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This year’s ESPN NCAA basketball coverage did not shy away from talking about the ordinarily sensitive topic of betting as much as it has in the past. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Walk into a bar or spend some time in an airport and there’s a good chance ESPN is on TV. What happens on its ever-present SportsCenter, airing live 18 times daily, resonates with sports fans around the country. So it matters that over the past couple of years, ESPN has increased coverage of what’s always been an extremely sensitive topic for leagues and TV networks — sports betting.

ESPN says it wants to be more direct about a topic broadcasters have dealt with circuitously, often with a wink and nod, rather than in the direct language of gambling.

An example would be the point spread, the most basic number in sports betting. It’s the line oddsmakers set between the favorite and underdog.

“There was a time when we would talk about it without talking about it,” says Rob King, head of ESPN’s SportsCenter. “We’d say phrases like, ‘The game’s going to be closer than the experts think.’ “

Those days are over. Take, for example, Las Vegas betting analyst R.J. Bell’s men’s NCAA Final Four commentary on SportsCenter in April:

“Well, first game we’ve got Kentucky favored by five at this point, over Wisconsin. The game was six. It’s been bet down by the professionals.”

For a number of years, talk about spreads and professional gamblers had been part of ESPN’s radio talk shows, podcasts and online columns. Former ESPN personality Bill Simmons made picks against the spread in his column and on his podcast. Radio talk show host Colin Cowherd has been doing the same for years. And Chad Millman wrote a sports betting blog before becoming editor in chief of ESPN.com.

But SportsCenter is even more visible, as mainstream and big time as you can get. And when Rob King rolled out more gambling coverage on SportsCenter last year, it was a decision made with care.

“We did ask ourselves how overt we were going to be on our full-screen graphics and our language,” he says. “I will tell you that we decided that we would try to be authentic, and in that case, use terms that we might not have two or three years ago. With the thought that, look, if we heard it and it looked bad to us and it didn’t sound right to us we could always pull back.”

There are reasons for such sensitivity. One, sports betting is illegal throughout most of the United States. Two, pro and college sports have always sought to distance themselves completely from gambling. And ESPN has deep connections with those leagues.

“Our concerns mostly were not so much journalistic as they were based on the relationships with business partners,” says Vince Doria, who retired as director of news at ESPN in March. “The NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NCAA and by extension college leagues and conferences.”

Then, last November, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in which he advocated legal, carefully regulated sports betting.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has come out in favor of legalized sports betting. Tom Dulat/Getty Images for Leaders hide caption

itoggle caption Tom Dulat/Getty Images for Leaders

SportsCenter’s King read that with interest.

“This was something of a watershed moment,” he says. “But it was also validation because we really thought that in covering this content we were serving audiences the way they wanted to be served.”

Doria says another reason ESPN started paying more attention to gambling: the growth of fantasy sports. Especially daily fantasy sports, which are basically an amped up version of weekly contests like fantasy football.

“No doubt about it, I think [it’s] a big factor,” he says. “While fantasy sports has been deemed legal, and not gambling, there’s no doubt that these one-day fantasy entities [are] thinly veiled gambling. You’re basically betting daily on players instead of teams.”

That is, these are legal sites where cash is risked on player performance instead of the outcome of a game. And in a sign of changing times, instead of shunning these sites, Major League Baseball and the NBA have turned them into business partners.

“The leagues have decided that, you know, fantasy sports is out there and we might as well make some money off this since they’re making money off our product,” Doria says.

And it’s not just the leagues getting into daily fantasy. Just this week, ESPN said it would put daily fantasy sports on its platforms through a deal with one of those companies, DraftKings.

And here’s one last reason ESPN is more comfortable with gambling: the rise of the nerds. The sports world is big into data and analytics. The deep statistics valued by teams, reporters and hardcore fans are also valued by bettors.

“Analytics and data are everything in sports betting,” says ESPN’s Chad Millman, who spent half a year in Las Vegas researching a book about professional sports bettors. “So there were alternative perspectives and alternative stats that drove the decisions that a lot of bettors were making that would just be interesting to a wider group of fans. Even if they didn’t care about sports betting at all. It just made them smarter about how to watch games.”

All of this troubles anti-gambling activists like Les Bernal, the national director of a group called Stop Predatory Gambling. Bernal says ESPN and the sports media in general act as PR vehicles for the gambling industry.

“You know, major television networks, you’re validating this,” he says. “So it’s one thing to tuck it in the back pages. In the past, newspapers would have point spreads in the back of the paper, whatever. It’s there for people who want it. But it wasn’t in your face.”

And he says when it’s in your face, the temptation to bet increases. “Without question, the more gambling gets covered it makes it more acceptable,” he says.

SportsCenter’s King says ESPN is not advocating for gambling.

Instead, he says, “We’re simply committed to serving all sports fans and being authoritative in every meaningful sports conversation.”

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The World Cup continues tonight for the U.S. women’s soccer team. And it’s a rematch 16 years in the making.

The United States is set to go up against China in a quarterfinals match in Ottawa, Canada. The last time these two met in the World Cup was in the 1999 finals. More than 90,000 people packed into the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., and watched the Americans win 5-4 in a dramatic penalty kick shootout.

This tournament, the U.S. has not looked as dominant as it did in 1999 — though the world’s second-ranked team hasn’t lost a game or even given up a goal since its opener against Australia. Still, that hasn’t stopped the grumbling.

Earlier this week, The New York Times highlighted some of the friction. It quoted midfielder Carli Lloyd as saying, “We know that it’s not our best; we know that we’re capable of so much more. So just trying to find that and fine-tune it is what we’re doing.“

The headlines from this World Cup have not been pretty. Many are like this one from USA Today, which looks back fondly on the 1999 team.

Some of the criticism has focused on head coach Jill Ellis, who has tinkered with the starting lineup in each of the four U.S. games this tournament. The U.S. team’s offense has not looked as potent, cohesive or innovative as it has in the past.

U.S. head coach Jill Ellis has been fending off complaints that the current team isn’t as good as the 1999 lineup. Bebeto Matthews/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Bebeto Matthews/AP

After Monday night’s 2-0 victory over Colombia, Ellis was defensive. As quoted in the Times:

“This is the World Cup,” Ellis said. “I’m really satisfied with advancing. Most goals in World Cup tournaments, a majority of them, come on set pieces; we’ve been brilliant. It’s about finding a way. I thought we stroked the ball around pretty well at times. So, yeah, I’m pleased with where we are.”

Ellis will have a new lineup again tonight as two of her starting midfielders have to sit out the game. Star Megan Rapinoe (who scored twice against Australia) and Lauren Holiday (who has played every minute this tournament) each received their second yellow cards of the tournament against Colombia. It’s a significant loss for the U.S. and won’t help its shaky offense.

Sixteenth-ranked China dropped the tournament opener to host Canada, 1-0. China then beat the Netherlands, tied New Zealand and defeated Cameroon to advance to the quarterfinals.

It’s a game the U.S. is expected to win. But it might not be pretty.

Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. ET and will be televised by Fox and NBC Universo.

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The 2015 NBA Draft took place Thursday night in Brooklyn’s Barclay Center. Karl-Anthony Towns from the University of Kentucky was the first pick, drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team that ended last season with a 16-66 record. Nineteen-year-old, 6-foot-11 Towns only played one year at Kentucky, but during that season was named a 2015 Second-Team All-American. He also helped lead Kentucky to the Final Four.

In an interview shortly after his pick, Towns told ESPN, “This is what you live for.” He continued, “I’m coming with a winning attitude. I just want to win.”

The Los Angeles Lakers — once dominant, now coming off of a bruising 21-61 season — had second pick and chose guard D’Angelo Russell of Ohio State University.

The Philadelphia 76ers (18-64) picked third, choosing center Jahlil Okafor from Duke University. All three top picks in this year’s draft were college freshmen.

Rounding out the top five were two international picks. The New York Knicks (17-65) selected Kristaps Porzingis, a 7-foot power forward from Latvia with the fourth pick. The fifth pick went to the Orlando Magic (25-57), who selected Mario Hezonja, a shooting guard from Croatia.

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It could have been a routine out in foul territory. Instead, a pop-up at a Chicago Cubs game was caught by a dad who was also holding a baby – and the crowd went wild. It didn’t hurt that the fan momentarily robbed the visiting Los Angeles Dodgers of an out.

The play was eventually ruled to be fan interference, as Cubs fan Keith Hartley was found to have reached over into the field to nab the ball before it could land in the glove of Dodgers’ first baseman Adrian Gonzalez.

But Hartley still got a round of applause for focusing on making the catch – and not disturbing his infant son Isaac, who kept enjoying his bottle while his dad lunged over the rain tarp.

The play became instant highlight-reel material for Major League Baseball — although the Los Angeles-based TV announcers who were working the game quickly disapproved.

“Mister, there are bigger things in life than a foul ball,” said one.

But after the play, the Dodgers didn’t seem to mind.

Interviewed while he and his wife were sitting in the stands with Isaac, Hartley tells TV network CSN that he was mainly thinking about his young son.

“I was just concerned about him. When we got to these seats, I was like, ‘You know, a foul ball can get on us quickly.’ So, I’m just trying to protect him, and I see the ball coming up — and it just kind of fell in my hand.”

In Chicago, the catch echoed the infamous incident in which Cubs fan Steve Bartman touched a foul ball hit by the Florida Marlins during the 2003 National League Championship Series, keeping a Cubs outfielder from making a play on the ball. In that inning, the Cubs went on to lose a 3-0 lead — followed by both the game and the series.

But in this case, Hartley’s catch didn’t have such lasting effects: The Cubs won yesterday’s game, 1-0.

“It’s not the World Series,” he said. “Hopefully Adrian’s not too upset: he’s on my fantasy team.”

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