Betting NFL in April This is pulled from ESPN Insider. Not sure how this board feels about paid content but feel free to take this down if it's in some sort of violation. Thought this article was pretty interesting:
Back in April I happened to be in Las Vegas on the day the Hilton SuperBook released the lines for Week 1 of the NFL season. It was serendipity, really. No one else in Vegas had posted NFL spreads yet because, you know, the calendar said it was spring. And the Hilton guys didn't make a big deal of it. I don't even think they posted the news on Twitter. They just threw some betting sheets into a bin and waited for the crowds to arrive.
And they did.
Within an hour, every sheet -- about 500 of them -- had been swiped. But, lucky for me, no one had made a bet yet. Which is how I became the first bettor on the 2009 NFL season.
I took the Chicago Bears plus-3 against the Green Bay Packers. For $20. This was before "the trade that changed the Bears forever." So now that measly $20 ticket hangs on the wall facing my cubicle, mocking me, reminding me that I lack the liver of my current favorite gambler, Phil Ivey, who probably uses $20 bills to wipe down tables on his private jet. (Topps should put out a "great gamblers" trading card line. Collect Phil Ivey and Alan Boston and trade among your friends. Parents would love it!)
In the four months since the Hilton's bookmaker boss Jay Kornegay and his crew put out their lines, NFL players have been released, signed, drafted, traded, arrested, jailed and injured. They have retired, unretired, held out and been suspended. In other words, the Hilton gang was partially blind when they did their work. And now the wise guys can see.
To get Chad's insight on how vulnerable the early lines are, you must be an ESPN Insider. Insider
"That's all right," says Jeff Sherman, one of Kornegay's top lieutenants. "One of our objectives when we put the lines up this early is to take money on the games. We think we have good enough opinions to do that."
What's interesting about watching the lines take shape from April to now is that it gives fans, whether they bet or not, another group of experts' takes on the NFL season. When The Mag puts out its NFL preview in a few weeks we'll tell you who's going to finish first through fourths in every division and why. But, as one of the NFL editors, I can tell you none of us are staking our livelihoods on the predictions. (As much as New York Jets fans would like us fired every time we don't name Gang Green as the beasts of the AFC East. Get over it; it's not gonna happen this year, either.)
Money is a great filter for matters of opinion. And the way the lines have moved, or haven't, is a good indicator for all fans of how analysts who literally bet the house are viewing their teams. For example, while there's been a lot of talk about the moves the Kansas City Chiefs have made, the wise guys ain't buying. The Chiefs opened as seven-point dogs to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1. Now the Ravens are favored by 8.5. The Philadelphia Eagles have been buzz worthy this offseason, which is why they went from three-point dogs to one-point dogs against the Carolina Panthers. Oh yeah, and Jet fans? Wise guys think so little of your team that the J-E-T-S have gone from 3.5-point underdogs against the Houston Texans to four. The Texans! This must be killing Rex.
And what about the greatest trade ever made? How's that changing the wise guys' perceptions of the Bears? Umm, not much. I got the Bears at plus-3 four months ago. And that number is still sitting there today.
"In that division, all the teams are seen as so even, except for the Detroit Lions, that the trade hasn't made that much of a difference to wise guys," Sherman says. "It's had a huge impact on the Denver number, though."
If You Ain't Tweeting, You Ain't Trying
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In fact, no spread has changed more than the Cincinnati Bengals-Denver Broncos, which opened at the Bengals plus-3 and now finds them as three-point favorites. That's a six-point move for those not counting at home. Holy striped helmet! What gives? Well, while Cutler hasn't changed what gamblers think of the Bears, Kyle Orton has definitely impacted their opinion of the Broncos. So have Josh McDaniels and Brandon Marshall.
But, of course, there is another factor. The Hilton guys made their opening line based on last year's power rating of the Bengals, a team that struggled without Carson Palmer. They didn't adjust it for this season based on his being under center, and wise guys are jumping on the game to take advantage. Thus, there is a cascade of cash on the cats, coming in at $5,000 apiece -- the Hilton limit until the season begins.
"Right now," says Sherman, "we've gotten two-way action on just about every game. Except the Bengals. We are lopsided on that one already. And we are still seeing Cincy money coming in at minus-3. But, hey, we never said we were going to be perfect."
That's true. In fact, most bettors would rather you weren't.
