I Fell Into an Online Sports Betting Vortex
Plus a sheet-pan ramen recipe you'll be wonton (I don't know)
Happy Friday and welcome back to The Crunchwrap!
This week, we’re looking at the Super Bowl, Portnoy’s Complaint (a real departure for me!), and a visit from the Gazpacho Police. Plus, another very good recipe lifted directly from the Times cooking app. (No snitching.)
Thanks as always for reading…
First Crunch
Last month, online sports betting became legal in New York. We’re now the 30th(ish) state where people can either legally bet on sports online or in person. If you haven’t seen how far online betting has crept into the mainstream in just a few years, the Super Bowl on Sunday is going to be a revelation.
For The Atlantic, I wrote about how—with a marketing budget that almost definitely eclipses the GDPs of several nations—Big Online Betting sunk its meaty, fratty hooks into me and turned me into a lousy amateur bettor:
Everyone likes to think that they are immune to marketing. Deep down you know that investing in crypto won’t make you as brave as one of the Wright brothers, even if Matt Damon says so. But then one January day, you find yourself sitting in your Allbirds, snacking on a bag of socially progressive M&Ms, and, with some resignation, you realize the truth: You’re a gullible, fallible, easily manipulated idiot after all.
This is exactly how I found myself betting on NFL playoff games this winter.
I admit this is a lighter, more business-focused approach to a story whose very problematic contours have been covered well. For a good, sobering read on the bigger troubles with online sports betting, check out Kurt Streeter’s piece. And for a piece that’s irritating because it’s funnier than mine, check out Lauren Theisen’s offering for Defector.
One housekeeping note: I will not be apologizing for the enormous shot I took at the Dallas Cowboys.
Video Break
For whatever reason, Substack still doesn’t support the embedding of TikTok videos in its dumb platform, which feels like cancel culture to me. So, look, I’m LINKING TO THIS VIDEO that you’ll have to click on yourself to watch. It’s the best expression of my favorite TikTok genre of late: Dads who say they didn’t want a dog who then fall in love with a dog.
If it’s too much work for you, here’s Chicago Bears’ great Dick Butkus being petty:
Snack of the Week: Sheet-Pan Ramen With Tofu
A small, but very vocal part of The Crunchwrap readership is going to let me know about their disappointment here, but after only posting meat-centric snacks in basically every newsletter to date, I wanted to give vegetarian lifestyle its due.
And it’s hard to beat this one. What’s great about this recipe is that it only takes about 40 minutes, and it involves buying instant ramen, boiling it, and then crisping it up in the oven. Also, the hoisin glaze for the tofu is delicious, but you need to make twice as much as the recipe calls for.
Nu, what else?
Friend of The ‘wrap Kathy Gilsinan has a remarkable book (The Helpers) coming out next month about the people who helped others survive, grieve, and stay float during the darkest days of the pandemic. Check it out/pre-order it stat!
AWESOME: “This battered, stained edition of the infamously filthy novel, with Roth’s first name misspelled with two Ls on the cover, is enormously significant: one of three known surviving copies of an illegal edition printed in Australia when the book was banned across the country.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Gazpacho Police remark was a gift to a writer like David Graham. We are all witnesses.
If you haven’t gotten around to it yet, Belfast was an excellent, beautiful movie about the early days of The Troubles. For The Guardian, Lisa O’Carroll wrote about the people in the city who see themselves and their families in the film.
That’s it for this week’s Crunchwrap! Stay safe out there and/or gamble responsibly.
xoxo,
Adam