If NBA commissioner David Stern had embraced sports betting, he might not have such a scandal on his hands with disgraced referee Tim Donaghy.
OK, Stern doesn’t necessarily need to promote sports wagering, but he should at least accept that it’s a reality and not going away.
Donaghy testified he provided inside information to gamblers such as what games certain referees would be working. This was enormous information because certain referees have biases such as calling a lot of fouls, which affect ‘over/under’ totals.
Unlike NFL and Major League Baseball, the NBA doesn’t provide this information ahead of time. They don’t make public referee’s next assignments.
If they did, NBA totals would be easier to handicap. Part of handicapping baseball ‘over/unders’ is researching the past record of the home plate umpire. There’s no stigma attached. It’s just part of the handicapping mix.
But Stern doesn’t do this. If he did, Donaghy wouldn’t have been so valuable to crooked gamblers.
Just about every year oddsmaker make a mistake putting out an NFL ‘over/under’ regular season win total. This season it’s the Tennessee Titans to win seven games.
My strongest ‘over/under’ win total opinion is the Titans will not win seven games. The Titans have the worst wide receivers in the NFL. The joke goes the Titans don’t care that their wideouts are so bad because Vince Young can’t throw a straight ball to them so why waste money on good ones.
Look for Young to regress in his second season. He needs a lot of work on his footwork and mechanics. The Titans aren’t sneaking up on any team this year. Their defense was horrible last year and it’s not improved this season. If anything it’s worse without Pacman Jones making big plays both at cornerback and as a returner.
Aside from Young, who still has much to learn, the offense has no playmakers. The running backs and wide receivers are way below average.
So much for preseason being a good time for lots of ‘unders.’ Of the 16 games played in Week 2, 12 went above the total. Now in Week 3 we have higher totals.
Who has the worst NFL future book odds in Las Vegas? My choice is Harrah’s which opened the Titans 25-1 to win the Super Bowl. They’ve since moved Tennessee up to 35-1. How generous of them.
Harrah’s also has the Packers at 20-1, Raiders 30-1 and Buccaneers at 40-1. The Gaming Control Board should investigate.
College scoring should go back up this season after being down five points last year. Two rules have been changed. The clock now will start on the snap after each change of possession, as opposed to last year when the clock began after the referee signaled the ball ready for play.
The second change is timekeepers starting the clock on kickoffs as soon as the receiving team touches the ball as opposed to when the ball first leaves the kicker’s foot. Because of these two rules, which came about last year to speed up the game, there were 13 less plays run on average compared to previous seasons.
