Kickers come much cheaper; but what guarantee is there that a game will hinge on a field goal or a conversion? Betting, in short, is a much exaggerated demon.How different from Britain. Yes, there is an almighty fuss when Michael Owen admits losing tens of thousands of pounds gambling; but no one talks of banning him Much sports gambling in the US is still under the counter. High street betting shops do not exist; if you want odds on a big US fixture, you might as well go to Ladbrokes or William Hill as Harry the Horse in Vegas.Worst of all though, the NFL’s objections to gambling miss the point. It is the classic human ploy of making much of a non-existent problem to deflect attention from real ones: in the NFL’s case substance abuse and excessive violence, sometimes leading to unnecessary, devastating injury.The NFL argues it operates one of the strictest drugs policies in sport, introduced in the 1980s at the demand of the players themselves.

Each of them is now randomly tested once or twice a year, off-season included. But a problem still exists, greater than any risk posed by gamblers and the men in Vegas – where Sunday’s line, incidentally, is the Raiders by eight points.. If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers manage to defeat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII here on Sunday, the result will produce the unlikeliest sporting trivia question: Name the only Super Bowl winning quarterback who began his career at White Hart Lane. A former basketball player from a small town in North Carolina, Johnson had been drafted by the Minnesota Vikings despite one scouting report which summarised him as “slow, tall, not smart and having a weak arm”.The Vikings had no real idea of his potential, so they sent their man across the Atlantic to see what he could do. “I felt I knew the system in Minnesota, but I wasn’t getting any playing time,” he said. “I felt I needed to play, to make mistakes and learn from them. It was one of the best moves I ever made, and what I went through made me tough-skinned.”Life in Europe did indeed prove hard.

The World League had just reformed after two years in suspension. The Monarchs, who had attracted gates of 40,000 in 1991, their inaugural season, saw attendances dwindle to 8,000. Johnson, along with 34 other bemused Americans, found himself living in a former police barracks in Crystal Palace, earning less than $1,000 a week.If home comforts were in short supply, on the field things were even worse. The 1995 Monarchs were a motley group of wholehearted but limited plodders; their coach was out of his depth, and Johnson found himself the highest profile member of a team destined for a tortured season of struggle “I was pretty much on my own,” he said here this week. “There was no one there to hold my hand, and it’s not like I was surrounded by great talent, but I am a survivor.”Johnson duly survived the carnage of White Hart Lane, demonstrating sufficient poise and leadership for the Vikings to retain him. However, he was plagued by injuries and was eventually shipped to the Washington Redskins, where he blossomed under the tutelage of the head coach, Norv Turner.

Just when he seemed settled, a new owner bought the team, promptly fired Turner, and brought in a new passer, the strong-armed but temperamentally suspect Jeff George. Johnson was on the move again, this time to Tampa Bay.Again the fates failed to smile on him. Last year, after his first season in Florida, Tampa’s coach, Tony Dungy, was dismissed. In came Jon Gruden, whose first move was to announce that the quarterback position was up for grabs.Gruden operates a complicated offensive scheme, so the oft-injured passer, once dubbed “not smart”, faced a challenge, but in the end there was no competition. Johnson won the job outright, and his 2002 season, in which he threw 22 touchdowns and only six interceptions, confirmed his status as one of the game’s most overlooked performers.”We had to modify some of the things we wanted to feature with him, but he is an outstanding football player,” Gruden said. “Brad is a fine passer, a great competitor, and one of the big reasons we are here today.