Nick Suss

Hattiesburg American

BILOXI -- Gambling is torture.

It’s a little after 9 p.m. near the end of a long college football Saturday at the new Beau Rivage sportsbook, and Alabama is just about done giving Ole Miss its nationally-televised atomic wedgie.

The score is 62-7 with six minutes left in the fourth quarter. Ole Miss has the ball and is inching toward midfield, but even ESPN has thrown in the towel on the Rebels. Some bored guy in The Worldwide Leader control room in Connecticut punches a button, making the Crimson Tide’s Oxford mercy killing disappear.

Suddenly, all the TVs in the sports book blink to Salt Lake City to put the spotlight on Utah vs. No. 10 Washington, the weekend’s marquee Pac-12 After Dark matchup.

But one Ole Miss fan hasn’t had enough pain yet.

Shamed by Alabama’s 42-point halftime lead, he changed out of his Ole Miss shirt at intermission to conceal his identity.

Yet, he sought more torture.

Eight hours of Miller Lites wafting off his breath, Mr. Hotty Toddy gestures for me to pull up the end of the Ole Miss game on my phone. I oblige, but almost two minutes of game time elapses by the time ESPN’s Gamecast loads. Ole Miss is setting up to punt. The game is over.

Our Ole Miss fan is despondent. Not because he thinks Matt Luke’s offense had a 55-point comeback in store. No amount of alcohol breeds that much delusion.

Rather, the screams of panic and erratic pacing of my new temporary best friend branches off a $200 bet he made earlier in the afternoon. He had two Benjamins riding on the over, which was 72 points when he placed his bet.

Had Alabama placekicker Joseph Bulovas made all three of his field goals instead of missing a 38-yarder with just under 11 minutes left in the second quarter, Mr. Flim Flam Bim Bam Ole Miss by Damn would be exactly at 72 points.

Instead, with the score stuck at 62-7, he’s at 69. He needs three points in four minutes or his two C-notes will become “See Ya Later” notes.

A veteran gambler, who’s also an Alabama fan, hovers over my phone, too. In a show of good sportsmanship, he offers to buy half of the Ole Miss fan’s bet to cut his foe’s losses.

Maybe it’s hubris. Maybe it’s liquid courage. Maybe it’s a sort of comfort zone for self-hating sports fans used to a lifetime of failure. Our Ole Miss fan refuses to sell off his bet.

Alabama calls three running plays and punts. Ole Miss hands off three times, the clock runs out.

Final score? 62-7. Total combined points? 69. Beau Rivage wins the under. The Ole Miss fan loses, walking away to see if he can fit in a ninth hour of Miller Lites.

The life of a gambler

Gambling has always been a foreign concept to me. Aside from three hands of blackjack and a handful of fantasy football leagues, I’ve never wagered money on anything.

Call it prudence, call it conservatism, call it living on a journalist’s limited salary or just call it plain fear, I’ve never understood what sort of a person would willfully give their money to a $76 billion industry on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, they could beat a rigged system.

Yep, I’m a cynic. But I always welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong.

So, when Hurricane Florence ruined my plans of venturing deep into Appalachia for a weekend of covering Southern Mississippi at Appalachian State football and watching people drink moonshine, I was offered an interesting Plan B by my boss.

The assignment was simple: Go to the newly-established Beau Rivage Sportsbook, regarded as the most-polished home for sports betting in Biloxi. Catch the betting vibe on the South’s holiest days of the year, which are college football Saturdays.

Along with New Jersey, Mississippi is one of two states that legalized sports gambling this summer. Since the law was officially enacted on Aug. 1, a handful of sportsbooks have sprouted up across Mississippi, with a proliferation along the Gulf Coast.

Ask any of the more seasoned gamblers in attendance, and they’ll tell you that Beau Rivage has the best setup in the region. The atmosphere feels like you’re walking into a neighborhood wing joint. Twelve TVs are stacked in formation against the back wall with leather chairs situated down in front, making casual viewers feel like they’re sitting in the war room from Dr. Strangelove.

Bars flank the wall of televisions on either side, with ramps leading to restaurant-style seating equipped with more TVs and an always-roving wait staff happy to stack your table three feet high with nachos and beer.

Just outside the bar sits the gambling station. On this Saturday, four rows of screens cycled through the day’s college football and MLB lines as patrons weaved through the movie theater-esque queue line to place bets.

Three weeks into the 2018 college season, Beau Rivage is still walking the tightrope between sports bar and gambler’s paradise. This is Mississippi, after all, not Las Vegas. Most of the viewers at the bar area in the afternoon wore either LSU purple or Auburn blue. When LSU won 22-21 on a Cole Tracy field goal as time expired, the casino erupted with cheers and “Geaux Tigers” chants.

Logically, it didn’t make much sense. Auburn was a 10-point favorite and the over/under was 44.5 points. Whether Tracy made or missed the kick had no effect on the gambling lines.

Yet fans still hollered like Beau Rivage was Death Valley East. In the most complicated twist of fate, one Alabama fan cheered on Auburn’s loss like another Crimson Tide national championship, even though he had money on Auburn.

That’s the South for you. Fans root for their rivals’ misfortune ahead of their own monetary gain.

That said, nothing beats the elation of victory.

One Georgia fan sprinted across the casino floor screaming like he’d just discovered the Fountain of Youth after Wisconsin missed a 42-yard field goal with less than a minute remaining to keep its deficit against BYU at 24-21.

He’d wagered $1,000 on the under. The line was 46 points. That missed field goal kept the sum at 45. That’s an all-time good win.

Others experienced the all-too familiar sting of losing.

The most exorbitant failed bet might’ve been the man who put $5,000 on Missouri to cover its 7-point spread against Purdue.

The Tigers won, but only by three points after blowing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead and needing a last-second field goal to win.

Then, there was our Ole Miss fan.

He started off the day hot, winning his bet on North Texas +2 over Arkansas. His Rebels’ not getting blown out by enough points set him back to even. But the bad beat to end all bad beats came at the end of the night.

Before the afternoon games started, he “bet the house” on Ohio State to cover its 12.5-point spread against TCU. Things looked rough for a little while, but the Buckeyes charged ahead in the second half, going up by 12 points. With less than two minutes remaining in the game, Ohio State intercepted a pass and busted inside the TCU 10-yard line.

Our man needed one point to cover and didn’t get it. The Buckeyes knelt twice. There went the house.

Perhaps no one had more gambling savvy than the Alabama fan who offered to buy half of the Ole Miss fan’s over bet.

When I first met him, he was pondering a seven-game parlay. He had bets everywhere. We started chatting and he began to mine me for information. Eventually, he placed two bets on the back of my “wisdom.” I told him there was no way Washington wouldn’t cover a 4-point spread against Utah. I was right about that.

I also told him there was no way the Tennessee Titans could beat the Houston Texans without quarterback Marcus Mariota or either of their two starting offensive tackles. I was wrong there.

But that’s gambling. Sometimes you win people money. Sometimes you’re happy you’re not with them on Sunday when your bad advice blows up.

This Alabama wheeler-dealer didn’t need help. He knew what he was doing.

Pregame, he had money on No. 22 USC +3 against Texas. At halftime, Texas led 16-14. USC covered, but this guy could feel the game shifting toward the Longhorns. He went to the counter and flipped his pregame bet to a wager on UT. Naturally, the Longhorns won the second half 21-0 and won him both sides of his bet.

Such is the appeal of the sports book. I didn’t understand it before Saturday. I still barely understand it now. But it’s the closest you can get to the action without having to work out or earn a scholarship.

Lessons learned

Are there problems with Beau Rivage, still on its sports book shakedown cruise?

Sure. Multiple gamblers complained to me about how the betting counter didn’t have enough screens. It’s a college football Saturday. Why were there screens devoted to MLB first-five-inning bets while some of the college football scores weren’t up? And why weren’t any of the Sunday NFL lines posted yet? How are people supposed to plan ahead for the second leg of a football-betting weekend?

Also, why does it cost $10 an hour to sit in the sports bar lounge? Patrons are mandated to spend at least 10 bucks on food and drinks for every hour they spend in the sports bar. Shouldn’t a betting ticket on an active game be enough to grant you admission? Drinks are free in the poker room. What makes them so expensive at the bar?

Detractions aside, the draw of the Beau Rivage is obvious.

It’s a place where you can find cocky Alabama fans discussing the relative ease of covering a 13-point first-half spread. It’s a spot where regulars already have known drink orders. It’s a locale where fans clad in Ohio State gear can attempt to taunt SEC supporters and start a bar-wide argument. It’s a joint where a storm can knock out your satellite reception for two minutes, turning all your TVs off, and Auburn fans and LSU fans can boo in unison until Gary Danielson pops back on the screen.

It’s like an episode of Cheers in which instead of Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin talking about gladiator movies, you have tipsy sports fans trying to discern the imperceptible differences between Texas A&M’s and Mississippi State’s color schemes on distant, tiny TVs.

It’s a heckuva place to spend a Saturday.

Just don’t bet against Alabama. That’ll ruin more than just a weekend.