Here’s a memory that goes back to the 1980s when I worked in the downtown OKC newsroom of The Daily Oklahoman.
Every Thursday afternoon during football season, I would walk about three blocks down to Taylor’s Newsstand from the paper’s Broadway & 6th Street headquarters.
You might remember Taylor’s Newsstand. It was located in the Century Center mall attached to the Sheraton Hotel. Taylor’s offered an awesome variety of magazines and newspapers from around the country. I fact, I bought a lot of Sunday papers from Denver, Kansas City and Dallas at Taylor’s over the years.
But that’s not what drew me to the newsstand on Thursdays in the fall. It was a publication that Taylor’s sold called The Gold Sheet.
Man, I loved to get my hands on The Gold Sheet each week.
If you are unfamiliar with it, The Gold Sheet was a football handicapping publication. A tout sheet. Still is, in digital form.
It was printed on heavy gold paper that unfolded into a large single sheet that contained predictions and analysis on every Division 1 and NFL football game for the coming weekend.
I’m pretty sure that my friend ‘David’ introduced me to The Gold Sheet, and I became a loyal reader.
I wasn’t much of a gambler, but coworkers at the newspaper in that mid-1980s era connected me to a bookie here in town who would would take my tiny wagers of $10 or $20.
So, The Gold Sheet became a big part of my weekly rhythm throughout the 1980s, when I was still single and willing to wager a few dollars on football.
Yes, I know it’s shocking that gambling on football (and other sports) occurred in OKC. But it did in the ’80s, and I’m certain you wouldn’t have to work too hard to find a bookie today who would take your wagering action.
A Bold Prediction: Oklahoma will have legal, online sports wagering within the next 5 years.
As for The Gold Sheet itself, it contained a prediction on the outcome of every game along with a couple of sentences that backed up each pick. It made for great reading, if nothing else.
Maybe because today is Super Bowl Sunday– by far the No. 1 day annually for sports wagering (sorry Final Four, Kentucky Derby et al) — I stumbled across a reference online this morning to The Gold Sheet.
And that got me to wondering what became of my favorite handicapping publication.
So, I did a little online research and discovered a Chicago Sun Times article from 2022 that revealed that it is now part of an online handicapping website called WagerTalk Media.
The article also outlined the history of The Gold Sheet, which was launched in Los Angeles by the late Mort Olshan in 1956. It remained a physical publication until the end of the 2019 football season, when it morphed into a digital publication.
A wave of nostalgia washed over me when I discovered the Chicago Sun Times article, which included a picture of The Gold Sheet from back in the day.
My weekly wagering days are long gone. But The Gold Sheet remains a fond memory of that time in my life.
BONUS CONTENT: Steve Lackmeyer, my friend and former colleague at The Oklahoman, wrote about the demise of Taylor’s Newsstand when it finally closed for good in 2009. Turns out The Gold Sheet outlasted the newsstand where I first discovered the publication.
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