San Francisco is a popular pick as an NFL dark horse this season. Maybe too popular. The consensus buzz they’re getting was one of the things that helped me eliminate them as a potential “go with” team in my football annual this year. I like their youth, their talent, and their coaching, but Frank Gore is so important to this team and he’s just flat out brittle. He’s tough. But he’s easy to injure.

Now on the first day of practice in pads, Gore breaks his hand in a non-contact ball-handling drill. He’s likely out for the entire preseason.

If the over/under on Gore’s games played this season were 12, would you dare go over? That’s just one thing that gives me pause before placing the buy sign on Frisco.

With Neteller reporting that they will contact customers via email with instructions on accessing the money that has been held for the past seven months, you can be certain that phishing scam artists have their plans in place. We can expect that there will be very official looking emailed attempts to access account holders’ bank account information from those looking to profit from the confusion surrounding the Neteller plan.

Do not use any emailed correspondence from Neteller to enter what you believe to be their site. If you get an email that appears to announce the distribution of funds, separately go visit Neteller’s site, log in, and go through the process on their site to claim your money.

If you’re a Neteller account holder and this is all news to you, get up to speed on the money that you have coming back to you.

We’ll be commenting on the whole Tim Donaghy situation in a day or two. Most of the opinions you’ve heard have missed the mark and a lot of what you’ve heard from so-called “experts” has been wrong as well.

Donaghy comes from an officiating background. In addition to involvement in charitable endeavors, his father Jerry was a college basketball official for a long time. His uncle Bill Oakes was an NBA official. Jerry was an ACC official in the 80’s, seemed to do more Atlantic 10 work in the 90’s, and had some NCAA Tournament assignments sprinkled in. The fact that the elder Donaghy once threw John Calipari out of a game (picture here) makes him a very sympathetic character in my eyes.

Just imagine the disappontment of these people. The family officiating background makes the whole situation just a little bit more tragic.

August can be a tough time for second-tier tracks to get the attention of horseplayers, but Laurel Park in Maryland has assured themselves of getting more than a passing glance from bettors who are understandably focused on Saratoga and Del Mar.

Lauel has cut their takeout to 10% for their ten day meet that starts on August 10th. The Maryland track has a gorgeous turf course that they renovated a couple of years ago and widened from 75 feet to 142 feet. The full fields on the turf should prove to be great betting races with huge exotic payouts.

Hopefully horseplayers will reward GM Lou Raffetto and his staff by betting the mid-August meet enthusiastically in between classier races from Saratoga and Del Mar.

If you’re an online gambler who had money caught up in Neteller when they ceased operations in the US you’ll soon have access to your funds. Neteller has agreed to pay the US Government $136 million as a fine to avoid any further prosecution of the company.

Neteller promises to begin the process of distributing money to US account holders by July 30.

Part of the deal has Neteller turning over any and all records, including customer records. No question that some folks who used Neteller as a means to avoid taxes have reason to be nervous. Of course if someone wasn’t a net winner gambling and had losses otherwise, they probably have nothing to worry about.

If you read Kevin O’Neill’s Maximum Profit Football Annual last season, you profited greatly when our two top college “go with” teams, Wake Forest and Central Michigan, dominated the pointspread on the way to shocking conference titles. Following our Full Season Value Strategy with our “go with” and “go against” teams was a pointspread winner in the NFL, as well.

If you recieved our annual last year, you need do nothing, as you’ll recieve the annual in mid-August again this year.

This year’s annual again proves to be the most opinionated NFL & college football annual in the business. If you’re searching for powerful pointspread results in 2008, you’ve got to visit www.FootballAnnual.com to get this season’s annual.

To recieve Kevin O’Neill’s Maximum Profit Football Annual this year, leave your name at www.FootballAnnual.com right now.

He won’t catch a lot of flack for it, as working for the Worldwide Leader insulates you from criticism, but one guy with egg on his face right now is Chris Mortensen. The more enterprising members of the Atlanta sports media, namely sports talk station 790 The Zone, got good information from the local media in Virginia that Mike Vick’s fingerprints were all over this dogfighting ring and his flunkies were not going to be able to take the rap for him.

Then a few weeks back, ESPN’s Mortensen reported that Vick was unlikely to be indicted. The ESPN report was a surprise to anyone who had followed the story closely here in Atlanta and had listened to the interviews done by Sandra Golden when this story was breaking. You’ve got to wonder who Mortensen’s sources were on this.

Much will be made of Vick’s conversations with Roger Goddell, who was promised that there was nothing to these allegations. But you also have to wonder how Arthur Blank, Rich McKay, and all the Falcons officials who were misled by Michael Vick over the past few months are going to react to this. Vick swore he had nothing to do with any of it. But if the indictment is accurate and Vick was intimately involved with executing dogs, among other things, you’ve just got to wonder if the Falcons would be willing to take the ginormous salary cap hit and cut ties with a guy who they simply cannot trust.

Obviously the Falcons never even think about trading Matt Schaub if they knew this situation was coming down the pike. Can Vick focus with this hanging over his head? Could this possibly be Joey Harrington’s team this season?

It’s crime time in college football. You need to keep your eyes on the police blotter, as depth charts can change, especially in the first couple of games of the season when one and two-game suspensions are handed out.

Georgia defensive lineman Tripp Taylor has been charged for his role in the bizarre beating of a couple of high school kids, who were beaten with a baseball bat, stripped, and urinated on. Taylor is a walk-on but was expected to see time on the field this fall.

Freshman recruit Caleb King is arrested on more mundane traffic charges. King will likely be redshirted due to the UGA depth at running back, but there sure is a lot of malfeasance that goes on at UGA.

What’s interesting about this is that nobody spends more time on character development and education than Mark Richt. In fact, Richt gave up play-calling duties in part to involve himself more in the lives of his players.

Georgia likely can’t afford many more suspensions. Unlike last season, when Richt could freely suspend players for a game due to the Bulldogs’ opener being against Western Kentucky, UGA’s first game this season is no gimmee, as there are folks who think highly of Oklahoma State’s prospects this season, despite the lack of defense in Stillwater.

A pretty good case could be made for Cincinnati as a value team in the Big East, but things have gotten a little tougher for the Bearcats. Their best defensive lineman and top deep threat have left the Bearcat program.

While this isn’t breaking news (I just found it in doing my preseason work this week), there’s some value to it. Cincinnati is one of those programs that doesn’t get smothered in coverage and can be overlooked among the bigger schools in the Big East. A case could have been made that UC could be a “go with” team. They lost 5 games last year but there’s no shame in getting vanquished by Ohio State, Virginia Tech, Louisville, and West Virginia. Coach D’Antonio’s move to Michigan State happened before the bowl season, allowing new coach Brian Kelly and his staff to coach the Bearcats in their International Bowl win over Western Michigan.

But UC is the kind of school that doesn’t have the depth to withstand the loss of their top defensive lineman and a top receiver. Though the future is probably bright under Kelly, the transition got a little more difficult.

It is also interesting to note the Anderson was granted a release to attend Eastern Michigan and Michigan, but not to attend Michigan State to play for his old coach. There’s more detail in this article. Kelly was second choice at Michigan State when D’Antonio was hired and there may be some bad blood there.

Up until this spring, if you had a wagering account with one of the major American providers of pari-mutuel wagering, you could bet on nearly every track everywhere. That changed pretty quickly, and most folks were shut out from either the Kentucky Derby or the Belmont this year.

Rather than coming together to grow their sport when the offshore sports books have been damaged by U.S. legislation, the various horse racing interests are battling it out and making things harder for customers who simply want to bet the major tracks at their convenience.

Confused? Who isn’t?

If you want it all explained, Andy Beyer is on the case in the Washington Post.