm sorry I should take that out Perry take that out was this guy in Cincinnati it was him and this guy smoothie which is and my cousin's like that's the only thing I ever knew him as is smoothie you know smoothie yeah and their job was to go to the casinos on the river

as soon as the sports books opened and place Billy's wagers right when the lines open because people don't understand how much those lines move once it gets downstream to the app guys. So there's all these controls in place that you don't even see, before you even see your line that you're going to bet, right? How much that line has moved.

The pros get it right at the open and they've got guys that go and do that for them. By the time it gets to you, the line has shifted so far down that it's like it's even more, even more stacked against you. And then when you are, there are, there's been instances where like, all right, like you said, there are some people who are just better at gambling than other people and those people

have like accounts on, on X or or on Discord where they're like, hey, here's my bet. Here you go. Everyone should feel free to place this if you like. And now the sports betting books have figured out about this and are cracking down on it. So they can now look at the data and see if, you know, X amount of people place the same exact bet. They will void that bet if it wins. And this has happened a couple times now and it's like complete, obviously bullshit. It's like cheating, I guess.

It's convenient that they want their money and expect it, you know, like at the point of service. But when you get them, they start getting a little pissy about it. It's not dissimilar to like, do you remember one like the, and I'm not saying like, the guys that were like shortened game stop and doing all that stuff or like i'm not saying like we should be in league with those guys necessarily but you did one cool thing that came out of is you saw how pissy like the the captains of industry got about this rag tag bunch of people fucking with their money like that they were like this is not how this is supposed to be i'm supposed to be the one who's deciding and being in power here and that that totally flipped their

world over for a little bit yeah can i can ask a really stupid question maybe this ignorant but like There's no limit to however much money you can bet, right, as long as you have it, right? Or it supposedly have it, right? Yeah, I mean, what do you mean? Like a credit line, for example? Yeah, I guess like, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. I think, like, the more classic way to do this would be with a bookie, and, like, some people might get in pretty deep with a bookie. But on the app, it's as much as you have in your bank account.

Of course, now, once you lose all your money, they will be sending you free bets to, and you know, win a little bit more and then sink in. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I guess that's kind of my point, right? That there's nothing more American than losing as much money as possible in order to make more money, right? You know what I mean? And that's just completely legalized and rationalize, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It's completely crazy. So, yeah. So anyway, to wrap this up and everything, Mani, what do you think is like the, uh, the, uh, Like, what comes of all this, basically? Like, is there going to be anything left of, like, are we all just going to be, like, you know, indentured to fucking Fandul, you know,

like in 10 years or, like, you're 82% of the male population? Seems to me that, like, you know, for the generic upside, like you're talking about, like, of, you know, getting some of these group chats and kind of building some camaraderie around this, like, hobby that you like to do, but some guys taking it too far and stuff like that, you feel like if you had to just surmise, what social life will be like for not only the 18 to 24 year olds who are like on this in a huge

way but society more general what do you think this stuff portends for uh you know you know i hate to be cynical it's not it's not looking great we're we're very much like we're still in my opinion at the top of the slippery slope and we in and we've already seen so much so you think there's even more room to oh yeah Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, we're just now getting some of this data about, you know, what the negative effects of, like, the easy access to sports betting has been. You know, we're still a long way from any kind of legislative action.

So these kind of stats are just going to get worse and worse. And, you know, I try in my little ways writing these articles coming on your show, for example, to kind of help educate people to understand just how stats. against you this is it feels like oh if i can bet on the lakers to win tonight why would it not like you know if that that feels good and likely but it's the it's the advent of this happening over time that's going to bite you in the ass and um and of course for some people it gets a lot worse than others like i i've uh you know i've been on a losing streak once and then kind of like reframed how i think about sports like online sports betting i look at it

it now a little bit more like a treat versus like a way to make money. If I, if I don't get my second coffee today, I might consider throwing that eight bucks. It's expensive in New York on a, on like, not Ohio State, but on, you know, any college football game or whatever. And then winning, you know, maybe that five bucks out of that. Like this is very small stakes, like little treats here and there is the way I look at it. But, but, you know, the way the sports betting apps advertised to people is that you'll win a lot of money. And that John Hamm ad that you mentioned at the top of this episode, the user, so to speak, is a total hero in the sports bar after winning a bet.

Everyone's picking them up, cheering, like, it's total jubilation in there. Yeah, exactly. And that's what they, that's not only completely diametrically opposed to what actually happens in sports bars but it but it's like it's the dream that they're selling you on it's like i feel like that's the part if i had to guess where legislation might go to mitigate some of the bad effects of this i would i would imagine they would stop they would have some kind of stop gaps on the advertising uh end of it you guys might have seen this clip on esPN a couple weeks ago. They're talking about this FBI, the indictments of Chauncey Billups and Terry

Rozier. And they're talking about it on ESPN at the same time that the sports betting advertisements are on the sides of the screen. Somebody in the production room was like, this is a terrible look and just like nukes all the graphics on the screen at the same time. So you're starting to see like, yeah, and they removed like shit that wasn't even about sports betting, like the NFL lineups and shit that was happening. So, I think you're starting to see an acknowledgement of, like, you know, some of this is there's obvious ethical concerns about this. And, yeah, just to answer your question, if I had to guess where this is going to go, you know, I'd like to see some kind of legislation that makes it so that it's, you know, the most famous people in the country are telling you to get on these apps. I just think it's, I just think it's gross.

No, absolutely, man. And, I mean, we don't want, like, a generation of young men, you know, who have been a debt-ridden. you know because like the port and blazers of like 2048 didn't win the playoff you know yeah you know you want to be you know there there used to be normal ways to lose all your money this this feels like absurd you know no maybe that's a piece of it maybe like a generation that's shackled by dead and doesn't really have a whole lot of hope and discharging that debt maybe this also plays in that psychology and is allowed for that rise and stuff you know it's that it's that What you were just saying, man, it reminded me of, have you ever seen the movie 900 or two for the money?

It's Matthew McConaughey and Al Pacino. It's from like maybe 2004 or 2005 or something. But basically this is like a primitive version where Al Pacino runs a tout service. And Matthew McConaughey is like a former college football player that tore his ACL and didn't amount to anything in the pros and everything. So he goes to work for Al Pacino. And they used to have these like, you know, back in the day, they would have these like Saturday morning like talking. head shows, which are now just on ESPN. They've just merged with ESPN.

But, like, you can see guys that would, like, tell you what teams to bed and what games to bed and all that kind of stuff, like, every week. Yeah. It was a little more niche, a little more subcultory then. Now it's just part of the wholesale experience of watching sports. And there's a scene in the movie where Al Pacino takes his, like, number, his card into, like, Gambler's Anonymous meetings. He poses as, like, some of the gambling problem.

Then starts handing out the cards to people. that's kind of what you like the ESPN graphics is kind of the 2025 version of that that's a really good analogy yeah it just gets it just gets to be it gets to be too much and even as someone who enjoyed and still does enjoy betting here and there you know for me this has gone too far yeah yeah well manny I appreciate you so much for being with us and it's a fun we could probably do like three more episodes on this if we could I know time and has these things developed we might have to and imparting i would just say to you guys like i've experienced a lot of elation in sports bars i've seen a lot of collective joy i have not once seen

anybody foisted on somebody's shoulders and carried out the trial of the hero so don't believe everything you'll not become legendary that's right that's right thanks again man i appreciate it man aaron thanks again man for being with us too of course man and many thank you thank you man for coming on and it's nice to finally get to meet your brother yeah i had a lot of fun on the show. Thanks for inviting me on. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, man. As we mentioned earlier in the episode, Manny has a book coming out in March of next year, and the pre-order link for that will be in the show notes, as well as a link to Mani's podcast, No Such Thing, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're listening to this, you know, a safe bet is to take

$5 a month over to patreon.com slash trillbilly workers party. where for that $5, you will get upwards of four bonus episodes a month and maybe some other goodies as they arise. So do that and tell a friend to tell a friend if you're already over there. And yeah, thanks again, fellas. I'm going to be able to be.