On a Friday afternoon, you’ll hear the typical sounds in almost every high school locker room: cleats slapping concrete, a coach berating someone for being late for the bus, or someone arguing over a missed tackle from the previous week. However, if you listen a bit longer, something else comes through. Parlays and spreads. over-unders. Before warming up, a sophomore frowns at a screen while checking his phone. No one recoils. Now it’s just a part of the atmosphere.
Although it took time for that change to occur, most adults were unaware of how quickly it was happening. A 28-year-old recovering gambler named Saul Malek stood on a stage at a private boys’ school in Cleveland the same week Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby checked himself into a residential treatment center for a gambling addiction that allegedly started when he was still a teenager. Malek asked everyone in the room if they were sports fans. Almost all of them raised their hands. Then he explained to them how, when he was their age, a single $10 baseball wager resulted in $25,000 in debt and a near-suicide by the age of 21. When teenagers recognize something familiar, the room becomes quiet.
The Sorsby case is the kind of tale that college football beat writers used to find unthinkable: a quarterback with a $5 million NIL contract, a transfer success story, who might lose everything due to wagers made on his phone over a four-year period. Only 46 players have used the NFL Supplemental Draft since 1977, and he is now hoping that a lawyer can save his eligibility. That’s not much of a lifeline. However, the implication—which is becoming more and more difficult to ignore—that he began young is what sets the story apart from previous scandals. Not at a university. earlier.
The figures pertaining to the industry as a whole are nearly absurd. Last year, Americans legally wagered $166.94 billion on sports, an increase of about 11% from the previous year, bringing in almost $17 billion for the sportsbooks. That money didn’t just show up. It originated somewhere, from someone, frequently from those who were given a glowing app on their eighteenth birthday, and occasionally even earlier. A third of American boys between the ages of 11 and 17 reported having gambled in some capacity in the previous year, according to a recent Common Sense Media survey, although national data on teen gambling is inconsistent, which seems telling in and of itself. According to a Massachusetts study, roughly 10% of those children were already exhibiting symptoms of problem gambling.
The picture becomes clearer when you speak with the boys directly. Henry Brown, a senior at University School in Ohio, stated that while parents are concerned about drugs, alcohol, and gambling, gambling is “probably the most common.” Gavin Owens, another student, talked about friends who are unable to watch a Cavaliers game without first placing a wager on James Harden’s total rebounds. He claimed that during class discussions, one of his classmates keeps his betting app open on his lap. “Their mind’s in another place — probably on the spreads.” The adolescent’s statement is eerily mature.
Observing all of this gives the impression that the sports industry is still catching up to a problem that it contributed to accelerating. Leagues and sportsbooks formed profitable alliances. Betting odds were incorporated into broadcasts by networks. Athletes themselves turned into prop bets; their snaps, rebounds, and first-quarter completions were reduced to small, tradable pieces. The audience then became younger at some point.
Scandals will continue to occur. Players are barred, coaches are charged, and press conferences are being affected by federal investigations. The more subdued issue, however, is the one that won’t make ESPN: a sixteen-year-old refreshingly making free throws after practice while holding a phone face down on the bleachers.
