Online poker is grey-area because the poker outfit itself is generally outside the scope of US law. If it were more legal, you can be sure their servers would be hosted domestically in the US where it's cheaper and faster.
Your local bookie, however, is in the same scope as a guy running a local card room -he's taking a cut off of people's gambling habit. Whether it's sports or not, it's still going to be bookmaking, and still trouble. Extra trouble if it's over state lines.
