Did Back to The Future accurately predict sports betting?

March 17, 2017

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Would the betting tips Biff got from time travel actually work?

In the classic film Back To The Future Part 2 (1989), by director Robert Zemeckis, a sports almanac is transported through time into the future. The results are catastrophic for Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and skews the world into an alternate reality. It is then up to Dr. Emmit ‘Doc’ Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and McFly to to once again jump into the time traveling Delorean and fix the problem. The result is one of the most cherished and iconic films of the 1980’s.

But what if that really happened? What if someone WAS able to get an entire century of sports betting tips? In the movie, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), does just that. He is able to use the sports almanac to build a vast fortune worth millions and likely billions of dollars. Would that really be the case if that happened in actuality and what would it look like. Did Back to The Future accurately predict sports betting?

Greed

So the person who receives all of the sports scores from the previous century would likely be skeptical at first. Secondly, they would need someplace to to go to in order to place all of their bets. Let’s assume this person is not already uber wealthy, like Biff was in BTTF Part 2. He was just an ordinary high school bully at the time when he received the almanac from his future self. The recipient of the book (assuming they are American) would likely to head to one a place where casinos dominate. That would be likely either Las Vegas, NV or Atlantic City, NJ. If there was a major amount of skepticism he may try his luck at one of the smaller casino locations, or even test theories on ESPN before wagering any money.

Lets say he is a Las Vegas kind of guy and heads down to the oasis in the desert. Once he arrives there he will have to find a bookie and DISCRETELY place a few small bets. Maybe something inconspicuous, for example some betting on some horse races would be an easy place to start. There are hundreds of races a day and one could easily start to make some small wagers to build confidence and avoid the adrenaline rush of winning. This is where the greed factor would come into play.

Greed, one of the original deadly sins, is defined as ,”intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.” As the gambler successfully made several winning bets, he may exercise caution at first. Paying attention to see who is watching him, or maybe leaving the casino altogether with his meager yet high margin wins. If he could maintain the discipline to never take too much from the house, he could probably continue this streak for a long time. But just how long could he keep winning every single bet and not get noticed? Would someone like Biff had the sagacity to throw a few well timed losing bets into the mix in order to conceal his much larger winnings? Would he have traveled to other cities or even countries to, such as Monaco, in an effort to build larger and larger earnings?

Eventually, as the required dopamine needed to flush the brain with euphoria was hitting extreme levels, the thrill of winning would be gone. The gambler would turn to other worldly vices in order to cope with depression. There are no shortages of this to be found. Would it be cocaine, alcohol, pills, prostitutes? At this point we assume that money would not be an issue either and the world wold be pretty much open to him. Could he maintain a low profile and continue to feed the betting machine?

Will he be discovered?

This is almost a given. Lets suppose the man with the golden hand was lucid enough to figure out he had become a marked man in every casino town in the USA. So, he turns to online betting to win money from the presumed safety of the internet. At this point, mafia, the F.B.I. and other shadowy types have put a mark on him. They don’t know HOW he is winning every sports bet, but they’d like to ,’bring him in for a few questions.‘ He would have to run, but where would he go? If he had saved enough money, and was tech savvy enough, he might be able to go ‘off-grid’ and continue to rack up money from online sources. Perhaps he could hire an accomplice to continue to place bets for him, or create a string of aliases online that would allow him to make bets. How long could this fugitive stay on the run, where would he go, and what toll would it take on him?

The aftermath of time travel

So we have established two things at this point; 1.) The man in possession of the sports betting tips has been successful and accumulated wealth. 2.) He has been discovered by various groups and is on the run, possibly with a string of damaging addictions. There could be many potential outcomes, but we’ll separate this into two. The happy ending and the not so-happy ending.

The not-so-happy ending doesn’t take much imagination, so we’ll start there. Depending on which interested group was to capture him first he may be tortured or at the very least incarcerated and interrogated. While the Hollywood version of ‘torture’ in casino movies is watered down, aka a guy gets tied to a chair and pummeled with fists, in the real world torture is horrible ordeal. Waterboarding would be in place if caught by the government as they try to get him to reveal the secrets of time travel. In a memoir of a border patrol agent he recalled a captured Mexican spies’ nightmare of being caught in a drug sting operation. The absolute first stage of torture for the double agent was being handcuffed to an fence and sodomized repeatedly by an H.I.V. infected gang member. He was able to produce the sports almanac, they would likely kill him, seize what ever remains assets he had available and then killed or locked away forever, never to be seen again.

The happy ending (…not that kind of happy ending…) might go something like this. Alone and paranoid, the man on the run hits rock bottom. As the bottle of pills sits empty on the floorboard of his car, a loaded gun rides in the passenger seat next to him. At the apex of a high bridge he stands on the precipice and looks over the edge. With the gun in his right hand, he lifts it to his head and stops. Then with out fully understanding why, he heaves the gun into the water far below, reenters his car and drives to the next town. In this town he makes a few long overdue phone calls to loved ones, checks himself into a hospital under a pseudonym and begins to detox. After a few weeks, he is clean and sober, with plenty of cash in reserve to book passage on a ship out of the country discretely. There he chooses his life in a foreign country and begins with a new name and identity. He starts a business with his winnings, and now manages his online betting with much more discern and tact. Growing richer than his wildest dreams while avoiding the suspicions of those that were chasing him.

So, Did Back to The Future accurately predict sports betting?

It’s fun to think about what it might be like to have every inside betting tip available to your and what you might be able to accomplish with it. Looking back at the late 80’s and time before the hyper-connected internet world, it may have even seemed possible to do so. However, now that we are fully into 21st century, it would be nearly impossible for a lone wolf to have achieved what Biff did in BTTF Part 2. Greed, lack of privacy, and other factors would severely dampen any chance that one person could amass that type of fortune from simply betting based on Gray’s Sports Almanac.

Do you think BTTF Part 2 could have accurately depicted what would have happened if someone got a copy of all the sports scores for the entire decade in an advance?