As the NFL season fast approaches, the casinos are advertising their various football contest promotions. Some are free. Some are small stakes like $25 per entry. Some are higher stakes such as $1,000 or higher buy ins. Some focus on college football, but most of them are for the NFL.

Which contests are worth playing? For some people many of them are suitable. For me, just about none of them.

The Station casinos $1.4 million Great Giveaway contest is a small-money contest that charges $25 per entry (or $50 for 3 entries) and gives away prizes for weekly winners along with overall season most wins, most losses, and even closest to 50-50. At the end of the contest, if you won no prizes at all, you get your buy in returned to you in the form of free slot play.

The Station contest has to be a positive expectation return. I suppose it's possible you could win a share of a weekly prize that's less than you paid to enter but that would be unlikely I would think.

So it's a free shot at making a few bucks and it gives you a chance to root for some teams throughout the season and have some fun. So what's the catch?

The catch for me is that these contests are a royal pain in the ass.

If it were only one entry, I might like it because I could make what I felt were my best selections for each week and if it wins great. If not, that's OK.

The fact that I have to fill out 3 entries drives me bonkers. After a couple weeks it begins to get really old, really fast. I start making patterns with my dots or I just go ABBAABBAABBA, AABBAABBAABB, and AAAABBBBAAAABBBB and the like.

Some places like the Palms have 6 entries. 6 entries! You have enough entries to do zig zag starting from right to left, zig zag starting from left to right, all home teams, all away teams, all favorites, etc.

I believe that the Coast casinos have a totally free contest this year. Obviously that is an overlay since you're paying nothing to play but I won't be participating.

I would rather have someone drop golf balls on my head for 4 months than I would like to participate in one of those contests for 4 months.

The bigger money contests are more enticing to me, but I probably won't be in any. For one thing, I may be traveling a couple times this fall and not be available. Most of the larger contests do allow you to have a proxy to submit picks for you but I don't know if I want to go to the trouble.

The most prestigious contest is the Hilton's Superconcept which costs $1,500 for the season and you make 5 selections against the spread each week. I stopped by there 2 days ago to inquire about the contest and potentially sign up.

I found out that I could have a proxy to submit picks for me and so that sounded good. Then I tried to hit them up for a race & sports parking pass and they said they couldn't give me one just for joining the contest. I decided not to sign up.

I guess you can call me a lot of things for that, but I try to get extra value out of things that I do and for me, I had decided beforehand that if they gave me a parking pass, I'd play in the contest and if not, I wouldn't.

I don't know how many of you have tried the parking behind the Hilton which has immediate access to the sports and race book but it's very convenient and a nice perk. Prior to Jay Kornegay running the Hilton book (and he is an excellent operator, perhaps the best in town) they had a few parking spots designated for sports and race bettors. When Jay came in he at least doubled and perhaps tripled the number of reserved spots. If you don't have a sticker, it can be really hard to park out there. The other option is the garage which is so distant that it makes the Planet Hollywood garage look like it's attached to the casino.

Anyway, I don't fault them for telling me no, but I just figured if I was going to be there every week for 17 weeks, I didn't want to have trouble parking.

Sorry to get sidetracked on that...

I'd say, if you're not really into gambling and you can get a free shot (or inexpensive shot) at some money and a little bit of a rooting interest each week then the low-roller contests could be good for you. For me, I think I'd have to be institutionalized if I played them one more year.

If you're interested in the higher stakes contests, I'd say that they can be worth it, but you don't need me to tell you that. If you're ready to pay $1,000 or more to play a contest then you likely already have an idea what you're getting yourself into.

One side note for sports book operators!

I read on an online forum how the loss of the betting hold of people who are trying to make legitimate bets having to wait behind people playing these free and cheap contests may very well be higher than the ancillary money they make off the gamblers in the contests.

In other words, someone wants to bet his 3-team parlay but he's got to wait in line behind 3 people playing a cheap contest all who have 6 tickets to process.

It's a casino's job to know the numbers as to where they make their money and I'd assume that they think they make more by running these loss leaders, but I have to wonder. If you turn away enough legitimate bettors then you really could start hurting your bottom line.