Before we get started with today's show, I just want to congratulate the Bill Simmons Podcast for winning

2017 People's Voice and Webby Awards in the Best Sports Podcast category.

Thank you to everyone who supported us and voted.

All right, welcome to against all Odds with Cousin Sal, the premiere episode.

Very excited to be here.

I'm Sal, and I have a gambling problem.

Yep, I'll admit it.

I've had this problem for almost as long as I can remember.

I can give you some background.

It started at a very early age.

I remember as a seven-year-old flipping baseball cards during recess and I think the idea is you typically

Risk five baseball cards against the schoolmate and I was the dumb kid off in the corner flipping a hundred cards against 10 or 15 kids at a time and

Let's see it wasn't long after that that I would visit my cousin Jimmy in Las Vegas I I was probably 11 or 12. I'd go to the bowling alley with

my aunt chippy and she would play the video poker machines. They have video poker machines and

bowling alleys in Vegas. That's what makes Vegas the greatest city in the

world anyway I'd hand their twenty dollars I made off my paper out and I'd stand 12 feet

behind there because I had to and I tell her what to do keep the twos drop the queen go for the flush and so on and it

only really got worse from there football baseball basketball hockey world cup

soccer tennis golf basketball, hockey, World Cup soccer, tennis, golf, elections, dancing with the

stars, hot dog eating contest. If you could bet on it, I'm in and I'm not even

that good at it. I'm really not. It's just in my blood and my bones and you know a lot of these shows these days they feature guys selling picks that you know these guys have no intention on playing these

picks themselves or ESPN has a segment called Bad Beats and it's a nice idea

...