About “The Bet Life”

I jumped in to doing this blog on somewhat of a whim. The novel I had been writing on and off for about the last 10 years was finally complete in May. I’d stopped blogging about non-sports topics in November to focus on writing the story, and by the time I finished I thought I was done writing. I spent the summer poking around for an agent or a publisher to at least read my manuscript, and basically got nowhere. I realize that’s not a very long time to try to get a work published, but for various reasons I wasn’t interested in “playing the game” of kissing the right ass just to have people “in the biz” read my work.

Eventually, I could sniff fall approaching. Every year around the start of football season, I get the itch to go back to writing my sports blog. It had gone through a few names and slightly different formats. In fact, the robqink address on blogger was originally used to combine all of my blogging efforts on various topics. My first sports article was posted on August 1, 2005. Eventually, I dubbed the blog “Rob Q. Ink – A Philly Sports Blog,” because sports posts were dominating the content. (After self-publishing my first book, I moved non-sports content to my name blog.) I worked on it fairly consistently, with a few breaks, until November 2012. After almost an 11-year hiatus, I rebooted the sports blog in the fall of 2023, with more of a focus on offering picks against the spread. Keeping the Philadelphia sports angle, I really pushed to get people to comment and interact with me and other readers. It seemed to be working for the ’23 football season, but by the following summer I knew it wasn’t going to survive unless I pulled in more writers. That effort failed, and by mid-season ’24 everything dropped off. After a post on November 15^th – a pick on Seattle versus San Francisco – I decided to put The “Ink” on hold.

My 20^th anniversary post on my Rob J. Quinn blog, published around the same time, hadn’t garnered much attention. I knew I didn’t have any more novels in me. I’ll likely self-publish the novel I wrote, eventually, but I still think I’m done with long-form writing.

I started wondering about what was next for me.

Almost 10 months later, I ended up writing probably the most popular post I’ve ever published. I wondered aloud (or in writing), is sports talk dead? The post has received the most hits in a short time of anything I’ve ever put on a blog. It seems I wasn’t the only one asking the question. That said, I’ve noticed The “Ink,” as I began calling it, was getting 1,000 hits a day, sometimes significantly more, every time I checked the stats. Honestly, I don’t know if those statistics are legitimate or not.

Another popular post that I put on my “writerly” blog was titled “The Bet Life and Super Sunday,” in which I wrote about my love of gambling. As I wrote then, “There’s something basic about gambling that I love. You put your money up, and you win or you lose. No bullshit. No nonsense. No excuses – at least none that anybody cares about. Betting on a game offers an adrenalin rush that’s hard to match. And, oddly enough, it gives me a sense of control. Power, even.”

Nothing’s changed.

I liked the name – The Bet Life.

A blog that hadn’t been touched in months getting 1,000 hits a day suggested blogging isn’t dead yet.

And that damn itch was still there.

To scratch it, I launched my new blog.

Losing the Philly sports angle made sense on a couple levels for me. I haven’t been an Eagles fan in more than a decade. (You’re welcome, Birds fans. Maybe I was the problem . . . but I doubt it.) The only sport I’ve ever played in an organized fashion is hockey, but I’ve never really watched the sport. I still love the Sixers, but, damn, is that franchise brutal. And the Phillies are my salvation all summer long.

But more and more, my “favorite team” is the one I bet on. I truly believe that fandom is changing. I started rooting for the Steelers after I couldn’t stomach the same garbage from the Birds year after year because that’s what sports was in my life – you rooted for your team. Kids aren’t seeing that now. They’re seeing dad and his buddies watching games with their phones out betting on the next possession, the next player to score, even the next play. As I said in my “Ink” post, I think having a favorite team will be passé in another decade or so, at least for younger fans.

I don’t want Bet Life to be all about me making picks, though that will clearly be a big part of the blog based on the first month. Just to be clear, I’m not a “professional handicapper,” something I’ll probably say often. So, feel free to chime in with your picks.

I think there’s a lot to look at in this new era of sports, including the way the media covers gambling, how sports books entice fans, checking out those guys (and ladies) who do call themselves handicappers, and more. Even money management is something I think is worth writing about – a topic I rarely hear discussed in terms of sports gambling.

I’ve been, shall we say for legal reasons, following point spreads long enough that my habit will be old enough to order a drink when football kicks off next season. As I said, I’m not a handicapper. I’m a guy who enjoys gambling and still wants to do a little writing. I’m surprised The Bet Life has lasted almost a month. If you like what I’m doing, I hope you’ll follow @TheBetLife on X and Facebook. Let’s have some fun following sports through gambling and maybe help each other win a few bucks.