Sports and Gambling

I've been known from time to time in a previous era to cast certain wagers on an athletic event or two, but since I've grown more older and mature I've shied away from such vices. One of the main reasons I stopped gambling was because I was only very average at it. The wins and loses were far to equal to continue as a full time venture. While I thought I knew sports, and particularly basketball and football at both the collegiate and professional levels, I quickly realized you really need to focus your efforts on a full time basis to be successful. While this may not come as a surprise to many who partake in these types of endeavors, I began like most people by thinking I knew what I was doing when it came to placing a wager.

Which brings me to the present day. I enter a college football and basketball pool ever year through a friend's business in Pennsylvania. The stakes to enter are rather minimal, but the payout can be substantial if you happen to come in the top three places of the pool. One year I was lucky enough to win the "March Madness" pool they had and took home a very nice payday because I was the only one who correctly had both participants in the National Championship game. So as I entered the 2009-2010 college football bowl pool I thought I had good enough picks to be respectable if not somewhere in the money. Well all I can say is that I got off to a horrendous start picking games against the spread, and it only went downhill from there!! In the first seven games of the pool, the underdog getting the points won the game outright in six of them. Needless to say I was off to a less than stellar 2-5 start. With 76 people entered in the pool I was history as far as getting in the money. It's kind of like The Masters golf tournament where you can't win the event on the first day, but you sure can lose it with a bad round. It was at this point that I was just trying to remain somewhere around .500 with my picks. I did OK over the next few games, winning a couple in a row and then losing one or two. It was on January 1st that the wheels just came completely off. From the games on the 1st to the 7th, I went 4-10 with only the Alabama win in the BCS National Championship game vaulting me from 76th place all the way to a tie for 70th place. I finished off going 12-22 for the 34 bowls which is absolutely miserable for someone who claims to watch a myriad of college football from Labor Day until the first weekend in December.

I obviously don't have a clue about betting against the spread. But what is also obvious is neither do the guys in Las Vegas that set the lines when it comes to college kids and lengthy time periods between the end of the regular season and a bowl game. Thank the good Lord above that I only do this for a nominal fee twice a year and that I don't make a living out of this because it would have been a very bad financial start to 2010 in my household.

On a related note, I can't wait for March Madness in almost exactly two months!!