It's fun as hell, and i love sports. When i was like 10 years old my dad brought me home a parlay card from work. i played a 4 teamer and he put up my 5 bucks. all 4 games hit, he came home with 60 bucks for me and i thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
now i do it almost for competition. idk how to explain it best but the idea of getting a bankroll, trying to make it grow, hitting a solid % of bets, trying to beat the oddsmakers.. its just fun to me. handicapping games, going through all kinds of stats, injury reports, weather forecasts, and analyzing match ups to find out which team is going to win and by how much is just a lot of fun for me. and if it wasn't for school and work i'd spend a hell of a lot more time doing it.. also backing up my opinions with money feels good (even if its only a few bucks), especially when you are right.
i don't really do it for a "rush" my bets are only between 5-10$ occasionally ill splurge a little bit for a teaser, or if its a big game like the superbowl i might put down between 50-100.. but that's very very rare. like i said small 5-10 $ bets, even at that small limit i find myself getting flustered when a team is screwing up, or really excited when they are playing well, not because of winning/losing the 5-10 bucks, just the idea of winning/losing competitively... idk if that makes sense.. but thats why i do it.