Category: Sports
When Youth Sports Stopped Being Fun
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The Next Social Epidemic Is Already Here: Legalized Sports Gambling
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. A fractured court, led by a conservative…
Bird by bird: The hobby healing millions of burned-out Americans
Ninety-six million Americans now call themselves bird-watchers.
That’s nearly one in three people. What was once the domain of retired dentists with too much time and too many thermoses has become a national pastime.
‘You don’t need equipment to go birding,’ he says. ‘Just walk outside and look or listen for birds. It’s like a treasure hunt — where can I find a new or different one?’
Or, as the bureaucrats insist, a “sport.” (Blame linguistic inflation, but that’s beside the point.) Bird-watching has gone mainstream, and America has fallen head over talons for it.
‘Exhausted by noise and nonsense’
Growing up in Ireland, I used to hunt pheasants with my father. But I also bird-watched with him. He had the patience of a saint and the binoculars of a spy. He could spot a kestrel from what felt like another county. I, on the other hand, had the attention span of a jackdaw. Yet even then, there was something strangely meditative about standing still, waiting for wings to appear.
Bird-watching wasn’t about chasing or conquering. It was about listening, noticing, and finding a kind of peace that didn’t need words. Maybe that’s why it’s booming in America now — a country exhausted by noise and nonsense.
The modern American lives in a blizzard of screens, sound bites, and sirens. Every scroll and ping pulls the mind farther from the present moment. Bird-watching is the perfect rebellion against that chaos. It rewards stillness. It teaches patience. It’s meditation with feathers. You can’t doomscroll while trying to spot a warbler. And unlike most modern hobbies, it doesn’t demand equipment that costs more than your car. A decent pair of binoculars and a curious soul will do.
It also helps that bird-watching is wonderfully democratic. You can do it anywhere — city park, back yard, Walmart parking lot, even your ex’s front yard if you’re brave enough. Birds don’t discriminate by zip code. From Brooklyn to Baton Rouge, the same act of quiet wonder unites people who otherwise wouldn’t share a word. A cardinal on a branch can silence even the loudest partisan. Or can it?
Taking off with Birding Bob
Who better to ask than Robert DeCandido, Ph.D., more commonly known as “Birding Bob.” Bronx-born and proud of it, he’s been leading bird walks for the best part of 40 years, charming tourists and occasionally scolding squirrels. He’s studied owls in Central Park, falcons on skyscrapers, and raptors in Nepal — because, apparently, the city’s pigeons weren’t exotic enough. With his encyclopedic knowledge, laser pointer, and unflappable enthusiasm, the Bob has turned Manhattan into one big aviary.
When asked why bird-watching has suddenly become the new yoga, Bob doesn’t entertain the hype. “To me, this has been building since the late 1990s,” he says. “It seems to track the use of the internet in people’s lives. I’ve been leading bird walks since the late 1980s, so I’ve watched the growth.” In his eyes, birding is less a sudden craze than a steady cultural migration decades in the making.
As for the pandemic’s supposed role in reviving our hunger for slow living, Bob’s answer is brisk. “No,” he says. “I think birding was one of the few activities you could do early on in the pandemic — especially with others.”
When the world shut down, birding stayed open. “If you had a park in your neighborhood, you could just walk over. No need for mass transit or being in close proximity indoors.” For Bob, that’s when many realized bird-watching was accessible, social, and a way to stay sane in those rather insane times.
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Image Courtesy of the National Park Service
‘Just walk outside and look’
And about that “retired dentist with binoculars” stereotype? Bob laughs it off. “Where or how did you come up with this idea? It was never, ever that.” His tours are proof. They draw everyone from teenagers to tech workers, stay-at-home moms to deadbeat dads. If anything, birding has become one of the few spaces in New York where social class often dissolves into shared curiosity.
Gen Z’s growing interest doesn’t surprise him either. “It’s cheap,” he says flatly. “People like nature. And the media’s pushing birding now, so different folks are giving it a go.”
It sounds simple, but it explains a lot. Birding offers something both primal and portable in an age hooked on algorithms and AI-fed sludge. It’s a dopamine hit that doesn’t come from Silicon Valley — though plenty of apps now let users flaunt their feathered finds. There’s Merlin Bird ID, which can identify a species from a photo or song; eBird, where users log sightings and climb leaderboards; and Birda, the “Strava of birding,” complete with challenges and badges.
Bob’s Bronx bluntness resurfaces when asked if birding could unite left and right.
“No. Americans will find a way to fight no matter what,” he says, half-joking. “Most birders are moderate to left, so the infighting has been mild so far. But it’s there.” He doesn’t hide where he stands — he lets his politics show — but never in a preachy or polarizing way. It’s more observational than ideological, the way a field biologist might note the plumage of a particularly noisy species.
Then, almost as if to re-center the conversation, he lands on what really matters. “You don’t need equipment to go birding,” he says. “Just walk outside and look or listen for birds. It’s like a treasure hunt — where can I find a new or different one? No need to make lists or find rare ones. Just go out and look. Have fun. Learn about your local environment.”
That, in the end, might explain why bird-watching has taken flight across the nation. In a culture obsessed with competition, Birding Bob reminds us that not everything needs to be a race. You don’t win at bird-watching. You simply show up, look up, and listen. It’s the most affordable form of mindfulness on the market. In an era powered by progress bars, birding is gloriously buffering. No feeds, no frenzy, just feathers in flight — and the occasional pigeon dropping on your $200 North Face jacket.
The game was fixed long before the bets were legal
The integrity of sports is in trouble again, or so the headlines say. The FBI last week arrested more than 30 people in a wide-ranging gambling probe that ensnared Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier.
A former Cleveland Cavaliers player, Damon Jones, was also charged in two separate cases — one involving sports betting improprieties, the other tied to Billups’ alleged participation in an illegal poker ring linked to the mafia.
Cheating is illegal. Addiction is tragic. But gambling itself isn’t a sin against the republic.
Given the timing — amid public debate over legalized sports wagering since 2018 — the FBI’s sweep might look like vindication for critics of betting. It isn’t.
Millionaires behaving badly
When federal agents arrest millionaire athletes and coaches for gambling crimes, it raises an obvious question: Is legalized sports betting really to blame?
Rozier’s salary cap for the 2025-26 season is $26.6 million. His career earnings total more than $160 million. Billups made $4.7 million during the 2024-25 NBA season. Disgraced Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, 25, had earned $2.7 million before his ban for sharing medical information to steer bets.
When people earn sums that most Americans can’t even imagine, they often invent new ways to ruin themselves. The average NBA salary in 1991 was $800,000; today it’s more than $8 million. As David Cone of Crain and Company observed, “Even if you’re just on a roster, you make more than doctors make. There’s no excuse.”
There really isn’t. This scandal is less about gambling and more about human nature — about greed, self-destruction, and the moral rot that wealth alone can’t fix. The Supreme Court’s decision to legalize small wagers didn’t make multimillionaires betray their sport for a few illegal dollars. They did that on their own.
The moral lesson that hasn’t changed
When infielder Fred McMullin went down in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, he earned $3,500 a year — roughly $67,000 in today’s money. Those players were underpaid and easily tempted. No one can say that about professional athletes or coaches today.
Legalized betting didn’t create this corruption, and FBI Director Kash Patel said as much during an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
Critics overplay their hand
A video clip from ESPN’s “Get Up” made the rounds this week after producers hastily removed an on-screen ad for ESPN Bet during coverage of the scandal. The network’s discomfort spurred an online feeding frenzy from the right’s new morality police, who pounced on the moment as proof of hypocrisy.
Saagar Enjeti circled the ad and captioned it, “Spot the problem.” But the real problem isn’t the ad; it’s addiction and bad character. Billups apparently got hooked on poker. Rozier and Jones broke the law and got caught in an era when every transaction and text leaves a trail.
Enjeti calls this “uncontrolled.” Tell that to the players facing federal indictments. Gambling today is more visible, traceable, and regulated than ever before. The temptation hasn’t changed — the surveillance has.
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Hirurg via iStock/Getty Images
Americans were always betting
Critics say the explosion of legal sportsbooks has opened new avenues for corruption. Maybe. But it has also pulled a massive shadow economy into the light. Americans didn’t wait for the Supreme Court’s permission to wager; by 2015, they were already betting an estimated $150 billion a year on illegal offshore sites.
Yes, the sector’s growth has been explosive. And yes, it’s unsettling to see leagues, networks, and sportsbooks growing so intertwined. But that doesn’t make moral crusaders the saviors of integrity.
The real vice
Take Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who reportedly won $1.4 million playing blackjack in Las Vegas last year — less than 1% of his net worth. Critics didn’t call that a moral crisis.
The point is simple: People should be free to spend their discretionary income as they choose. Cheating is illegal. Addiction is tragic. But gambling itself isn’t a sin against the republic.
The latest pro sports scandal offers a moral lesson, but not the one the prohibitionists want to hear. Legalized betting didn’t corrupt sports — people did. And no law can outlaw greed.
