College Football Week 12: This won't be the first time Kenjon Barner burns trees

Not feeling particularly great about this week.

Clemson -16.5 vs. NC State. Clemson rolling.
Vandy -4 vs. Tennessee. Will Dooley ever get fired?
Kansas State -13 at Baylor. Tired of betting against KSU and losing.
Mizzou -5 vs. Syracuse. Cuse due for a letdown after last week.
Marshall -3 vs. Houston. Houston blows.
UCLA +3.5 vs. USC. Gotta take a dog. This seems good.

 

Not taking the bait on Stanford, +24?

 

It's down to 20.5. I'm debating.

 

Vegas must not have seen much action at 24. Heed the warning sign. I think Stanford gets shithoused.

 

I once read that betting the favorite in every college game with a spread of 21 or more had like a 70 percent success rate.

 

Oh, they saw action. Lots of money coming in on Stanford, obviously, for the line to fall like that. Smart money, I'm guessing, so now they're just BEGGING you to take Oregon.

Stay-away game for me.

 

A four-point swing like that might provide some opportunity to middle the game if you jumped on it early.

 

Or maybe Vegas knows who will play and who won't play on Oregon's beat-up defense and has dropped the line accordingly.

 

What's that mean? Take both sides and hope to win both?

I think I'd need more than a 4-point window to do that, but it's an interesting idea.

 

That's what the pros do, and for less than four points. They'd have people stationed with cell phones at different books and bet both sides on a point or two difference -- all they'd really be betting is the vig so they would be making something like 20-1 on their money. Biggest reason cell phones were banned in the books.

 

Interesting idea. So all they really risk is the vig, but win double if it comes in between the two spreads, is that the gist of it? Makes a ton of sense if you've got a game with a wildly fluctuating spread like this one.

As an inexperienced ntiwit on this gambling stuff, I'm curious why the cell phones make such a difference.

 

Yes. You'd bet on Stanford early and Oregon late, and hope the final margin is between 20 and 24 points. If Oregon wins by, say, 21, you'd win both bets. If you're trying to do it, four points is damn tempting. It's not often lines swing that much in a week.

The most famous (or infamous, if you worked in Vegas) instance of middling was Super Bowl XIII and, like LTL said, it was far less than four points.
The line started at Steelers minus-3 1/2. Lots of action came in for the Steelers, so it eventually went up to Steelers minus-4 1/2. At that point, people jumped on the Cowboys. The final score was 35-31, meaning both the early and later lines covered. So, Vegas lost all the early Steelers bets, plus all the late Cowboys bets.
In Vegas, it's known as "Black Sunday."