NFL
O p ening
K ick o ff
T hu rsd ay, September 5A train pulls into Hoboken Terminal.
Commuters swarm the dim, dusty
platform, then disperse, gone as fast
as they came. The train disappears, too, back toward Manhattan,
and a quiet settles in. A few people remain—a geriatric black man
in a sweat suit and sandals, seated on a weathered bench; two pot-
bellied white guys in oversize football jerseys, leaning against a
concrete column; a handful of others—and all of them are staring
at their phone. They may be strangers, but they belong to the same
tribe. These are the carpetbagging gamblers of the Garden State.
They’re not alone. The bettors enter this promised land anywhere
along the 108-mile border between New York and New Jersey. They
come down Route 17 to Mahwah, order disco fries at the State Line
Diner, and wager. They cross the George Washington Bridge and bet
in the KFC parking lot in Fort Lee. Some just pull over to the shoul-
der, whip out their phone, then U-turn back over the bridge. “I know
people who drive to the Vince Lombardi rest station just to make
their bets,” Chris Christie told The New York Times in June, “and
then turn around and go back to the city.” In 2003, the pit stop was
described by a trucker to The New Yorker’s John McPhee as “a real
dangerous place. Whores. Dope. Guys who’ll hit you over the head
and rob you.” Today, the trucker might add to his list the gamblers.
Speaking of Christie, he’s no idle observer; he’s the architect, and
this is a valedictory moment years in the making. In 2011, the then
governor of New Jersey nobly launched the battle to legalize sports
betting in his state. Why shouldn’t the government get a piece of
the $150 billion wagered illegally on sports each year, as estimated
by the American Gaming Association? His efforts paid off when,
in May 2018, the Supreme Court overturned a 1992 federal law
that had banned the practice in all but a few places. New Jersey was
among the first states to take advantage, accepting its first bet with-
in a month of the high court’s ruling. Two, actually, each twenty dol-
lars, placed by its current governor, Phil Murphy, on the New Jersey
Devils to win the 2019 Stanley Cup (they didn’t) and on defending
champion Germany to win the World Cup (they were eliminated
in the first round). Christie earned his rightful spot in the Sports
Betting Hall of Fame, which is a thing, apparently. Since then, six-
teen more states have passed such bills, including New York. None
of them come close to New Jersey, which took in nearly $3 billion
in its first year of operations. This past May, it surpassed Nevada
to become the state in which the highest amount was bet on sport-
ing events—nearly $320 million in that month alone. Why such
success? Is it something in the waters of the Ramapo? Perhaps. But
also, the state allows you to bet on your phone. Other states have
74
been reluctant to embrace the practice in an effort to drive gam-
blers toward the traditional brick-and-mortar houses of sin, like ca-
sinos and racetracks. Their mistake: In New Jersey, mobile betting
accounts for a whopping 82 percent of the state’s overall handle.
You don’t need to be a resident to bet in New Jersey; you just
need to be at least twenty-one. But you must be within its bound-
aries when your bet is placed. Out-of-staters have tried everything
they can to get around these restrictions: deploying virtual private
networks (VPNs) that mask users’ IP addresses and therefore their
location; trying to place bets from the Staten Island Ferry on its
journey across New York Harbor; standing atop the Tri-States Mon-
ument in Port Jervis, their phones held high and oriented south-