Posted on 2/12/2008 5:52:29 PM

General Sports Betting - Rose’s Rant

By Mike Rose

The first weekend after the Super Bowl is always a strange one. You’re just not sure what to do with yourself. The weekend just feels strange as you try and figure out something else to do. You can go shopping with the lady and spend money you know you don’t want to, or you can look into a number of the chores you had put off throughout the college and pro football seasons. How about hitting the gym to work off some of that beer/wings gut you developed over the last five months? I didn’t think so!!!

None of those choices seemed ideal, so instead, you probably plopped down a whole bunch of your pigskin winnings on a college hoops card containing what seemed to be 52,000 games. Countless sports betting scenarios exist. Some of the lines look to good to be true, while others have you scratching your head trying to figure out what Vegas is thinking. Bottom line, many people ended up losing a bulk of their bankrolls wagering on teams and totals of which they had no idea about.

Take Saturday’s card for instance. Boston College invaded Cameron Indoor Stadium to take on the Duke Blue Devils in a game that saw the home team favored by 18.5-points. The Eagles had lost its L/3 road games to Virginia 84-66 as 5-point underdogs, North Carolina 91-69 as 19-point road pups, and to Clemson 78-56 as 10.5-point underdogs. They lost those three games by an average of 21 PPG, and now they were only getting 18.5-points against the 2nd ranked Duke Blue Devils. It almost seemed too good to be true to lay the lofty chalk with Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils. Well, BC held a 42-41 lead at the break, hung tough throughout the second half and only ended up losing by a 90-80 final count. Those holding Duke tickets in their hands were left wondering how BC was able to stay in the game let alone cover the lofty spread. Those not so fine tuned into CBB might not have known that Duke knocked off arch-rival North Carolina earlier in the week, and were set up to letdown in their next game. On the flipside, the experienced CBB bettors reaped the rewards as the Eagles brought home their first road cover since early December when they went into Maryland and upended a much different Terps squad as 5.5-point underdogs.

Another game that almost certainly cost a number of people occurred in Baton Rouge, LA when the 4th ranked Tennessee Volunteers took on the LSU Tigers. LSU decided to can Head Coach John Brady on Friday; the day before the game. Brady was the third-winningest coach in the university's history. His 192-139 record included a trip to the Final Four in 2006 and two first-place finishes in the Southeastern Conference. With all of LSU’s injuries, and the fact that a lame duck coach was roaming the sidelines certainly had many leaning towards laying the chalk with the Vols. Of course, LSU put forth one of their best efforts of the season, while Tennessee put forth an absolute stinker. Head Coach Bruce Pearl had to consider his team very lucky to escape LSU with the 2-point victory. They shot 32% from the field on 19-of-60 shooting, only made 5-of-19 3-point attempts, and hit a miserable 27% from the charity stripe. LSU covered the double-digit spread with ease, and cost all Tennessee backers a couple of units each. The lesson to be learned here is to never overreact to coaching changes or mass injuries. It always seems that everyone always cranks it up a couple of notches under those circumstances.

Just a couple tidbits before I close this week’s edition out. My heart goes out to those that probably lost three years off their lives on Sunday night when they took in the Clemson/UNC game. The Tigers lost a heartbreaker in overtime by a 103-93 final count, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Clemson was installed as a 9-point road pup and held a 45-34 lead at the half. North Carolina shot just 38 percent (11-of-29) in the first half and committed 13 turnovers, while Clemson connected on 7-of-12

3-pointers. They then went on to allow the Tarheels to tie it up when they went on a 14-3 run to end regulation. A surefire underdog winner quickly turned into a nightmare when the Tarheels went on to win by 10-points. There’s no doubt that a number of TV’s were broke that night, and it’s almost impossible to tell what exactly is to become of the Clemson Tigers throughout the rest of the season. Maybe they’ll simply go into the tank and head back to the NIT, or maybe they’ll learn from this loss and go on and win the ACC Tournament. It’s really hard to tell, but what is 100% known is that Clemson backers suffered what will amount to one of the top 5 ATS losses of the season.

On a final note: Do you think Roger is second guessing his parading around Capitol Hill last week knowing full well that the evidence and testimony that’s surfaced during that time all points to his guilt? It doesn’t matter how many autographs he gave or pictures he took with government officials. He’s already been deemed guilty in the court of public opinion, and now he’s going to have to be on top of his game to avoid going to trial for lying under oath.

We all know you did it Roger!!! You should have just fessed up to it in the first place like so many others already have. Nobody even cares anymore. This whole ordeal has turned into a complete joke, and the fact that John Rocker has come out of the woodwork to make a couple extra dollars confirms it. I hope this ordeal is finalized after Wednesday, but you and I both know that won’t be the case. Who knows, it might not be wrapped up until were well into the 2008 season, but by then, it will be an afterthought quite like it’s already becoming…..

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