The Spire

Patrick Grudberg ‘24

Parlay Chef

Just over a year ago, the state of Massachusetts legalized sports gambling. This has set off a frenzy on most college campuses, with legal 21 year olds splurging their summer wages on four leg parlays and underage students punching in their dads’ Social Security numbers to game the system. While taking a stroll through Hogan 1 or even in Kimball, it’s rather common to see packs of boys huddled around a friend’s FanDuel app “cooking up” a nasty fifteen leg NBA parlay that the ringleader swears is a “mortal lock.” 

With unprecedented levels of degeneracy in the forecast for the upcoming season of March Madness, President Rougeau and the administration have decided to cash in and open a brand new sportsbook on the fifth floor of Hogan. “We are delighted to announce the opening of our brand new sportsbook SaderBet. We firmly believe this will help our students in their pursuit of being men and women for and with others,” said Rougeau at a press conference earlier this week. The school has not wasted any time in preparing for the opening of SaderBet this weekend. The touchscreen kiosks outside Cool Beans have been uprooted and brought to the sportsbook. Students can place bets on these high functioning touchscreens and will have the option of using dining dollars to cash bets on the Crusaders athletics teams.

One student shared their excitement for the new sportsbook, stating, “SaderBet will eliminate the stress of having to get rid of all my dining dollars at the end of each semester. Now, instead of buying my friends milkshakes and $9 price-gauged pretzels from the Lobby Shop, I can just have them take my ID and place some sick parlays on my card.” After a disastrous gambling splurge last year, which saw President Rougeau and Dean Murray end up on the losing side of a Purdue moneyline bet that drained Holy Cross’ endowment, the administration is looking for new ways to create revenue. Instead of haggling students in Kimball to donate money on “Purple Giving Day,” they can simply direct them to Hogan 5 and encourage them to place ridiculous same-game parlays on the next Celtics or Bruins game.

After hearing of this shocking news, I decided to visit the sportsbook that is almost ready for the grand opening this weekend. Along with the mobile betting kiosks, there are traditional face-to-face booths where students can place bets with Holy Cross campus legends. Want to bet the Holy Cross moneyline at +400,000 vs Iowa? Just step right up to Kimball Cathi’s station and she’ll help book your betting slip. Speaking of Cathi, who is often described as a combination of Oprah Winfrey and Joan of Arc, President Rougeau has asked the former Kimball legend to come out of retirement to become the face of SaderBet. In an interview this week, Cathi told us, “I just love helping kids give into their vices and place some harmless $5 bets. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Along with Cathi, Athletic Director Kit Hughes has pledged his loyalty to the project in the hope of boosting attendance at Holy Cross sporting events. He told us that, “free pizza and generic purple t-shirts just isn’t cutting it anymore. We need to find better ways to get butts into seats. What better way than to have students place bets on our games and encourage them to attend said games, rooting for their same-game parlays to cash in.” After seeing that Holy Cross women’s basketball is slated to face UT Martin and, with a play-in victory, Iowa in the 1 vs 16 matchup, Hughes has already launched a special betting promotion. SaderBet’s first promo code will allow students to place this enticing parlay: Holy Cross moneyline vs UT Martin, Holy Cross moneyline vs Iowa, and Bronagh Power-Cassidy to score more points than Caitlin Clark. The parlay odds opened this morning at around +5000000000000000. 

This might seem like a longshot, or honestly even a glitch in the system. But remember folks, these are the people who facilitated the great Dining Dollars bank run of March 17, 2024 just last weekend. If there’s anything we can expect at SaderBet, it’s that there’ll be constant money to be made off input errors on the betting boards. Just last night, a student noticed a mistake in the Holy Cross vs UT Martin points spread. Instead of the more popular +2.50 opening spread, many students were able to place a mislabeled +250 (that’s right: Holy Cross needed to win or lose by less than two hundred and fifty) at almost even odds. Who knows? Maybe this is a trick from the IT deep state to get kids hooked on the SaderBet Kool-aid. Win one bet that was a total gimme with juicy odds, next thing you know freshman are entering the sportsbook to place futures bets on men’s basketball to win over 8.5 games next year.

I can say that the entire Sports Section at the Spire is anxiously waiting for the grand opening of SaderBet this weekend. We’ll be the first ones in the door, doing real charity work in the community. We all know that none of our March Madness parlays are going to hit. We think of it as our way of giving. This school is so eager to push current students to donate, we figured we may as well do our part in this slightly more veiled way. See you on Hogan 5 this weekend!

Copy edited by Colette Potter