Everything But Poker

Special to Everything But Poker: Marc Recht is a currency trader and casual gambler with a specific motto when it comes to betting football games: I don't know anything but I know what the line should be, and if it looks wrong to me, it's telling me something. He grew up a Redskins fan in DC, but lives in the Bay Area of Northern California now, covering the Raiders and Redskins for the NFLBlogBlitz.

My friends and I like to play a game where we guess the gambling lines before they come out; I’m guessing we aren’t the only ones who do this. After Alabama dismantled the unstoppable Florida Gators and Texas squeaked by a previously unheralded Nebraska team, I assumed the line would have to be ‘Bama by a full touchdown. When it opened at 5.5 I was mildly surprised, particularly because I couldn’t think of a reason why any Average Joe who had just watched these two games would be betting on Texas. How could they? The Tide had just completely humiliated and destroyed the best college football team in history (arguably). Colt McCoy had just come within a second of running out the clock on his season by throwing the ball into the upper deck (exaggerated for effect) instead of into the ground.

I started talking to people about who they liked and my suspicions all quickly came to fruition. I literally could not find one person who liked Texas, nobody. This was not a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was the fact that the line was dropping. It was not moving up, then down, then up, then down, it was moving down. Not a lot, it slowly went down to 4, and never budged from there. Typically this is not a significant move for a college football game, but when it is moving in the opposite direction of the opinion of every single person you talk to, it’s a bit of a red flag for a guy like me.

Like everyone else, I had seen both games. I had as high of an opinion of this year’s Gator team as anybody, maybe even too high. I thought they would have been favored by 10 over Alabama and expected them to beat them soundly; I was wrong on both counts, at least for that one day I was. Like everyone else, I was also unimpressed with the Big 12 Conference in general, and had seen Texas struggle a bit, you know, in the games that didn’t involve beating UTEP 64-7.

So if you don’t show me the line or tell me whom anybody likes in the BCS Championship Game, I would say the same thing as everyone else. The Tide rolls. But given the above information, being the contrarian that I am, I made the decision that I “loved” Texas in the game. OK well at first I didn’t love them, but I liked them. By the time we got to game day I did in fact love them. I was receiving text messages from people I don’t even speak to any more telling me they were in LA for the game and betting their mortgage on Alabama. My boss, who is English and probably has never seen a college football game, bet on Alabama.

Wait, there’s more. ESPN wrote a gambling column, presumably written by somebody who doesn’t quite understand odds and gambling. The article was citing about ten reasons why Alabama had the edge in this game with the final point of the column questioning why the line wasn’t bigger. Clearly this gambling ‘expert’ wasn’t getting it either. Listening to the pregame show on the radio, another ‘expert’ said that Colt McCoy had to play the game of his life for Texas to have “any chance to win this game.” Really? To have any chance at all he has to play a perfect game? At this point I’m wondering how the spread isn’t about 14 based on all of this chatter. At this point I am also pretty terrified of the relatively sizeable wager I have on the ‘Horns because it’s tough to stand strong with your conviction against the world, no matter how much smarter I am than everyone else.

I texted my friend right before the game started. A “good” gambler who understands odds and also had money on – you guessed it – Alabama. The text said, “I am either a genius or a moron. We may find out quickly.” I texted another friend that I would also categorize as smart, who was loaded up on Alabama, telling him how ridiculous the chatter was and that this has to be the sucker line of all time. He asked me what line I would have made if the Texas-Nebraska and Florida-Alabama games had never happened. What? Those games did happen! Whatever.

So when a game starts that you bet a lot of money on based solely on the fact that everybody likes the other side, you are looking for something that will stop the feeling of being terrified that you are about to lose a bunch of money. It didn’t take long in this game for that to happen. On Alabama’s first possession, the Texas defense ate the Tide’s offense alive. Nick Saban turned into Jim Zorn and tried a ridiculous fake punt (and I don’t care if they guy was open it was 4th and 23 from the 20). Texas proceeded to run four plays that told me everything else I needed to know. Colt McCoy was ready, this team was not scared, and this team was going to win the game. End of story.

I am not even going to waste my time talking about one of the most unfortunate injuries in gambling, errr, sports history, and the ensuing mismatch that took place. I am definitely not going to waste my time talking about the fact that Texas was actually COVERING, WITH THE BALL, WITH THREE MINUTES LEFT (sorry got angry again). What I am going to say is the following: Texas would have won this game 34-13 if Colt McCoy didn’t get hurt. You don’t believe me? I couldn’t care less. You are almost surely one of the lucky suckers that bet on Alabama; you are the person that will see any line that looks too good to be true and never question it; and you are the same person that I will overhear chatting at the sports book the next time I’m in Vegas before proceeding to take the other side. This was the lock of the decade. It was ruined by a fluke injury on a questionable play call. What a bummer.

---by Marc Recht