Business Week reports on a sports betting hedge fund out of London seeking to raise 50 million euro in chunks of 100,000 euro (a euro is equivalent to $1.27 US). 

Centaur’s Galileo Managed Sports Fund is not really a sports betting fund, it’s more of a sports trading fund, as the fund, for reasons not apparent, closes out their positions on London-based betting exchange Betfair before their winning plays go final in most instances.  Strikes me that they’re purchasing an insurance policy that they’re overpaying for, but I’m sure they have their reasons.

While there is no evidence that these guys have an edge that will last, at least they can take a shot.  Regulators would not likely look favorably upon such an enterprise in the US.  But even if approval were to be granted,  there’s no question that such a fund wouldn’t succeed in the US, even in Vegas, as there is a gargantuan difference between the vast European sports trading market anchored by Betfair and the thinly traded American sports betting market.  There are opportunities for Americans with the right contacts to bet substantial amounts on football, basketball, and baseball, but the high limits don’t occur until closer to game time, by which point the sharps have taken the value out the best bets.

In the States even large Vegas and online sportsbooks are running scared with low limits on a great many propositions.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to Vegas and see the look you get from a sports book manager when you try to bet $500 on a baseball game on the overnight line, or get a bet down on a college football total on a Wednesday, or bet more than a couple hundred bucks on a hockey game.  While smart individuals can carve out a nice living betting, the casino corporations would very quickly cut off access to a sports betting mutual fund having any level of success on their way to a nine-figure bankroll. 

The exchanges are different, as similar to the Chicago Board of Trade, they permit bid/ask person-to-person wagering with a small commission in the middle.  With London having a long tradition of sports betting, Betfair’s low commissions generate substantial liquidity and opportunity. 

And sorry, no, you can’t bet through Betfair from the US.   Well, unless you get a cashier’s check from………you know, I really shouldn’t shouldn’t write about that, should I? 

Incidentally, few realize it, but Mark Cuban was not serious when he suggested the establishment of a sports betting mutual fund a few years ago.   He was not looking to launch such a vehicle, instead, Cuban was making a point.  He was merely comparing the shrouded-in-secrecy financial markets with the vast amount of information available on upcoming sporting events. In the financial markets you have cooked books, accounting tricks, and sunshiny revenue forecasts.  Compare that with the analysis of a sporting event, complete with legitimately generated stats, published injury reports (allowing for Belichickian subterfuge, of course), and video of past performances readily available.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Galileo Managed Sports Fund works, or if it just a bunch of wannabe sharps creating a great new opportunity for Britain’s smartest bettors.   But unlike here in the States, at least they have a shot.

Las Vegas’ M Resort, about 8 miles closer to California than the strip hotels, has an intersting sports betting model, as they hired investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald’s wagering unit, Cantor Wagering, to run their sports book.   

Articles in Fortune and the Wall Street Journal highlighted Cantor’s focus on in-game wagering and the innovative mobile eDeck sports betting unit that allows visitors to bet from anywhere within the casino.  But what the media is missing is that in an era of casino companies being risk averse in the sports book, the M is taking the biggest bets in town.   Serious bettors I know are spending a lot of time at the M.

Sports betting isn’t all the property has to offer.  There’s much more open space than most casinos and it’s clean modern design sets it apart from it’s strip competition.  A top floor bar offers superior vistas of the entire Las Vegas Valley.  Factor in the creative sports betting options and it is definitely worth a visit on your next trip to Vegas.

Properly judging a team’s performance using statistics is a key to success this time of year.  Some teams are not as good as their numbers.   Others are better than advertised due to luck, level of competition, unfavorable or favorable matchups, etc.   Most bettors who drive line moves at sportsbooks, especially early in the week, have some statistical backing for their plays.

The late, great, Mike Lee taught me to ignore games against 1-AA competition when compiling statistics, and his business partner Gail still provides statistical data at Friends of Mike Lee Sports.  Knowing how domination of 1-AA opponents can skew results, I had to laugh when I saw NC State referred to as “college football’s best defense” on ESPN’s web site this week.   NC State has played four games, and two were against Murray State and Gardner-Webb.   Back out the 1-AA creampuffs and NCSU allows opponents 5.1 yards per play, which is 44th in the country when only 1-A competition is taken into consideration.  

How do you judge Virgina Tech’s 272-59 rushing advantage over Miami? Is it a sign of life in the trenches for a team that was outrushed by a combined 475-150 in their games against Alabama and Nebraska?   More likely it’s just the advantage of playing in Blacksburg, where strange things happen and a special teams disasters make opponents wilt.

“Meaningless” plays at the end of a game don’t get any more meaningful than the strange doings in the Air Force/San Diego State game.  Air Force, closing a 17.5 point favorite in a game that was as low as -16 and as high as -18.5, led the Aztecs 26-2 before SDSU scored a TD with just over 3 minutes left.  It looked like a half-point cover was in the offing but the Aztecs missed the extra point, still trailing by 18, to the delight of those who had -16 and +18.5.   So the middle was in the air, right?  Not exactly.  SD State scored on a 30-yard TD pass on the games closing play for the 26-14 final.  You really couldn’t make a big case that Air Force deserved the cover, as the Falcons didn’t score an offensive TD and notched only 12 first downs, but benefited from a 6-0 turnover advantage.

Other teams that were -4 or worse in turnovers and lost despite outgaining their opponents include Buffalo (lost to Temple), Maryland (lost to Rutgers), Mississippi State (lost to LSU), Miami-Ohio (lost to Kent State), UNLV (lost to Wyoming), and North Texas State (lost to MTSU).   A lot of big turnover edges occur in mismatches, but most of those games were lined pretty competitively.  Just a ton of mistakes and bad luck influencing those contests.

Turnover beneficiary LSU visits turnover victim Georgia this Saturday in a key SEC matchup.  The Bengal Tigers are fresh off their 4-0 turnover edge in a miracle win at Mississippi State where they suffered a 21-12 first down disadvantage.   Georgia is suffering a 12-3 turnover deficit on the season, turning the ball over exactly 3 times in all 4 of their games.   The Bulldogs are pretty lucky to be 3-1.  So do you figure those patterns continue or is a reversal in order?

All the commentators who think that Tim Tebow should have been out of the game with Florida up 31-7 in the third quarter at Kentucky have short memories.  How did Oklahoma surpass Texas last year despite losing to the Longhorns?  By scoring early, late, and often.  Margin of victory absolutely matters in the polls, and nobody knows that better than Urban Meyer, who is well over 60% to the pointspread in his college head coaching career.  There’s also the small matter of the Heisman Trophy, which Tebow won’t win if he’s being pulled with a mere 24-point lead in the 3rd quarter of conference games.

We’re used to Jim Grobe’s Wake Forest teams playing smart football.  So the running back running the wrong way on first and goal from the 4 in OT, leading to a fumble and a 3-point loss to Boston College was a surprise.   But that wasn’t the only mental mistake by the Deacons.   Wake could possibly have won in regulation if not for consecutive boneheaded plays early in the fourth quarter.   BC was up 7 and on their own 34 facing a 3rd and 33 situation.  On an overthrown ball over the middle that was nowhere close to the first down Wake Forest safety Cyhl Quarles nailed the receiver for a needless and obvious pass interference call.  For good measure Quarles then hovered over the receiver in a menacing pose, which could have drawn another flag.  On the ensuing first down play BC threw downfield for 23 yards when two confused defenders collided, knocking each other down, setting up a BC touchdown a few plays later. 

A near replay of the Colts/Dolphins game of the previous week took place when Fresno State visited Cincinnati.   Frenso won first downs (25-15), rushing (290-57), and time of possession (43:42-16:18) but lost due to some quick strike big plays by their talented opponent. Fresno was in a terrible scheduling situation, off of tough defeats to Wisconsin (in OT) and Boise when they traveled east to take on the high powered Bearcats, and hanging around with UC for the pointspread cover was impressive.    Pat Hill had some questionable teams for a couple of years but despite the three consecutive losses he’s got a good team together this season.  

We’re sitting with a 57%+ pointspread record so far this season on our late phone service, building on our many years of football success.  If you’d like to learn about our program or get on board, call 1-770-649-1078.

Plenty of notes from the first full weekend of NFL and college football.

1. “Sports betting” began this weekend in Delaware with plenty of problems.  Long lines due to the need of managerial overseers in Vegas to approve bets.  You really need approval when you’re paying 5.5-1 on 3-teamers when industry standard is 6-1 and books have made money at 6.5-1?     Much more on the issue of NFL betting in Delaware this week, so come back to RealWorldSports.com for more.  
2. If you had the Duke/Army game under the total, avert your eyes.  Duke CB Leon Wright picked off Army passes and returned them for TD’s on consecutive plays with 1:48 and 1:32 remaining.  The second score put the game over the total.  Army’s 6-10, 283 pound slot receiver (not a misprint) Ali Villenueva then caught a TD pass on the game’s final play to round out the scoring for the 35-19 final
3. Thaddeus Lewis is a well-regarded QB for Duke and became only the second Dookie to notch 50 career TD passes (first had to be Ben Bennett, right?) in the win over Army but was pulled for ineffectiveness. (5-16 for 60 yards).  But Lewis is back in the lineup and Sean Renfree (7 for 8 in relief) will again be the backup this week according to Duke Coach David Cutcliffe.
4. Jim Tressel’s catching a lot of flack in Columbus about his time management and overall game strategy.   The end of the first half could have been clock managed better.  On the other hand, trusting his defense at the end of that game instead of kicking a long, long field goal gets little questioning from this corner.  But that offensive game plan sure was stodgy, wasn’t it?  Pryor doesn’t seem comfortable or confident, or at least he didn’t on Saturday night.
5. And speaking of that unimaginative offense, who would have thought a week-and-a-half ago that Buckeye types would be suggesting that maybe Ohio State could take a lesson from Ann Arbor? 
6. Sports handicapper Matty Baiungo has isolated a “pure fade” of a team that he’s going against again this week.  His opinion is supported by some solid statistical analysis as well. It’s one of 10 fully analyzed plays in the Maximum Profit Football Weekly. and you can subscribe to “The Max” for a little more than $6 per week through the Super Bowl by calling 1-770-649-1078.
7. “Game Story Line of the Week” comes from Desmond Conner of the Hartford Courant in his gamer on the ugly UConn/North Carolina matchup.  Of the Tar Heels, Conner wrote, “if that was the 19th ranked team, this is going to be a bad year for college football.”
8. Syracuse’s road loss to Penn State was a rarity.  No, not that the Orangemen lost (though they are playing a lot harder than they did under Greg Robinson). It was a rarity because it was an actual road game.  SU’s second game on the road doesn’t take place until November 7th when they visit Pitt.
9. Georgia’s been losing offensive linemen left and right the past few years, including stud OT Trinton Sturdivant last week. Now the injury bug has hit the other side of the ball.  Senior defensive end Rod Battle is out of the year with an ACL tear.   This certainly doesn’t help the Dawgs, but UGA’s pass rush has been lacking the past couple of years, and this gives a young player a chance to step up.
10. A football bettor needs to make sure he’s getting full effort from the team he backs, and Colorado’s defense absolutely looked as though they quit on Dan Hawkins Friday night. Toledo notched over 300 yards both passing and rushing, with the total damage hitting 624 yards.   Despite that, Hawkins is likely to last the season due to the $3 million buyout required by his contract.  Apparently the Buffs athletic department isn’t sitting on a pile of cash right now.  Hawkins suggested that he had a potential 10-win team on his hands in the preseason, which is reminiscent of Jim Donnan saying “I’ve waited my whole life to coach a team like this,” before Quincy Carter’s disastrous final year at Georgia.
11. Technical handicapper Dave Fobare has a college play out of an angle that is 46-12 with the average cover margin of a stout 9 points per game.   It’s one of 10 fully analyzed plays in the Maximum Profit Football Weekly. You can subscribe to The Max for a little more than $6 per week through the Super Bowl by calling 1-770-649-1078.
12. Talking to the press after Florida State’s narrow escape against 1-AA Jacksonville State, Bobby Bowden repeatedly referred to Jacksonville State as “Troy”.   The explanation that Bowden warned his team all week about how this game set up so similar to FSU’s narrow win over Troy a couple of years ago does make some sense. But the feeling persists that both FSU and Bowden would have been better off had the coaching legend step aside five years ago.  
13. Monday night was a bookie’s dream, particularly those who get a lot of “Favorite Freddies” playing and who had players with open teasers rolling into Monday night.  Both ugly dogs cover, with the Bills and Raiders keeping the Patriots and Chargers from covering teasers.  But neither dog wins outright in case there was some big money line action working on the dogs.  Nice night to be on the 11 side of the 11-10.
14. When a team turns the ball over 7 times in their opener, after turning the ball over 6 times in their playoff loss last year, the quarterback is going to take some heat.   But John Fox points out that the offensive line gave Jake Delhomme no chance on Sunday.  Jim Johnson must have been proud looking down on his Eagles defense.
15. How meaningless is preseason football?  The Eagles and the Falcons both looked lousy defensively all preseason long.  Yet they caused a combined 11 turnovers (4 ATL, 7 PHA) and dominated the opposing offenses.
16. If you think turnovers revert to the norm, you must be all over the Panthers plus the points at the Falcons on Sunday.   You’ve got the team that suffered a 2-7 turnover deficit taking points from the team that benefited from a 4-0 turnover edge.
17. Yeah, those who bet the Chiefs at any price, including the closing +13, have every right to bitch after seeing a late game 24-24 affair turn into 38-24.  But Baltimore’s yardage edge was 501-188, so you can’t complain too loudly.
18. Earl Bennett didn’t have a single catch last season.  But the Bears wideout has the advantage of having been Jay Cutler’s teammate at Vanderbilt.  Bennett was thrown to 13 times by Jay Cutler on Sunday night, catching 7 of the balls, his first career catches.   Was Bennett simply being ignored by the Packers or is the familiarity a crutch for Cutler?  In any event, after Cutler looked so great in the preseason, those 4 INT’s were a killer for Chicago.  
19. The NFL Network’s Deon Sanders is serving as a mouthpiece for his former agent, Eugene Parker.  Sanders claims that two teams were interested in trading for Michael Crabtree’s rights.  But San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Crumpacker properly labels Sanders’ claim as “ridiculous” , informing us that it is past the deadline to trade for the rights to a rookie.
20. Any collegians coming out into next year’s draft should cross Parker off their list of potential agents.   With the NFL’s slotting system, a rookie holdout is preposterous, yet Crabtree is asking for more money than those drafted several places ahead of him.  This holdout could well be a career killer.
21. Fawning coverage of Brett Favre’s performance on Sunday, yet he didn’t have to do much and what he did he didn’t do well.   When your team is running for more than 6 yards per rushing attempt and your opponent has to react to that, you should be averaging a lot more than 3.3 yards per pass attempt as a team.
22. A team that came a few seconds from winning the Super Bowl is visiting a team that was 5-11 last year, yet the homestanding 0-1 Jaguars are a 3-point favorite over the visiting Cardinals.  That line will likely only go up from there.  You never would have seen a Super Bowl taking points to a below .333 team in Week 2 a few years ago.
23. Oddswiz.com tells us that offshore sportsbooks handled the opening week rush pretty well.  Site crashes used to be the norm for unprepared online sportsbooks.  But things were pretty smooth last weekend.
24. I was in a sports bar/restaurant on Saturday night and there were two audible groans within a few minutes of each other when scores flashed showing that Florida State came back against Jacksonville State and Maryland pulled it out in OT against James Madison.   People just love the plucky little underdog, although JMU would undoubtedly blanch at such a characterization.
25. My colleague Erik Scheponik has an NFL play based on some strong matchup analysis that’s also supported by a 15-2 trend.   It’s one of 10 fully analyzed selections in the Maximum Profit Football Weekly.  Subscribe to The Max for a little more than $6 per issue through the Super Bowl by calling 1-770-649-1078.

Thanks for reading this far.  Good luck and be careful.

Dallas sports radio titan Norm Hitzges has been dominating the ratings for 35 years now.  You may remember him as ESPN’s college football handicapper in the early 90’s when his 22-3 November (against the spread) was rewarded by not being invited back the next year.

Norm knows his stuff, and I’ll be talking football betting as Norm’s guest at 11:50AM EDT (10:50AM for Texans) Thursday morning on Sportsradio 1310 The Ticket.  It’s a fun and informative segment every year and you can listen here.  If that doesn’t work go to the upper right hand corner from The Ticket’s main site.  Norm’s new producer is Mike Bacsik, who gave up Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th home run while a pitcher for the Washington Nationals.  Hopefully we’ll hit it out of the park with our betting talk and preseason analysis.

Are we ever going to see reasonably intelligent coverage of sports betting in the media?  When a smart guy like the National Football Post’s Michael Lombardi tosses out something this flawed, I begin to give up hope.

Lombardi analyzes the direction of the NFL Super Bowl futures market by comparing early odds to more recent odds, but he keeps on referring to “odds” without answering the question “odds on what?”.  Apparently, he is talking about odds against winning the Super Bowl.   But it never actually says that, which could confuse a lot of readers.

Lombardi also doesn’t specify what his source is for the data.    I assume it’s Las Vegas Sports Consultants, but a better way to do this would have been to survey five different major books in Vegas and get an average of their odds, or maybe list the best available price.  After all, you can’t actually make a bet through LVSC, and you won’t find any odds board completely mimicking their prices.  The sports book directors have to take a 20-1 shot and make it 18-1 to make themselves appear necessary.

But the most obvious flaw, as pointed out by readers commenting on the article, is to judge the marketplace on “points” of his own creation.  Incredibly, New England’s being bet down from 6-1 to 4-1 is “2 points” while Seattle being bet down from 60-1 to 40-1 is “20 points”.    The decrease in return on risk is obviously identical , with early bettors enjoy a 50% higher return than current bettors in both instances.   But because Seattle is more of a longshot they get the “20 points” in moving from 60-1 to 40-1 while the Patriots get only “2 points” for being bet down from 6-1 to 4-1.

In fact, the Patriots move is significantly more substantial from the perspective of money wagered.  It doesn’t take a ton of cash to make a skittish sports book drop a 60-1 shot down to 40-1 but there’s clearly stacks of greenbacks backing the Pats at 6-1, 5-1, and 9-2 to get them down to 4-1.

A better way to do this would have been to analyze the season wins over/under market, as there is a lot less bookmaker profit built into those (any futures board with the Chiefs 40-1 to win the Super Bowl and the Browns 50-1 has a hell of a lot of juice built into it).  Season wins bettors have the opportunity to bet “yes, I like this team” or “no, they’re going to disappoint”, which means that the moves up and down are meaningful.   In a futures market sometimes the oddsmaker will move someone lower and then balance it off by moving someone higher on little more than a whim.   For instance, one of the more confident moves in the season win totals market is the suggestion that the Bengals are going to have a big year.  Yet in this survey Cincy is 75-1 early and 75-1 late. 

The ordinarily savvy Lombardi’s piece on the way the money is flowing in the NFL futures market is a good concept, but is poorly implemented.  As Lombardi admits, he has little gambling knowledge, and clearly (like most folks) he is mathematically challenged as well.  Lombardi is well worth checking out on non-betting issues, like his Sunday notes columns, but he needs to put a little more effort into any future wagering related columns.

If you’re a poker fan and are approached by a semi-famous tournament player you’ve seen on TV to bet on sports together, avoid the temptation.

I know, it’s a pretty obvious rule, but you’d be surprised.

There’s a nice little scam in use by “poker pros” that I’ve heard about on more than one occasion.    You won’t find the top tier guys trying to pull this off.   Rather it’s a guy who isn’t swimming in sponsorship money, and hasn’t had a big hit in a while.   Maybe they’ve made a WPT or WSOP final table, got some TV exposure, and are known a little bit in the poker niche.  While not respected by the poker elite, they enjoy some street cred among impressionable gamblers who know them only from a TV appearance. 

Here’s how it works. The poker player gets friendly with someone who recognizes them from ESPN or the Travel Channel. Over beers, he let’s it be known that while he’s pretty good at poker, he’s particularly sharp as a sports bettor.  The poker pro let’s it slip that he’s looking for outs in different parts of the country for line shopping, getting down the kind of money he wants to play, etc.   Slightly star-struck, the mark makes it known that he can help out with a bookie or agent back home.

The ”relationship” blossoms.  The poker player and his new “partner” will split all the action, with the poker pro making the bets and the unsuspecting ”partner” paying and collecting.  Confusing minor fame in the poker niche with expertise, to say nothing of integrity and honesty, the mark accepts the deal, and let’s the poker pro start playing on his account.   You can imagine what happens from there.

The poker player begins making max bets, and plenty of them.    If the poker player wins, he gets half the winnings sent to him when the mark collects from the local bookie or agent.  And it’s important to string together some winning weeks early, because  when he loses the game begins. 

Rather than paying kicking in his share, the poker player fires off a wide array of creative excuses for not being able to pay up.  When the money owed to the mark’s bookie or agent starts getting bigger, the poker player eventually just stops returning calls.  

The mark is holding the bag, and now realizes that the excuses were just part of the ruse.  He understands that he’s been scammed, but what’s he going to do, call in Norman Chad to mediate?

The moral of the story is clear.   Don’t get into a financial arrangement with people you don’t know well, and don’t be impressed by the minor celebrity of a lower tier poker pro.  

This is, of course, mind-numbingly evident for any thinking person not star struck by a two-year old TV appearance, no matter how many times it has been re-run.

But you’d be surprised.

As online poker inches toward legal acceptance, online sports betting is expressly denied legality in every current well-supported legislative option legalizing online gambling.   The favorable treatment of poker is a result of a well-organized lobby, with poker stars testifying on Capitol Hill and lobbyists engaging legislators.  The Poker Players’ Alliance, a lobbying group backed by poker sites, is headed by a former US Senator Al D’Amato, adding credibility and visibility. 

Why is there no similar representation for online sports betting? 

Ask David Carruthers.

Carruthers, a veteran of the British gaming industry, was hired away from Ladbrokes in 2000 to be CEO of online wagering company BetOnSports.  Founded by Americans, BetOnSports had a British corporate structure, operatings in Costa Rica and a listing on the London Stock Exchange.  Carruthers accepted an invitation to debate then-Congressman Jim Leach on The Wall Street Journal editorial page.  The reasonably polite, fairly respectful debate was published in The Journal on April 4, 2006.

73 days later, on July 16, 2006, Carruthers was arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport while changing planes on a flight from his home in London to his company’s offices in Costa Rica.   The charges?  No more than being the CEO of a sports book that accepted bets from US customers.   The same description fit 100 other guys, including American founders of online sports books who traveled freely in and out of the US.   But Carruthers was the one that was arrested.

This April Carruthers finally pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against company founder Gary Kaplan.  It is expected that he will be free to return home before the end of the year.

The investigation into BetOnSports had been going on for a while, but just over two months after some high profile media advocacy, Carruthers, a London resident employed by a British company with operations in Costa Rica, is arrested and over three years later is still not free?

Not exactly encouraging to anyone thinking about stepping up to be the voice of the online sports betting industry, is it? 

I projected my Final Four on the ABC affiliate in Providence with ABC6’s Ken Bell. Two lessons learned from the appearance. First, legal and illegal gambling is so ingrained in Rhode Island that made up statistics about Ocean State sports betting ring ever-so-slightly true. Second, don’t let horrible pictures of yourself find their way online, because Google Images is forever.

Let’s talk tournaments with 5 items of interest, all in college basketball.

1. Teams playing in their home state have a winning record against the pointspread in the NCAA tournament, but Villanova coach Jay Wright made an interesting point this week when he reminded reporters that in Philadelphia a couple of years ago the crowd was rooting for Monmouth to upset the hometown Wildcats.  All the neutrals and out-of-towners were pulling for the upset.   Home court advantage is likely greater in the second round, when losers go home and more tickets free up for local fans who hadn’t donated enough money to their team’s athletic program to have a shot at them the first time around. 

2. The minor tournaments (NIT, CBI, College Insider) all got started last night, with all the home teams favored. For what it’s worth, those home favorites went 6-5-1 against the pointspread.  Power conference teams went 1-4-1 to the pointspread.  For our purposes, we’re calling the UAB vs. ND game a push, though +6.5 was available on UAB at a number of sportsbooks throughout the day while a couple of minutes before the 9PM EDT start -5.5 was available on Notre Dame.

3. The NCAA tourney tipped off (kinda) last night, with Morehead State routing Alabama State 58-43.   MSU opened up a one-point favorite before being bet as high as -3.  The past few years in the play-in game the surge of money has been on the wrong side, but bettors who moved that line last night were correct.

4. Virginia Commonwealth seems to be the bracket buster du jour, and VCU coach Anthony Grant will likely be making a lot more money somewhere else next season (maybe those Georgia players transferring should wait and see who their coach is before jumping ship).  But if you’re picking VCU, make sure it isn’t because of the frequently cited reason that UCLA is ”traveling three time zones east”.  UCLA’s conference tournament was in their home town, they haven’t played since last Saturday, and their game tips off at 9:50 EDT (6:50PM on Bruin body clocks).  If they were fatigued, or had played more than twice in the past 12 days, or if it was a noon game the time zone could be an issue.  If VCU wins it will because they play better than UCLA, not because of the time zone.

5. Rhode Islanders have little need for an online sportsbook, as research shows that 1 of 8 Providence residents live next door to a bookmaker.  As a result of such intense pointspread interest in the Ocean State, I’ll be on ABC 6 News with New England sportscasting legend Ken Bell sharing some tournament thoughts this afternoon at 4:45PM.  So in the unlikely event you’re reading this from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or Eastern Connecticut, be sure to tune in. 

Sign up for our daily pointspread selections on the NCAA tournament (as well as the other college tourneys) and you’ll get the rest of the NBA regular season for free.  Call me at 1-770-649-1078 for rates and details, as well as answers to any questions you may have.