11/15/2008 - Homestead, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Carl Edwards won Saturday's Ford 300 at the Homestead Miami Speedway, but came up 21 points short of defending his Nationwide Series championship as Clint Bowyer clinched his first title in one of NASCAR's three national touring series with a fifth-place finish.
Edwards held off Kyle Busch in a four-lap shootout to the finish to capture his seventh Nationwide victory of the season and the 20th of his career.
Busch finished second. Brad Keselowski came in third, and Jason Leffler was fourth.
More details to follow.
<< Terps topple Tar Heels on late field goal
College Park, MD (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Obi Egekeze booted the game-winning field
goal with 1:42 to play and the Maryland Terrapins downed the 17th-ranked North
Carolina Tar Heels, 17-15, at Byrd Stadium.
Maryland was trailing by a point when t
<< Ducks D Beauchemin out six months
Anaheim, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Anaheim Ducks defenseman Francois Beauchemin
will be out the next six months due to a torn anterior cruciate ligament in
his left knee.
Beauchemin suffered the injury during the third period of Fri
<< Harvin, Gators rout Spurrier and the Gamecocks
Gainesville, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Percy Harvin rushed for 167 yards and two
touchdowns on a mere eight carries, as No. 3 Florida further solidified itself
as a national title contender with a 56-6 thumping of Steve Spurrier's 24th-
ranked
<< The Penn isn't mightier; UNC wins
Chapel Hill, NC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Deon Thompson scored 17 points and grabbed
seven rebounds, and top-ranked North Carolina survived Penn 86-71 in the
season-opener for the wounded Tar Heels.
Tyler Zeller scored 18 points, and Way
Hall, Unga lead BYU past Air Force >>
Colorado Springs, CO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Max Hall threw a pair of touchdowns to
Austin Collie, and Harvey Unga added two scores on the ground, as 16th-ranked
BYU defeated Air Force, 38-24.
Hall completed 28-of-37 passes for 354 yards and
Burris leads Calgary to Grey Cup berth >>
Calgary, AB (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Henry Burris threw for 236 yards and a
touchdown, and rushed for 32 yards and the go-ahead touchdown as the Calgary
Stampeders held off the B.C. Lions 22-18 to win the West Division final and
advance
Bruins D Ference out 6-to-8 weeks >>
New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Boston Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference will
miss the next 6-to-8 weeks after suffering a broken tibia in the team's
6-1 victory over the Montreal Canadiens Thursday night.
Ference was injured after b
Still unbeaten: Boise State bombards Idaho >>
Moscow, ID (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Jeremy Avery rushed for a career-high 156 yards
and a pair of touchdowns on 11 carries, as the ninth-ranked Boise State
Broncos routed the Idaho Vandals, 45-10, to keep their BCS hopes alive.
Kellen Moo
Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their “supplements” to worry about what their opponents are doing).
Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this won’t be an intelligent discussion.
Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).
Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.
Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a “truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit.” And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. “The plug-necked yahoos on your team,” you can say, “will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.”
The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesn’t focus only on your opponent’s team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.
What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Where’s your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, “I’ll try to type slower for you next time.” Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.
Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, don’t just conclude by saying your opponent is a “twerp who drafts like my grandmother.” Say that your opponent is a “sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars.” By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.
But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You won’t be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, I’m sure, to reply.
In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.
Recently I had an email debate with an angry reader who said I did not understand "the science of oddsmaking", as he called it.
He said I was wrong for suggesting oddsmakers care about who wins or loses games.
"Oddsmakers only care about splitting the betting public 50/50 on both sides of the line and keeping the commission (a.k.a. juice)," he wrote.
He might have been right about not understanding "the science of oddsmaking". After all, I'm not an oddsmaker. That said, I stick to my assertion that oddsmakers (a.k.a. sportbooks) often do care about who wins games.
Granted, as a general rule, sportsbooks try to balance their action so that they're not exposed to big losses. However, there are times when this is difficult to pull off, regardless of how much a line has moved. There are also times when that general rule is ignored and a book pursues risk.
Generally speaking, it's safe to say the books in Vegas are risk-adverse. Unlike in the past when the wise guys ruled the town, Vegas is now corporate and the goal of most casinos is to make as much money as possible with as little risk as possible.
Thus, Vegas sportsbooks try everything in their power to balance the action. They're satisfied simply collecting the juice. But these profits are small, especially compared to the take from other casino games, namely slot machines.
Because the profits at Vegas sportsbooks are so small, you could argue that many casinos operate sportsbooks simply as a novelty to keep the tourists happy.
With a growing aversion to risk, it should come as no surprise that Vegas bookmakers have been panicking this NFL season.
Despite huge pointspreads, a disproportionate percentage of bettors are still laying their money on favorites like the Eagles, Colts, Pats and Vikings rather than the dogs (a common trend for the largely recreational bettors that visit Vegas).
And much to the dismay of the books, those favorites are finding ways to cover the thick chalk. In fact, prior to Week 7, the four teams listed above are a combined 16-2-2 (88 percent) against the spread. (The tables turned dramatically in Week 7, but more on that later.)
The result has been an early-season beating for the books, and a bonanza for bettors.
While Vegas increasingly hates risk, it's no longer a major player in the sports betting world. Most of the betting action now takes place offshore where sportsbooks are not as obsessed about balance. In fact, some books encourage exposure to risk because the rewards can be so much bigger.
Consider MySportsbook.com. On its website, the book has odds pages which actually display the amount of action it's getting on games. In other words, you can see how much action the book is taking on both sides of a pointspread, moneyline or over/under.
One look at these numbers and it's obvious MySportsbook.com does not balance every game. In fact, far from it.
Take last weekend's matchup between St. Louis and Miami. By game time on Sunday, 83 percent of the betting action at MySportsbook.com was on the Rams; only 17 percent was on Miami.
What's interesting is that MySportsbook.com opened the pointspread with Miami at +6 1/2. By game time, the spread had lowered to +5.
That goes contrary to the balancing theory. If MySportsbook.com had wanted to balance the action, it would have given Miami more points; instead, it took away 1 1/2. World Series odds are now up as well.
MySportsbook.com exposed itself to even more to risk, and rolled the dice on the underdog Dolphins. Why? I contacted a representative with the book to find out. His answer was simple.
"The line moved early based on 'smart money' from sharp players," said Jeff Gilroy, a spokesperson for the book. "We also knew from early in the week that we would need Miami, therefore (we dropped) the spread to encourage Rams money.
"At the end of the day, we liked the home team."
So the conclusion is this: MySportsbook.com respected the sharp action, and gambled that the sharp bettors had a better take on the game than the recreational bettors, who were hammering the visiting Rams.
In the end, the gamble paid off. Miami, desperate for a win in front of its home fans, pounded the overrated Rams, who are terrible on the road and even worse on grass. Final score: 31-14 Fish.
MySportsbook.com was also heavily exposed on numerous favorites in Week 7, including Philadelphia, Seattle and Denver. All three failed to cover.
The fact that sportsbooks are exposed to risk on certain games is really nothing new. The fact, that Sportsbook.com is willing to show the public where it's exposed is intriguing.
Armed with this type of information, bettors can make more educated wagers. They can get an idea where the sharp money is going and conversely where the public money is headed.
MySportsbook.com is opening up its cashbox, letting bettors look inside and challenging them to take their best shot at grabbing the cash.
To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting odds needs. Mysportsbook.com online sportsbook accepts Visa and Mastercard credit cards.
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