If you don’t like bad beat stories, then skip today’s article.
Six years ago, I suffered the worst gambling loss of my life on a single event.
Super Bowl XLII cost me $39,000, by far my most costly loss ever. To put this into perspective, that money was pretty much everything I had — my entire gambling bankroll.
Here in Las Vegas, it’s been said all gamblers go broke at least once during their lifetime, and this was my turn to do penance.
The NFL’s most gutless team has just announced they’ll be changing into new uniforms for the 2014 NFL season.
After losing five of their last six games, their playoff hopes were dashed following an inexplicable home loss as a 9-point favorite to the miserable New York Giants — a banged-up shell of a team that gave up on the season more than two months ago. Lions’ quarterback Matt Stafford, the perpetually underachieving team’s “franchise player,” claimed the pink negligee for himself.
The announcement was a major disappointment to at least one other NFL club. The Baltimore Ravens, who haven’t played a decent game since last year’s Super Bowl, were reportedly outraged these uniforms are now taken. Nike has been contracted to come up with a similar design.
No doubt, the Lions won rights to their new look fair and square.
“If the bra fits, wear it,” said grossly overpaid Raven’s quarterback Joe Flacco.
How’s it possible there are more than half a million enlisted men serving in the United States Army right now, and yet not a single one of them can throw a froward pass?
I figure the troops go through basic training, right? Don’t they learn how to pitch hand grenades? How much more difficult can it be to toss a football?
Army has consistently had the worst quarterbacking in college football for 70 years. Go ahead — try and name a single Army quarterback. And don’t say Roger Staubach — because he played for Navy.
Believe it or not, there was actually a time when Army fielded some great football teams. They even won the national championship three times. So what in the hell happened? Shouldn’t the people in the Army be tougher than everyone else? Shouldn’t they be kicking ass and taking names? Who is tougher than a bad ass who carries a 100-pound backpack 20 miles during boot camp? And that goes for the starters as well as the reserves. Let’s see someone from USC do that.
Friday night, the LVH Casino hosted a football handicapping seminar. Over a thousand people showed up, hoping to get advice and selections from some of the best sports handicappers in the business.
Here I am posing with longtime pal Steve Fezzik (see photo above). “Fez” is the only person in history to win the prestigious “Super Contest” twice, which he accomplished back in 2009 and 2010. That’s like football gambling’s equivalent of the World Series of Poker.
Today, Fez is affiliated with a site called PREGAME.COM. I have no vested interest here other that to say that when Fez recommends something to me, I almost always bet it. I don’t need an explanation, because I’m sure it’s already been analyzed thoroughly. No one I know works harder at sports handicapping than Fez. He’s also never short on opinions about a game or a situation. When we met last night, Fez told me he’s putting up a free podcast daily at the site. You might want to check it out. I know I will.
Friday night’s seminar featured a dozen handicappers who took to the stage and talked about pro and college football. Hats off to Jay Kornegay, the legendary race and sportsbook manager for LVH (formally the Las Vegas Hilton) who provided this service free of charge. In years past, the Red Rock Casino used to be the home of this seminar. I’m glad to see something provided to sports bettors. I wish there were more of these activities
I’d also like to give a special shout out to Ted Sevranksy, a.k.a. “Teddy Covers” who is right up there with Steve Fezzik as a football betting analyst. Teddy, who hosts a daily radio show, was also on the panel, and offered a number of interesting ideas.
I took a few mental notes. These are not necessarily Fezzik and/or Sevransky’s opinions. However, when one of the panelists said something I thought was particularly noteworthy (even when I disagreed with it), I filed it away to reflect on it later. Listed here in no particular order are some of my mental notes from the football betting seminar:
The NFL regular season is only a few weeks away. As was the case last season, I’ll be handicapping the entire board each week and posting opinions here at my site. Look for most release times to be Saturday morning.
One of the more interesting options for football bettors is season win totals. This is the number of regular season games each team is expected to win (16-game season).
Betting NFL season win totals has advantages and disadvantages. The good thing about them is variance tends to be reduced over the course of the entire season. While any team can have a good or bad single game, making individual game handicapping a real challenge, skill and talent spread over 16 games tends to not produce as many suprises. Of course, there are always exceptions.
The disadvantage of betting NFL season win totals, especially for bettors who do not have credit lines, is tying up money for several months at a time. If you bet a few team totals in August, a best-case scenario is you won’t be able to collect until January. For this reason, season win totals are not as popular among recreational bettors by sheer volume of money wagered, which (arguably) makes these closing numbers much harder to beat. This is because the sharp money has hammered the right market price into place, by now. Hence, there’s some validity to now being “too late” to find value on season win totals.
That said, I’m going to post opinions here anyway. Let’s begin with the NFC: Note — Current lines are taken from OLYMPIC SPORTSBOOK as of August 20, 2013.
