By Parvi Anand and Izzy Taylor
Last week, you may have seen a few seniors walking around carrying their books in pillow cases hanging from sticks. It’s what happens sometimes when you lose for the week in fantasy football. At least they didn’t lose any money, unlike others who had to pay out the pot to avoid punishment.
Given the popularity of fantasy football and other forms of betting among Lovett students, we decided to investigate how sports culture and betting are manifested here at Lovett.
Sports play a significant role in our student body, with many of our students participating in at least one sport during the school year. Furthermore, many of us (myself included) are deeply invested in the success of our favorite professional teams. Many follow different leagues, players, and stats, spending countless Sundays on the couch staring at the screen watching the games.
Fantasy sports competitions are popular at Lovett, as they are in most high schools across the country. We don’t know very many people in our lives who haven’t at least checked out a league of some sort. Fantasy football, in particular, is extremely popular.
When we sent out a survey to the student body, the results reflected that nearly 73% of survey takers have participated in a Fantasy Football league. This confirmed for us just how significant it is. To learn more about how it affects Lovett students on a personal level, we interviewed a senior who chose to remain anonymous.
In our conversation, he said that he and many of his friends participate in a competitive fantasy football league. He told me that he enjoys it a lot, spending time following players and games in an attempt to beat out his friends. And of course, as in every competition, there have to be losers. In our survey, we asked if the fantasy leagues people participated in punishments for their weekly losers, and 79% of those who responded said yes. This includes our interviewee.
When asked about his favorite ones, he said, “We think the public humiliation ones are the funniest ones.” According to our survey, many respondents agree that public humiliation is the most popular form of punishment. From making a TikTok to standing with a sign on a street corner, funny and shameful acts are extremely common for the losers of that week’s game. People love a good laugh, and a kid that you know embarrassing himself online is a sure way to get one.
According to the survey, one of the most popular punishments was something called the “milk mile.” This involves chugging as much milk as possible every quarter of a mile. Others include getting a buzzcut and walking around with your shoes tied together.
Beyond fantasy football, we wanted to talk more with our senior about the core topic of this article: sports betting. He confirmed that he and most of his friends who had turned 18 place bets on sports games and players. When asked about what platform he and his friends use to place bets, he said that “Prizepicks” is “pretty common.”
Similar to fantasy sports, he and his friends will discuss the statuses of players and predict the outcomes of games together, trying to find the best bets to place. “We will talk with each other,” he said, “or if we’re going to watch a game together, or even if we go to a game, we will just do the same ones.”
We went on to talk about how consistently you can win the bets you place, to which he remarked that there is really no way to be 100% sure your bet is going to hit. “There’s just a lot of ups and a lot of downs,” he said. “You’ll have lows, and you’ll have really high highs. It’s gambling at the end of the day.”
So, when asked why a high school student at Lovett would participate in the hit-or-miss business of sports betting, his reason was a simple one. “For me, it’s a money thing,” he said. “Of course, it’s exciting to do it, but it is definitely a money thing.”
We wanted to find a deeper connection to our culture, a factor that might explain why students here are more interested in betting as they grow up. That’s where fantasy football comes in. People have spent years meticulously tracking players and teams in their fantasy football leagues, truly immersing themselves in the game. So when the time comes that they turn 18, they feel like they have an edge over the competition.
We asked our senior about this idea, and he agreed it was likely. “There’s definitely a correlation feeling of adrenaline when your team comes back from a big deficit or you just have a crazy week because your players do well,” he said. “I think there’s definitely some correlation there.”
But should high schoolers be placing bets as soon as they come of age? He shrugged, reminding me that, at the end of the day, it is unavoidable. “Well, if you’re 18, you’re allowed to do it. It’s legal,“ he said. He said he actually encourages his friends not to do it.
Some of the survey takers would agree with that advice. “Gambling is stupid in the first place, and has ruined thousands of lives,” one wrote.
Another quoted his friend saying, “‘Sports Betting is guaranteed money” and then pointed out, “This kid went on to lose like 700 dollars the next day, but still bets.” In fact, several respondents shared stories in the “comment” section about just how much money they’ve lost when their bets go south. Multiple people wrote about a group bet of over $3000 that didn’t hit, causing individual students to lose hundreds of dollars in seconds.
According to the survey, 46% of respondents have placed a bet on a sporting event. Then again, half the survey takers who identified as “underage” said they had no plans to gamble when they turned eighteen.
We wondered if our senior planned to gamble in the long term. He said that as long as he had the freedom to, he didn’t see himself quitting entirely. However, when life gets serious, he believes he will leave this old habit behind. “I think when I’m older, I’ll probably be a little more responsible with everything,” he said.
And what do experts think about the issue of gambling? When we first sat down to listen to the Plain English episode, hosted by Derek Thompson, ”The Problem With Sports Gambling,” we expected another adult warning about how “kids these days” are being influenced by apps and online distractions.
Usually, these takes feel overly dramatic or too simplified. However, as we listened, we realized that sports betting is far more complicated and concerning than we had thought. Our notes ended up pages long.
The episode explains how sports betting has become one of the fastest-growing segments of American entertainment, while also creating problems for both professional athletes and everyday people. Thompson details a recent FBI investigation into illegal sports gambling, which led to arrests of well-known basketball figures. A former NBA player was accused of leaking private injury updates about LeBron James, and Terry Rozier reportedly took himself out of a game to help a betting partner profit. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he was “deeply disturbed” by the allegations.
What surprised us most was that Silver was once a major advocate for legalizing sports betting. In 2014, he wrote that betting was already happening underground and needed regulation. The NBA opposed expanding legal betting at the time, but Silver argued the laws needed to catch up.
Now, research shows that bringing betting “into the sunlight” has financial consequences we can’t ignore. A 2024 study by UCLA, Harvard, and USC found that states that legalized sports gambling after a 2018 Supreme Court ruling experienced significant increases in bankruptcies, debt collections, debt-consolidation loans, and auto-loan delinquencies, along with lower credit scores. It made us realize how quickly something that seems harmless can escalate.
What really caught our attention was how much this affects young men, especially those barely older than us. Thompson notes that half of men aged 18 to 49 now have a sports betting account. At first, this doesn’t mean harm, but even a small percentage of serious addiction can become a nationwide problem.
Another unexpected fact is that in New Jersey, nearly one in five men ages 18 to 24 shows signs of a gambling problem. Thompson calls this “a little bit more concerning.” As high school seniors, we find that an understatement. This age group has the least financial stability and the highest long-term risk, making it easy to see how people our age could be affected.
Thompson says sports gambling can be fun, but it can also hurt the fairness of professional sports and ruin lives if it gets out of control. Jonathan Cohen, author of Losing Big: America’s Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling, notes that the industry relies on a small number of people losing substantial amounts of money, which creates risks for both athletes and fans.
Listening to the episode made us wonder if sports betting is becoming a “normal” part of growing up.
Our survey supports this. According to the results, when asked, “How common is it for Lovett students to place sports bets?” 89% of respondents said it’s common to very common.
And do these teenagers think it’s a problem? Not really. Nearly the same percentage of students (86%) rated it as ‘not at all a problem’ to ‘neutral’.
On the other hand, Mr. Boswell, Head of the Upper School, told us that “the school is increasingly concerned with the potential effects of legalized gambling on students and has scheduled a Community Time on the topic for early January.”
(If you or anyone else you know struggles with gambling addiction, you can reach out to your counselors, teachers, or the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 800-522-4700.)
