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Bradley, U.S. soccer face tough questionsSoccer Betting Lines06/30/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - In the wake of the U.S. national soccer team's disappointing 2-1 loss to Ghana in its FIFA World Cup round-of-16 match on Saturday, there has been a lot of talk about the future of head coach Bob Bradley. Will he be the coach for the next World Cup cycle, or is it time to go in another direction? First, the tough questions need to be asked. Did the U.S. team reach its full potential in the tournament? Maybe. You could argue no, given the way the bracket opened up for the team. But if England had taken care of its business as expected, the U.S. would have finished second in Group C and then faced Germany instead of Ghana in the second round. Would the perception of the team's failings be the same then? Can Bradley take this team to the next level? Another maybe. He showed he can adapt in both the Slovenia and Algeria games, bringing in a forward for a center back when his team needed a goal in the second half of both games. Can you ever recall Bruce Arena - the all-time wins leader in U.S. soccer history - make a substitution to open his team up in an effort to get a goal during his eight-year tenure? Me neither. There is also no guarantee there even is another level. Until U.S. soccer is improved at the grassroots level, no coach on the planet is going to get the team to the top of the heap. Did certain players who were counted on to be key contributors - Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore, Ricardo Clark, and the entire central defense, among others - come up short on a number of occasions over the past couple of weeks? You bet. But how much of that falls on a coach instead of the players? Granted, it's the coach's job to get the most out of his players, but he shouldn't be responsible when Altidore and Dempsey repeatedly miss wide-open nets, or when the central defense tandem of Jay DeMerit and Carlos Bocanegra/Oguchi Onyewu lets players run right up the middle past them. It isn't like Bradley had better options on the bench. That goes back to the grassroots failings, and the lack of a player pool to compete with the elite national teams. Bradley did take the responsibility for Clark being on the field vs. Ghana, however. He admitted he made a mistake when he subbed the ineffective and mistake-prone midfielder out of the game after just over 30 minutes. Is that mistake enough to cost Bradley a shot at another World Cup? Probably not, but that's a decision over which U.S. soccer president Sunil Gulati will have to deliberate. So, did Bradley do enough to earn another cycle as the U.S. coach? Yes. Stability is key at this point, with this player pool. Until U.S. soccer has more to offer in terms of depth of talent, the sturdy and dependable Bradley is as good as it gets.
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SPORTS BETTING: NFL Football Sportsbook BettingNFL owners, already life's biggest winners, want to try their luck with the lottery.That was the news out of their meetings last week, where team bosses voted unanimously to allow stamping state and local lottery tickets with franchise logos, if, ahem, any governments wanted to do a deal. A shocker: Within days the Pats announced they'd be sponsoring the Massachusetts state lottery, the Skins said they'd slap their sticker on Virginia scratch-offs and the Ravens admitted they were talking to Maryland lottery bosses. In all likelihood, it won't be long before every team is a presenting sponsor of scratch-offs or just plain old pick fives. "The change in policy was approved 32-0," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "So you can expect to see more deals soon." It's a branding opportunity too big for the owners to ignore, and one a couple of dozen baseball franchises have enjoyed for years. The fact the NFL has been slower to act than those slack-brained Seligites is indicative of its complicated relationship with all forms of gambling. Consider this: Last Thursday, as the Pats and the Redskins finalized their new lottery deals, a lawyer representing the NFL argued before Delaware's Supreme Court that the state's newly signed sports betting law should be repealed. The NFL betting is the face of opposition to sports gambling . And as much as it would like to share that responsibility with other leagues, that's not going to happen as long as more than 40% of all money legally wagered on games is bet on football. That's why the Brewers can do a multi-million dollar deal with a local casino, or the Celtics can make their own pact with the Mass lottery, and the response is, "Sweet, let's play." But when the NFL does it the stakes are higher, and everyone from NPR's Frank Deford to the Associated Press to the guys blogging at Deadspin will line up to play gotcha. So I asked Aiello, who surely knew there'd be piling on, how the league can rail against being bait for sports bettors, then allow its franchises to be just that for lotteries, the most insidious and addictive form of gambling around. He emailed me this response: "We are not moral crusaders. NFL personnel are permitted to engage in legal forms of gambling, except for betting on NFL games. We are making a distinction here between the spread of gambling on the outcome of our games and supporting state lottery scratch-off games, that have nothing to do with the outcome of our games." Here's where I should rip him. But, the thing is, he's right. Not to get Obama on you, but this is a complicated, nuanced issue. As much as lotteries are considered a tax on the poor, the NFL isn't a socially obligated government program -- it's just a business. Scratch-off's help the bottom line, sports betting doesn't. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors … But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. Now, it's okay to call the league hypocritical when it releases injury reports, which players have told me only helps bettors. And it's okay to mutter something obscene when the league pretends gambling doesn't help drive TV ratings and fan interest and put money in owners' pockets. But when it supports other forms of gaming? Big Deal. The Bears should put an orange "C" on every deck of cards dealt at Harrah's in Joliet; the Eagles should slap their logo on roulette wheels at the Borgata in Atlantic City; the Dolphins should hold training camp at the El San Juan in Puerto Rico. To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your Sportsbook accepts MasterCard needs. |
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