Friday, September 09, 2005

Happy Friday, world. It's a short week, which always means that Friday comes up on you quicker than you expect, and then it's a rush to get everything done so you can get out and enjoy the weekend. At least it is for me.

The NFL season is officially upon us, and the college season is in full swing, which means lots of things, but I am going to talk about one here- degenerate gambling. Football is the best sport to gamble on, because all of your bets happen in a concentrated period, the spreads are easy to understand, as is the scoring, and it's more exciting to see your bets play out in football than any other sport. So here we have it. A few gambling tips for your ass to start off the season, courtesy of my favorite internet sports columnist, The Sports Guy.

1. The AFC was 44-20 against the NFC last year. The AFC has gotten better. The NFC has gotten worse.

2. The Rams are 7-19 on the road against the spread in last three years.


I personally like to take home dogs, teams with matchup advantages at the explosive skill positions, and parlay conference powerhouses in college football. For the NFL, it's a crap shoot because of parity and I had a pretty bad record last year, so I won't give out much advice. I do think that the first month of the season is the time to bet heavily on the NFL, because there are always teams that are better than advertised and some that are worse than advertised, and it takes the oddsmakers a while to get that sorted out and make the lines accurate. So bet away. I am taking the Bears +5.5 over the Redskins, Cards +2.5 (at home) over the Giants, and parlay that baby with the Colts -3 at the Ravens. We'll see how that plays out in week 1, and if I turn out to be right, I'll try to post more picks each week. My god, I missed football. Go hawks.

Also, my big brother noticed something hilarious about Iowa State- their punter is named Troy Blankenship, but was (possibly intentionally) mis-named in the Daily Iowan as Todd Blankenship. In case you don't get the reference, there was a funny and popular Deep Thought from Saturday Night Live years ago that went as follows-

"I wish my name was Todd. Then I could say to people, 'Hi, my name is Todd. Todd Blankenship.' Oh yeah, I also wish that my last name was Blankenship."

I'll leave you with that. Have a good weekend. Hope whoever you're rooting for (not Iowa State or the Redskins) win big.

1 comment:

shane said...

hey G, hey tim

Orten is probably going to the best nfl QB taken in the draft but you are right his inexperience could hurt his performance in the first few games

and as for a little advice on fball betting. if you can find a local booky(bookey?) to place bets with you can get really good odds betting certain spreads with and against each other. Good local bookies adjust their spreads according to their local markets in order to maximize their profits but the online betting houses/bookies typically use the vegas spreads. So as I said there is money to be made analysizing and using the spread differences to your advantage.

that is enough opining from me.

shane