Keeping Hope Alive for a Return to School

I wonder if New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is a good poker player because it’s clearly hard to know what exactly he’s thinking.

Earlier this week he cast doubt that the state would be re-opened for Memorial Day weekend in late May saying “I think June or July is a much better reality if we keep doing our part.”  At some point later I will get into the ramifications of what a closed Jersey Shore for the unofficial start of summer would mean but it would not be pretty.

When Murphy made that statement I immediately went to my DraftKings Sportsbook app to see if you could bet on whether or not he would be closing schools for the remainder of the year.

It had been reported that he would discuss the status of the school year at his daily press briefing on Thursday and I for one considered it a “lock” that he would announce that schools were not re-opening for the current academic year.  I mean if you are not going to allow people to be outside walking on the boardwalk or sitting on the beach you are certainly not going to let hundreds if not thousands of children inside buildings together.

In addition half of the states in the U.S. have shut down schools for the rest of the year and New Jersey’s health crisis is worse than just about all of them.

Knowing all of that I was disappointed that I could not make a small wager on DraftKings because to me the closing of schools was as much a guarantee as the Colts beating the Jets in Super Bowl III.  I may have shared the story of me as an 8^th grader at Central Regional losing $2.00 to just about every student and teacher in the school on that game.

I saved a few bucks this time around because with a poker face Murphy announced that schools would remain closed through May 15^th which means there is a glimmer of hope that schools would open for a few weeks. That also keeps alive the slight and I do mean slight chance of some form of a spring season for high school athletes who compete in baseball, softball, lacrosse, track, golf, tennis and volleyball.

By the way I’d bet against that if I could.

STAY HEALTHY MY FRIENDS!