To say it’s been a disastrous football season in the state of Washington is an understatement.  Washington and Washington State are a combined 0-14 against Division 1-A competition, while the Seahawks are struggling along with a 2-6 mark.

Unfortunately for bettors who like to back the Evergreen State entries, the pointspread has not been the great equalizer it so often is.

Washington State is 0-7 to the pointspread.  At 1-6 to the number, Washington’s lone cover came in the strong effort they gave in their BYU loss.  And the Seahawks are 3-4 against the spread. That’s a combined 4-17 against the spread for the three clubs.

No matter how you slice it, it has been a miserable, money burning year for bettors and fans in the state of Washington.

Congrats to the Phillies and their classy fans for their World Series win. If you had a side bet on the rain-shortened Game 5 of the World Series, you had action despite the suspension of the game with the score tied 2-2.  Nevada gaming rules stipulate that when a game is suspended after five innings or more of play, the wagering result is based on the last completed full inning.  The Phillies led 2-1 after the fifth, so Phils bettors win. The victory was limited to side bettors, however.  Totals and runline wagers require the road team to bat in the top of the ninth, and as such were “no action” on Monday night.

Weather was responsible for the strange stats out of the games played at both Army and Navy on Saturday.  A windy, rainy day gave Navy a big advantage over pass-happy SMU in the 34-7 Navy win.  Total yardage was 404-144 in favor of the Middies, and that 404 yards resulted from 77 snaps, all of them runs, and not a single pass.  Army overcame a 4-1 turnover disadvantage to beat Louisiana Tech 14-7 due to a rushing edge of 203-68 and a defense that with the help of the elements held the Bulldogs to 9 first downs.

There’s a high bar for retired numbers at West Point.  Pete Dawkins,  a Brigadier General and Rhodes Scholar, in addition to being an all-time Army football great, had his number retired in the wind and rain at West Point on Saturday, a full 50 years after winning the Heisman Trophy.

The Titans are terrific, 7-0 both straight up and against the spread.  Showing that they do all the little things right, Tennessee has actually been outgained in three of their last four games, yet continue to both win and cover.

Looking at the Breeder’s Cup results, Jeremy Plonk suggests that when drug policies and testing has some teeth, the European way of training is superior enough that American horses have little chance.

Steve Crist of Daily Racing Form was the handicapper/bet structurer in a promotion for the Albany regional OTB where bettors who gave the OTB $2500 or more in action in September and October could share in a pick six ticket.  Crist hit with his $5,000 ticket, and the $65,000+ payout (including consolation payouts) was shared by 41 patrons who bothered to show up in Albany on Saturday. Crist, called “King of the Pick Six” for his acumen with the bet, also had an identical ticket for himself.

While everyone’s talking about how weak the Pac Ten is, nobody’s talking about how close Oregon State came to dealing both USC and Utah their only losses.  A week after their USC upset, the Beavers had a late 7-point lead in Salt Lake City but couldn’t seal the deal.   Having to replace their entire front seven on defense, the Beavers struggled to an 0-2 start.  But since a loss to Penn State that doesn’t look all that bad in retrospect, Oregon State has covered five straight, and are an outstanding three-loss team.   Bettors have noticed the Beavers, as OSU was a big early week mover from an opener of -12.5 to -15 against an Arizona State team that has lost five straight.  In their last four games the Sun Devils have been beaten by 89 yards and 642 points, though the competition was stiff (Georgia, Cal, USC, Oregon).

In the investment world Oklahoma State athletics benefactor T. Boone Pickens was a genius until recently, but has since become an idiot, with his funds losing around $2 billion since energy prices peaked. Conversely, Boston Red Sox owner John Henry was an idiot, but has recently become a genius. After years of drawdowns and redemptions, Henry’s funds have been slaying it during the recent market volatility.

Why was new 49ers coach Mike Singletary so unhinged on Sunday?   When you win yardage 388-261 against an opponent that has been outscored 97-33 the previous three weeks yet lose to that opponent 34-13 due to sloppiness and carelessness, the new coach gets pretty pissed off.  And who can blame him?  Underperforming Fricso is 7-17 against the spread since the start of last season.

For 12 fully analyzed and researched football selections each week, subscribe to my Maximum Profit Football Weekly for only $7 per week.  Call 1-770-649-1078 for more information.  When you subscribe this week’s 8-page pdf newsletter will be emailed to you immediately.

Good luck this weekend.  And be careful.

I bet Portland over their season wins total.  Choices range from over 44.5 laying -133 to over 45.5 at even money.  It is my lone NBA season total wins play.  The Blazers open their season tonight at 10:35 EDT.

There may be other good ones out there, but I’ve been fully absorbed in football and didn’t do a complete analysis of every team.  A couple of other plays I was interested in had schedule dynamics that conflicted with my “on-court” opinion of their prospects.

The Blazers are a talented young team that played well in spurts last season.  They exhibited good chemistry and solid rapport.  Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge (I have to admit that LaMarcus was not on the list of names that my wife and I considered for any of our children) are tremendous building blocks and now they’re joined by Spanish Olympic sensation Rudy Fernandez and, of course Greg Oden.  Their youth and inexperience will hurt them at times, but the young legs and depth will help at others.  And the talent is undeniable.

Taking a look at their schedule, clearly Portland won’t start out on fire, as they play 16 of their first 24 on the road.  But big picture, the schedule is favorable. The Blazers play 16 back-to-backs, while 27 times they’ll be playing unrested opponents.  This is a solid advantage, especially for a deep, young team.  The fact that there is no longer a team in Seattle means that a lot of those unrested opponents will not just be on short hops, but facing arduous travel, and/or playing the night after playing in altitude in SLC or Denver.

If you want more information on Portland, a good collection of Blazers articles is hosted here.

Good luck if you decide to join me in playing the Blazers over on their season wins.

My opinion that the top teams in the Big 12 might be a little bit better than the top clubs in the SEC but the SEC has more depth might be supported by this season’s pointspread results.  Take away pushes and SEC favorites are 8-16 to the number.  Big 12 favorites are 9-5.   Dogs are barking in the SEC and keeping the top teams in their sights, while the upper tier teams in the Big 12 are rolling over their lesser competition.

College teams can change from year to year, and sometimes we see pointspreads that seem out of whack, but the Tulsa/Central Florida game is particularly dramatic.  Last December Central Florida was favored by 7.5 over Tulsa in the CUSA Championship Game but just over half a season later, Tulsa is a 23.5 pick in the wagering markets in this Sunday evening affair.  Adjust 3 points for both games for home field advantage and that differential comes down from a raw number of 31 to 25, but 25 points is still a huge change in perception.  But it is more than just perception.  Central Florida’s lone win over a 1-A opponents was against SMU.  Interestingly, UCF beat SMU by 14 at home, while Tulsa only won by 6 in Dallas.  But the other common opponent, UTEP, tells a different tale.  Tulsa crushed UTEP at home 77-35, UCF got crushed in El Paso 58-13. Tulsa’s average result agaist 1-A opposition is a 55-26 win while UCF’s typical performance is a 18-32 loss.  Crunch the numbers, throw in “championship game revenge” and there’s your three-and-a-half TD favorite.

Even after rolling over Denver, the Patriots numbers are shaky.  A more accurate way to judge football teams than raw yardage numbers can be yards per play, and the Pats rank 25th in both offensive and defensive yards per play, gaining 5.1 yards per play while allowing 5.9.  Yet they’re outscoring their opponents 21.7 to 19.3.  Attribute that to good coaching and doing the little things well.

Remember in grade school when you had a blank map of the United States and had to fill in all the states?  That exercise wasn’t performed in Daphne, Alabama. West Virginia QB Pat White’s brother Coley is also a quarterback in the Mountaineer program.  According to Coley, when Pat was recruited by Rich Rodriguez “I didn’t even know that West Virginia was a state at the time.”

The Bengals are not only winless, they haven’t been within 39 total yards of an opponent.  They’ve scored 14 points or fewer in five of their seven games.  Marvin Lewis must have compromising photos of franchise owner Mike Brown.

The worst college football performance of the weekend was not Washington State’s 69-0 annihilation at the hands of USC.  At least the Cougars were disembowled by the mighty Trojans.  Nope, the worst result of the weekend was San Diego State’s 70-7 to a New Mexico team that entered the game with a 3-4 record.  It was 56-0 after UNM’s first drive of the second half.  All ten TD’s were scored by the Lobos offense (no special teams or defensive scores) and the Aztecs were outgained by 338 yards.  New Mexico entered the game having scored 24 points or less in five of their seven games.  Remember when Chuck Long was a big time coaching prospect?  Yikes.

In a misguided effort to draw celebrities to the track and make it seem like a bigger event, the Breeders Cup has decided to hold the event both this year and next year at Santa Anita.  In the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains, Santa Anita is gorgeous, but from a sporting perspective, there’s a problem.

Santa Anita has a lovely turf course, but they run what would traditionally be dirt races on the synthetic ProRide surface.  A lot of horses who do well on dirt don’t take to synthetic tracks, so if you’ve got a horse in it’s prime that does well on dirt but not on the fake stuff,  tough luck for you. For the next two years your championship hopes are eclipsed so that horse fans and television viewers can bask in the glory reflected from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Gabrielle Union, Michael Clark Duncan, and Freddie Rodriguez.  (No, I don’t know who most of them are either, but the San Diego Times-Union tells us they’re famous).

Another way they’ve messed with the Cup is adding a number of divisions. Are there that many horses itching to go longer than a mile and a quarter that a dirt marathon (or in this instance, a non-dirt marathon) is necessary?

Friday is now “Ladies Day” and after a quarter-century of being known as the Distaff the sport’s premier race for older fillies and mares is now going to be known as the “Ladies Classic”.   Apparently this will draw huge throngs of fans to the sport who can’t be bothered to take 10 seconds to learn that “distaff” has traditionally been a term for races for fillies and mares.

I guess that something needs to be done to get some traction in the sports world on a football weekend. But the Cup is such a great event, why dilute it with these changes?

Now none of this means that there aren’t some great betting opportunities.  A lot of quality horses means that some of those quality horses go off at great prices.  There will be horses that figure prominently that pay boxcar mutuels when they win and with full fields, the exactas can be huge.  When I last checked a couple of years ago a win bet on every single Breeders Cup horse in history was still returning slight profits.  Yep, the number of longshots that win overcome the takeout.

My horse handicapper Dan Branham has been blistering hot in graded stakes action all year and if you want to subscribe to his selections for the weekend call my office at 770-649-1078.  Friday’s first race goes at 3:35PM Eastern Time.

Money burner meets money burner as Auburn and West Virginia, with a combined pointspread record of 2-11, get it on in Morgantown on Thursday night.  West Virginia is favored by 3 in Nevada, and mostly by 2.5 offshore.  The total hovers around 38.  A clear, windless night is promised, with the temperature falling below 40 during the second half.  Both teams are rested, neither having played on Saturday before this Thursday encounter.

It sure seems odd to see Auburn running for 3.3 yards per rush against 1-A competition.  And it’s not like the Tigers are making it up with their passing game.  Their overall yards per play offensively is a pathetic 4.3, which is 115th in the nation.

Auburn jettisoned offensive coordinator Tony Franklin a few days before their loss to Arkansas, so this week will be the first real look at what new offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger has planned.  With a slimmed down playbook, look for things to be a lot simpler for the Tigers.

While the focus is on Auburn’s offensive coaching, the Tigers appear to be good in shape with their defensive leadership.  Defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads held the same position at Pitt and successfully shut down the high-powered Mountaineers in last season’s regular season finale, keeping West Virginia out of the national championship game.

West Virginia’s Pat White is originally from Alabama, so you know the quarterback will be fired up for this one.   And White’s absence from last week’s game helps explain the close win over Syracuse.  But it doesn’t excuse the poor performance, as getting outgained by the pathetic Orangemen 346-268 may have been worse than it appeared. West Virginia was under 150 total yards before Noel Devine uncorked a 92-yard run to put away the game in the final five minutes.

These defenses are both sound.  Against 1-A opponents Auburn allows only 4.1 yards per play (7th nationally) and West Virginia permits only 4.4 yards per play (11th).  It’ll be interesting to see what wrinkles Tommy Tuberville has up his sleeve, and what West Virginia does to let QB White cut loose against his home state competition. Without some surprises this could shape up as a textbook example of a low scoring grinder that will be decided by a mistake.

Let’s look at the key stats behind some overachieving teams and some disappointing outfits in this season’s NFL.  What’s different for these teams?

Buffalo Bills: The Bills improvement is largely in their defense.  They’ve improved from 5.6 yards per play to 4.9 yards per play, as well as 361 yards allowed to 299 yards.

Tennessee Titans: The offense ain’t much, but what a D.  The Titans defense has improved from an excellent 5.0 yards per play to an unbelievable 4.4.

Denver Broncos:   Denver’s winning some games, but statistically their defense has been horrendous.  It wasn’t a strength last year at 5.6 yards per play, and that has skyrocketed to 6.4 yards per play this year.

New York Giants:  Eli Manning and the Giants offense are cooking, both running and passing effectively.  They’ve gone from 4.6 yards per rush last year to 6.1 this year.  And 5.7 yards per pass last year to 7.4 yards per pass.  Their 2008 offensive stats are extraordinary.

New England Patriots: 6.4 yards per play last year on offense.  Brady-free, they’re 4.9 this year.  A huge decline for an obvious reason.

Green Bay Packers:  The Pack are having trouble stopping the run, from allowing 3.9 yards per rush last year to allowing 5.1 this year.

Seattle Seahawks:  The Seahawks are an opposing quarterback’s dream.  After allowing 6.0 yards per pass last year, they allow 7.7 this year.

Indianapolis Colts:  The Colts are worse both offensively and defensively.  They had a 5.9 to 4.7 yards per play edge last year, it is only 5.5 to 5.4 this season.

Note:  You’ll notice that a lot of these statistical changes have mitigating circumstances.  The Titans have played some poor offensive teams.   The Giants had a couple of home games where their opponents didn’t show up.  The Colts have had injuries on both sides of the ball, especially offense.

So some of the improvement and decline has a reason behind it.  Determining which teams have excuses, which don’t and what it all means as we go forward will make a big difference in your bottom line.

The scores rolling in today will be more interesting than usual. A lot of games last weekend had scoreboard results that didn’t reflect how the game was played.   Let’s see how these teams fare today.

Louisville 35 Memphis 28 as a pair of non-offensive TD’s for Louisville as Memphis outgained them 481-299.  Louisville did win rushing 166-130.

Utah 40 Wyoming 7 really didn’t reflect how this game was played.  Wyoming actually outgained Utah 252-242 and outrushed them 184-23.  But turnovers were 5-0 in favor of the Utes.  Only 2 of Utah’s 5 TD’s were scored by their offense.

North Carolina 29 Notre Dame 24 saw Notre Dame win yardage 472-322 (though they were outrushed) and first downs 27-21.  But it was another 5-0 turnover disaster.  The Tar Heels cause (some would say “benefit from”) a lot of turnovers.

Minnesota 27 Illinois 20 despite a 550-315 total yardage edge to the Illini, including 25-16.  Minnesota did outrush the Illini 116-88. A 3-1 turnover edge assisted the Gophers.

Notice three of the four “lucky winners” above actually outrushed the opponent that appeared to dominate them statistically.  That tends to be a recurring theme, and you don’t want to get caught up rewarding teams too much for cheap passing points.

I’m sure others are focused on “wrong side” results in Michigan State’s win over Northwestern and West Virginia’s surprisingly close win over Syracuse.  But Michigan State jumped out to a 17-0 lead and led the whole way, and the game shape effected both the game plan and the defensive intensity.  Yards per play were pretty equal in that one.  Pat White was out with injury for West Virginia, so it’s tough to punish them and reward Syracuse.

Let’s see if the “good luck” teams come back to earth today while the “hard luck” teams struggle.

The BYU at TCU game on Versus is much more attractive than the Florida State at NC State game on ESPN at the same time.  The problem, of course, is remembering where Versus is.  It’s actually a lot like remembering what conference TCU was in in the decade that saw them wander from the SWC to the MegaWAC to Conference USA to the Mountain West.

This is developing into an excellent annual midseason rivalry, and tonight, BYU’s BCS hopes will be on the line against a very tough opponent.  Both of these teams have played a subpar game, BYU escaped a bad Washington team thanks to a horrible celebration call and a blocked extra point, TCU got beat at Oklahoma due to a 4-0 turnover deficit. Other than that, both teams have waxed a bunch of mediocre competition prior to last week.

They’re both off of Saturday wins that saw them struggle a bit, likely due to the lookahead here. Common opponent New Mexico doesn’t tell us much, BYU beat them by 18 points and 97 yards while TCU beat the Lobos by 23 points and 105 yards.   Those are far from the only similar numbers involving these two clubs.  They appear to be pretty evenly matched statistically.

TCU QB Andy Dalton will be back tonight, playing for the first time since injuring his knee against Oklahoma. BYU workhorse RB Harvey Unga was not with the Cougars on their charter flight to Fort Worth due to some eligibility concerns surrounding his participation in a flag football game.  But that was cleared up and he’ll play tonight after taking a later flight.

Dalton’s availability is likely the reason that BYU, after opening as a 2-point favorite, is now a 1-point dog.  The total has come down a point and a half, to 43.5. Some clouds, little wind, and a temperature in the low 60’s during the game.  Really should be a heck of a game.

When I recorded my usual guest slot on Marc Lawrence’s radio program yesterday, Marc told me that co-host Jack Reynolds, who had missed a few shows while hospitalized, would be back with us on the program next week.  This was great news, as Jack’s personality and experience adds a lot to the show.  He had definitely been missed over the past few weeks and Marc, Victor King and I were all eager for his return.

This morning I got a call from a shaken Marc with the terrible news that Jack passed away at 4:30 this morning.

Jack was best known nationally for his wrestling work.  He teamed with Jesse Ventura for many years as the World Wrestling Federation’s top broadcasting duo, but his background in broadcasting went much deeper.

Going back to the 1960’s (and maybe even the 50’s), Jack was a popular DJ for iconic Cleveland rock & roll station WHK, the station whose influence is responsible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame being on Lake Erie. He was later a sports talk radio host for WWWE, and worked in TV for several Cleveland Stations. He was an accomplished baseball broadcaster, serving as play-by-play for the Canton-Akron minor league team. Jack’s work was recognized his industry, as he was a member of the Ohio Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

In semi-retirement in recent years he continued to do radio and TV work with Marc Lawrence, his close friend from Cleveland.  Off the air, Jack spoke often of his family and was particularly proud of his son Tony Rizzo, who turned broadcasting into a family business as a popular Cleveland television sports anchor.

Jack was a wonderful man, warm, funny, and a tremendous storyteller.  He had a million tales about the wrestling, baseball, and football worlds.   I only knew him from doing the radio program with him (a change in travel plans scuttled a hoped-for Las Vegas dinner a couple of years ago), yet I counted him as a friend. A great family man, Jack knew the names of my wife and children, and with genuine interest always asked about them.   I thoroughly enjoyed my interaction with Jack and will miss him greatly.

Jack leaves behind a lot of family, including his wife and both of his parents, who are in their 90’s.  Condolences to Jack’s family and to his close friend Marc Lawrence.

Rest in peace, Jack.