You might have heard— sports gambling is about to change. With the US Supreme Court voting 6-3 to overturn a 1992 ban on states’ sports betting rights, the landscape of online and offline gambling is going to change. What the change really did was just open the door for states to choose whether or not to allow sports gambling within their borders, but that will have tidal waves of change throughout Las Vegas and overseas/online betting.

What does this have to do with the LA Chargers? Not terribly too much, other than that fans can expect gambling to become more and more synonymous with sports over the coming years. As the NFL figures out how to monetize gambling without ostentatiously impacting the game’s integrity, they will surely work to make certain avenues of gaming more family-friendly and socially acceptable, much like what they did with the second-hand ticket market. This, in turn, should prove very interesting to those that like to follow “Vegas Lines” for teams and players, as the lines should become more and more competitive with more institutions competing in the market.

MVP Futures

Online sportsbook BetOnline.ag, estimated to be the third most popular such site, today released their futures lines for MVP and Rookie of the Year bets. The Chargers’ Philip Rivers is one of the highest ranked candidates in this first of the pre-season rankings. Only seven players ranked above him in likelihood, and you can probably name them without reading:

Aaron Rodgers +600
Tom Brady +750
Carson Wentz +1100
Drew Brees +1100
Russell Wilson +1200
Jared Goff +1600
Ben Roethlisberger +1600
Philip Rivers +1800

To be fair, Rivers was tied with a litany of other very good QBs, as the sportsbooks fairly assume that they are good enough and capable enough to earn MVP if their team plays lights-out. Those include Matt Ryan, Kirk Cousins, Cam Newton, and Dak Prescott.

Hey, as far as pre-snap reads go, this season is looking good for the Chargers! We’ll see if and how the lines change as training and pre-season come into play.

-Jason “Semisatisfaction Guaranteed” Michaels