Are you a degenerate? The quiz to end all quizzes
Twitter provides perspective that snowballs into inspiration. The other day I posed a question to the community; "What's the greatest form of degenerate sports gambling you've ever been involved in yourself or seen exhibited by friends?" Answers that came flooding in were as hysterical as they were appalling. There's a good chance a few of you may have a real gambling problem but I love you for the stories nonetheless. After much deliberation I decided that most of the responses were so off the wall they couldn't possibly be made up just for shock value. The end result of all the feedback led me to build the official gambling survey to quantify tiers of degenerate behavior.
Let me first preface all of this with the stance some of this may or may not be autobiographical. The quiz should take no more than 5-7 minutes to complete, after all we're not out to steal Cosmo's thunder at OKTC and getting five minutes of a bettor's attention span is a landmark achievement. I won't take full creative credit for this idea so once you finish the quiz scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll quickly see that misery loves company...if misery is pure gambling excellence from the masses.
The quiz is simple: there are five groups of degenerate behaviors, circle as many in each class that apply to you. As the absuridty of every action increases, so does the point value from 1 to 5. For those not privy to interacting with gamblers on a daily basis, it will quickly become apparent why the stakes get raised as you go deeper into the gambler's mind.
Give yourself 1 point for each of the following that apply
(Possible score of 15)
NFL
College football
Pro Basketball (any league)
College Basketball
College baseball or college hockey
Professional baseball (any league)
Professional hockey (any league)
Soccer (any league)
Auto Racing
Horses
Dogs
Tennis
Rugby (NRL, AFL, Union)
Boxing
UFC
Give yourself 2 points for each of the following that apply
(Possible score of 34)
Snooker
Darts
Elections
Award Shows
WWE Wrestling
Table Tennis
Volleyball
Gymnastics
Pope
Any non mainstream Olympic sport (archery, high dive, synchronized swimming, etc)
Cycling
Handball
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Arena Football
FHM’s Sexiest Woman or other beauty pageants
WNBA
Video Games
Give yourself 3 points for each of the following
(Possible score of 42)
High School Sports
Little League World Series
T-Ball (in any capacity)
Coaching Changes Props
National Anthem duration
Coin flips
Superbowl props involving anything not related to the game itself
Pro Bowl
NBA or NHL Skills Competition
Homerun Derby
Pigeon races
Drinking games
Weather
Airplane arrivals or departures
Give yourself 4 pts for each of the following
(Possible score of 24)
Length of religious sermon
Age of strippers
Anything at a wedding…I mean anything (competitive eating, bridesmaids, crying during speeches, etc...you get the gist)
Baby pools (naming, weight, due date)
Color of cars in a parking lot
Hermit crab, crawfish, or any race involving animals smaller than the palm of your hand
Give yourself 5 pts for each of the following (also please seek help if more than 3 apply)
(Possible score of 45)
Over/Under rings it takes for gambler’s anonymous to answer your phone call
Anything having to do with bodily fluids (blood, urine, etc)
Job hires or fires
College acceptances
Performance reviews
Religious milestones
Divorce pools
Length of friend's relationships
Special Olympics fantasy leagues (don’t ask)
Scoring System:
145-160
Pick-up the phone, call the Gamblers Hotline immediately (Ace Rothstein - 8 Men Out)
125-144
Your sickness hasn't reached an epidemic yet but you're on the cusp of infecting others (Lester 'Worm' Murphy - Rounders)
105-124
There's still potential, it's time to push the envelope a bit and go outside the comfort zone to raise your game (John Anthony aka Brandon Lang - 2 For the Money)
80-104
Not sure why you're even taking this quiz, oddsmaking won't be in your future (Henry Gondorff - The Sting)
1-79
Marriage material right here; your spouse, significant other, or domestic partner has nothing to worry about with you (Vincent Lauria - The Color of Money)
For those interested in this sort of thing, Sweet 16 BEST BETS: Arizona +3.5 and Michigan +2
For your reading pleasure I leave you with the actual responses people had when asked about the depths of their degeneracy. To quote Terrell Owens, "Get ya popcorn ready!"