On Sports Betting: Bowl Season Helps Make It the Happiest Time of the Year

You gotta love the holiday season.

There’s good times, great friends, delicious food and college football bowl games. Lots of bowl games. By late December, often one every day. And sometimes more than one a day.

On Tuesday, we watched an interesting dynamic develop as Northern Illinois squared off against UAB in the Boca Raton Bowl. The offensive and defensive stats showed UAB to have an edge over Northern Illinois. One website, which offers projections of varying accuracy, also showed UAB rolling to a win. But another website, which is affiliated with a major television network and charges for access and projected scores, predicted a close game and  gave the edge to Northern Illinois, which closed as a 1.5 point underdog.

The result wasn’t close. UAB rolled and thumped Northern Illinois, 37-13.

The same divergence of opinion was in evidence on Wednesday when Ohio University met San Diego State in the Frisco Bowl. The stats largely belonged to the Bobcats and the Aztecs had finished the season on a weak note. Still, there was that prominent website forecasting a close game and hinting bettors back San Diego State, which was a +2.5 point underdog, a number than moved to +2 in many spots. The same website also had three picks from experts. They all liked San Diego State.

We’d seen enough of the experts and walked to the window and gave the ticket writer the number for Ohio.

“Oh, Ohio State,” she said.

“Nope,” we replied. “Ohio University. The Bobcats, not the Buckeyes.”

But who would expect a ticket writer who works for a major Las Vegas casino to know that?

And the final score? The Bobcats blanked the Aztecs, 27-0.

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By Thursday, one of the college football “experts” was back in business. Citing a plethora of statistics and the threat of torrential rain, he confidently predicted the South Florida-Marshall game would go under the total of 51. The rain came down in buckets during the second quarter of the creatively named Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl, but there were 35 points scored in the first half. And the final score of 38-20 was a relatively easy over.

But it didn’t take an expert to realize the Vegas Golden Knights were heavy favorites over the New York Islanders on the same day. Anyone willing to lay -200 on the Knights (or +135 or so on the puck line) cashed a ticket as the Knights downed the Islanders, 4-2.

One of the bowl games on Friday inadvertently sparked another clash of opinion between that prominent national website and a Las Vegas handicapper. The website favored Western Michigan at +10.5 points  in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. But the local handicapper noted how the Broncos had struggled at the end of the season and predicted BYU would easily handle Western Michigan. And after a choppy first half, the Cougars got on track and routed the Broncos, 49-18, almost single-handily sending the total over 52.

We were intrigued by one bowl game on Saturday: Army vs. Houston. The Black Knights notched a highly successful season and opened as -3 favorites, but the number rose steadily. A couple of local handicappers chimed in with support for Army but noted that the value diminished as the number rose. We saw it as high as -7 at a couple of local shops.

We were still prepared to play Army and split our investment between the first half and the game, but were unavoidably LTTW (late to the window). But we weren’t too surprised when Army rolled to a 42-7 first half lead, then extended that to crush Houston, 70-14.

And if you were looking for an easy winner that day besides Army, you could have played the UNLV men’s basketball. The Rebels were a pick vs. Hawaii but rattled off a 73-59 win.

But if you expected an easy winner Saturday from the Vegas Golden Knights, who were laying -170 vs. the Montreal Canadiens, you were disappointed. The Canadiens won, 4-3. We anticipated a bounce back from the VGK on Sunday vs. the L.A. Kings and were surprised when the Golden Knights came up on the short end of a 4-3 score. (An opportunistic $100 bettor could have played the Canadiens at +150 on Saturday, collected $250, rolled that over on the Kings on Sunday at +170 and pocketed $675.)

There’s a break in the schedule of college football games with no games scheduled for Christmas Day. But it’s only a one-day reprieve. You’ll find three games on the board for Wednesday and more on the calendar as New Year’s Day and the College Football Playoff nears.

If you decide to play any of the games, we add a note of caution. Beware of the “experts.”

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