From: don.p.del.grande@gmail.com   
      
   > I disagree. Cal-Berkeley has a culture most people find... weird. And then   
   you have the culture in California that if you aren't some form of a pro team   
   (HS football counts for the sports factories), no one cares. Which see, again,   
   the vote to disallow    
   sports gambling.    
      
   Cal and Stanford have one advantage when it comes to the minor sports. Nobody   
   plays a minor sport expecting to make it their professional career, which   
   means a scholarship is pretty much a free ticket into a school where a degree   
   just might be worth    
   something.   
      
   And refresh my memory - you're not from California? I am, and I saw the   
   politics behind this vote first hand, starting long before the ballot   
   propositions even had numbers.   
   One problem with the vote was, there were two competing propositions. One   
   would limit it to being physically in a tribal casino, or one of the four   
   (oops - now three, now that Golden Gate Fields is being sold) major horse   
   racing tracks in California; the    
   other would allow for online betting, but while technically it had to be run   
   by the tribes, they could (and would) outsource it to companies like   
   DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM (which, in fact, were the main contributors to   
   that proposition). The TV    
   commercials weren't so much "vote for me" as they were "don't vote for my   
   opponent" - and the TV commercials started LONG before there were enough   
   signatures for either one to qualify for the ballot. The commercials for the   
   "no online betting" ones    
   pretty much consisted of two kinds: (a) "DraftKings and FanDuel will pocket   
   most of the money, and California will get very little of it!", and (b) "Do   
   you honestly think your teenagers won't be able to place bets?" Meanwhile, the   
   ones supporting online    
   betting also had two kinds; the ones that aired outside of sporting events   
   touted how some of the profits would go towards supporting the state's   
   homeless, while the ones that aired during sporting events (literally, one   
   aired for the first time in the    
   first 10 minutes of Fox's first NFL pregame show of 2022) said, "Online   
   betting in California if you vote for us. Enough said." Between each side's   
   detractors and the people against sports betting in California in general   
   (plus who knows how much money    
   from various Vegas/Reno/Tahoe casino interests), both were doomed to defeat.   
      
   Note that, under California law, the next chance to change the law to allow   
   for sports betting of any sort (besides horse racing) is in November, 2024.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)