So let's talk about horse racing instead. I've been an enthusiast since the age of nine when my late grandmother, an ardent and knowledgeable fan who pored daily over the racing pages of The Sun, placed my first bet.
The occasion was the 1973 Grand National and my 10p rested on the shoulders of Crisp, ridden by the top jumps jockey of the day, Richard Pitman. Anyone who knows anything about racing and many who don't will know that Crisp led until the final 100 yards of the four-and-a-quarter miles, only to be collared at the death in the first chapter of the equine legend that was Red Rum's racing career.
I think I cried and, 35 years later, I am still gripped by a wholly irrational desire to hurl something at the television screen whenever Mr Pitman appears as part of the BBC's racing team - even though I know it wasn't his fault.
And I still can't pick winners, as I explained to my wife after our annual excursion to Uttoxeter's ladies night last week ended in the usual flurry of ripped-up betting slips and vanishing £5 notes.
I managed to get an odds-on favourite turned over and backed a second-place and third-place finisher (all to win, naturally) while my Derby bet last Saturday finished a well-beaten third.
I spent the whole of last winter's National Hunt campaign noting how Denman was improving fast and would surely be a Gold Cup contender; on the day itself, when I was lucky enough to join the throng at Cheltenham, I plunged my hard-earned down the tubes on Kauto Star. And no, I hadn't had my mind changed by Guinness at £3.30 a pint.
It's like that with most racing, as opposed to gambling, fans, I think. We love watching the power and grace of the racehorse in action and we admire the skill and bravery of the 11-stone jockey aboard a beast ten times his weight (I admit to being more of a fan of the jumping game). If we win a bit of money, that's a bonus - it's the sport that counts and we'll never have the wherewithal to make a living out of it.
And it's surprising how many of us there are. Uttoxeter last Thursday attracted its' usual eclectic mix of finely-dressed couples, racing folk in tweeds, hardened punters with a fag in their mouth and a Racing Post under their elbow and brassy blondes from Stoke-on-Trent and Derby wearing far too little, drinking way too much and being transported to and from the course in lurid pink stretch limousines.
Epsom, meanwhile, opened its' doors to an astonishing 140,000 people last Saturday and although some would have been there just for the day out, there's something about horse racing that draws people in where other sports don't.
And that's where this is leading because I've always had Post readers down as racing fans. I've worked here long enough to know that the betting offices around Birmingham's law courts attract their fair share of smart-suited types, while the reader reaction when we occasionally print the wrong racecard, or miss out a racing return, far outweighs anything else.
But given our limited resources in terms of space, there are often questions to be asked about the room devoted to racing in the paper. Given the lack of West Midlands involvement (OK, Seb Sanders was born in Tamworth, but you can count the number of trainers in our area on the fingers of one hand), should we be bothering at all? I know my answer and the fact is that if we didn't have a page or two of racing, something else would have to fill its' place, but discussions like that are what this blog is for.