Before and After

Health and wellness companies often tout the power of their product with the vaunted before-and-after photo, showing what appears to be proof-positive that whatever is in their bottle/shake/meal plan/supplement/diet/exercise plan/subscription-bicycle-mountainclimber-rower-oversizedfoodprocessor they’re pitching you on.

Right there in front of you is a photo of a person, often a very average someone who looks a bit like you. There are actually two photos of this person, side by side. The left photo version (in left-to-right reading countries) is usually someone who is in very-to-somewhat poor shape – often a bit like you, if you’re still looking at their picture by now. More often than not the someone a bit like you is looking somewhere between ambivalent and deeply unhappy.

Maybe a bit like you. Maybe not. But what almost always draws the most attention seems to be a dramatic difference between our poor before and our (obviously ever) after.

About that after. That after is always radiant. Glowing, even. The picture of health. But still, the message is clear. This not-quite-you was sad and lonely and miserable before our ^^whatchamagig, and now (possibly in some part to what they’re trying to get you to buy)… They… Are… Happy. Better. Maybe just finally okay.

What a lovely thing to aspire to, even if it’s often more than a little manipulative. If only the larger-scale out-your bedroom window before’s and after’s were always so convenient. Sometimes they work out just fine, and sometimes… well, sometimes.

Real-life before and afters can also look like Mount St. Helens, the Tohuku tsunami, or even something more theoretically innocuous, like social media. Those afters are the new state of things, and best of luck ever getting things back to the way they were. Pandora is out of the box. Apple is bitten. The Kraken has been… um… released.

Sorry. Point over-made.

Speaking of before’s and after’s, Next year will mark 35 years since Pete Rose accepted Major League Baseball’s ban for his involvement with gambling in his own sport, and Charlie Hustled on out of the game. He’s the poster child of how sports had always felt about the image of its “games are played fairly” version of being Reality TV. The idea that someone of influence might shift the outcomes of games to benefit their wallet is the sort of stain a money-making big league operation has to stamp out quickly and fiercely to avoid losing their loyal believers. Er, fanbases. Rose got caught very red-handed, and is still out of baseball and the Hall of Fame in his early eighties. His before and after is rather catastrophic, yes? A real sports Mount S. Helens.

When it comes to sports and gambling in the past, Player Rose is not just a first-ballot Hall of Famer, he’s THE first-ballot Hall of Famer, a guy who owns the kind of forever records that matter in a sport of the size and history of baseball. Manager/player-then-manager-bettor on his own games Rose is the capital-P Pariah that can actually possibly erase all that amazingness, at least during his own lifetime.

So it says something about the still-sizable penalties that four professional football players were given by the NFL in relation to their gambling habits, just handed down a few days ago. Three of the four will face indefinite penalties for betting on their own league, and the fourth will still miss a third of his upcoming season for betting on “other sports”. Whether the punishments end up fitting the crimes will be telling, but one imagines even the gents on indefinite punishments may not be out of their sports until they’re at least octogenarians. The current language is “at least this year”. Less threatening sounding, no?

Outside players themselves, there was more “is this okay?” news surrounding Shams Charania and his relationship with a sports betting site that ended up profiting greatly from news he shared. It may not have actually been a byproduct of ill intent, though I’m sure it will be examined more closely, but it exposes the influence someone like Charania can have in those situations. One might imagine there might be regulation on the way to close that little loophole quickly.

But so much of this comes in the face of this new normal, in which online betting and some of the regulation/deregulation that came with it have changed the shape of the new sports landscape. Before? Betting bad. After? Betting good. Betting possibly wonderful. Unless of course you have a problem, and then just listen to the 45 second wrap-up rider for a jillion different states that follows the end of every gambling ad on your favorite podcast’s betting commercial. It’s a new world, but one with a certainly slippery slope. Or two. Hundred.

The revised models of several of the sports approaching this new world are embracing the fact that this action will be going on with or without them, and not only can they realize some of the massive fruits that surround that labor, but also be able to shine a light more brightly on a space they are monitoring themselves. Eyes open, as it were, to a variety of degrees. The NBA led the way in reaching across the aisle to the betting sites, and the other huge properties soon followed. Football was the particularly juicy addition. Now “the line” is a part of conversations that surround the game throughout, including the odds of outcomes in real time. Supercomputers? Let’s apply them to sports stats, odds, and betting, and even do a commercial about it during the game!

The effect has been immediate, and has quickly touched the space at all layers, with sites like (and including) DNVR having relationships with sports betting properties, relations that everyone is particularly careful about trying to NOT cross lines in while navigating this refigured idea. The new NBA’s CBA even includes language around players’ abilities to be involved in sportsbooks (thanks, Adam. Mares, and Silver, I guess). Las Vegas, once the scourge of the league in terms of their ability to bring pro-level sports due to their gambling-centric economy, is now looking like the next darling to be a four-sport town. Their football stadium looks like Darth Vader’s summer home, and their NHL and WNBA teams boast current championships. Not a bad start.

Good? Bad? The perspectives are as divided as the opinions on Charlie Hustle. Really only one thing is certain. Sports and betting have entered into what appears to be a strengthening marriage, while still seeming to come to terms around the pre-nup. That seems… fraught with peril. Will that work out well for all parties involved? Time will tell. We are now decidedly into the after, boys and girls. Enjoy the good parts while we rearrange the deck chairs a few more times.