Over The Pylon

Every year about this time, I get the hankering for something. A little something I call sports betting. If you’ve listened to any of our OTPcasts, you know my refrain that the first several weeks of the college season is where some gigantic money can be made as lines are set based on what ill-informed experts think and/or the reputation or recent history of a team, which has very little bearing on how they perform in the new year. Take for example the tickets I was able to cash in 2008 as BSU ran roughshod over their opponents. By the time the bookies and the lines got wise, I’d already made my bones and got out. Funny how timing is everything in life, but most especially sports betting.

The NFL, however, has always been uncharted water for me. Mainly because the smaller number of teams means that there are very few “under the radar” type mismatches. With 32 teams compared to 120, the amount of information is smaller, thus ensuring that the experts hold most of the cards in their favor. However, something about the 2012 season has me wondering if it isn’t time to dip my toes in the proverbial NFL wagering waters.

As a Colts fan in the last decade, it has been hard to get a favorable advantage on the betting line. In the Peyton years, the Colts were favored in nearly every outing, and then it became a point spread issue, something I’m decidedly not good at evaluating at the NFL level. Parity in the league, relatively equal talent across the line, and again that pesky lack of informational advantage meant I couldn’t find a glitch in the matrix to exploit. But that may be about to change. Click to view odds.

For 2012, the Colts are perhaps the greatest unknown in a while, certainly in recent franchise memory. It’s both scary and exciting as we venture into the Big Blue Unknown together. The pessimists say it will take years for Luck to truly grasp command of an offense the way Colts fans are used to #18 doing, if he ever grasps it at all. There are the expected naysayers who would like to be first, instead of right, in calling Luck a bust. There are also the wildly optimistic that expect Luck out of the gate to be as good if not better than the last few years of Manning. Probably somewhere in the middle is where it will shake out, but one thing that is for certain is this virtual unknown means potentially very favorable lines in terms of the first few Colts games before folks truly know what Andrew Luck is capable of.

If you, like me, would like to perhaps put some change in your pocket while watching the Colts return to glory behind the right arm of Andrew Luck, you can visit SportsBetting.ag.

Filed under: NFL Odds |