This weekend saw two games that have gamblers everywhere yelling ‘fix’ and cursing Vegas for having a say in the outcome of games.

The two games in question were Saturday’s Pac-10 game between USC and Stanford. I am writing from a southbound train and I don’t have the score specifics, but suffice it to say that USC had a big enough lead that they were going to cover the sizable spread. Stanford however was deep in USC territory with a few seconds to go and decided to bring out their FG team. I don’t know what compelled Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh to do this, but it pissed off USC head coach Pete Carrol and he called a timeout. This prompted Harbaugh to put the offense back out, and they scored a TD and thus Stanford covered the line.

The ‘fix’ doesnt fit the USC game. That was just posturing by coaches. What is Harbaugh doing kicking a FG with 6 secs to go and down by so many points? That pissed off Carrol, as it would most coaches. The TO by USC was to say FU to Stanford. Harbaugh then said, no FU, and went for it. It just so happened that the game was around the spread.

Now, the Chargers / Steelers game yesterday is a different story. It reeks the more they, the refs, try to explain themselves. If you are unaware of what happened, in short, the Steelers were up by 1 with seconds to go and SD had the ball deep in their own side of the field. The Chargers try the customary multiple lateral play and in the process the ball is fumbled and scooped up by Steeler Troy Palamalu who scores with no time left. Final score 17-10 steelers and a back door cover of the 5 point spread. Then all hell broke loose. The refs ultimatley excuse the teams from the field declaring the game over. This was after a review and multiple conferences by the refs. The score was even posted on NFL.com as 17-10. Then, inexplicably, the refs take the TD away saying it was advanced on an illegal forward pass. The head ref, Scott Green, said after the game that they erred and the Steeler TD should have counted. Additionally, the Steelers were called for 13 penalties and the Chargers were called for 2. One of those Steeler penalties negated a TD that would have put the Steelers up by 4, 5, or 6 points depending on what they did with the PAT. Since the TD was called back they kicked a FG and took an 11-10 lead. That score is the official final score.

All I can say is, its called gambling for a reason. The NFL’s response to this should be interesting especially in light of the recent NBA referee scandal. Personally I do not believe this was a fix, rather it was just horrendous officiating. I am well aware of all the clues that point to a fix, but to me they are too obvious. Though perhaps being obvious is the best cover for the fix.

And this was on the tail of my article about how gambling can sure seem unfair at times.

15 team parlay .5% to win 117%
Atlanta Falcons -275, Miami Dolphins -500, New York Giants -300, Indianapolis Colts -350, Jacksonville Jaguars +120, Green Bay Packers -190, Philadelphia Eagles -425, New Orleans Saints -250, Carolina Panthers -900, Tampa Bay Buccaneers -230, San Francisco 49ers -290, Arizona Cardinals -155, Pittsburgh Steelers -235, Washington Redskins Ev, Buffalo Bills -230

8-Team 6 point tease .5% to win 4%
New York Giants -1, Jacksonville Jaguars +9, Green Bay Packers +2½, Tampa Bay Buccaneers +1, Arizona Cardinals +3, Washington Redskins +7½, Buffalo Bills +1

6 team parlay .5% to win 19.2%
Jacksonville Jaguars +3, Green Bay Packers -3½, Philadelphia Eagles -9, Tampa Bay Buccaneers -5, San Francisco 49ers -7, Arizona Cardinals -3 -105

6-Team 7.5 point tease .5% to win 2%
Oakland Raiders +17½, Houston Texans +15½, Cincinnati Bengals +16½, Kansas City Chiefs +13½, St Louis Rams +14½, San Diego Chargers +12½

That’s Why They Call it Gambling A must read for all of you.

In order to be right one must utter the prediction. Well, here it is. The New York Jets will win tonight and take over sole possession of the AFC East. This serves me very well as I need one more Patriot loss on the year in order to have a winning ticket for my next trip to Vegas.

Last week I attempted to apply a recognition heuristic to my decision making of which NFL teams would win. Overall the results were positive as I went 10-4 with Point Spreads and 8-6 with Money Line. From a betting perspective there was no money won as I played two 14-team parlays and a 7-team parlay. The risk was small so the damage done was inconsequential. Had I wagered each game individually and of equal amounts there would have been a profit realized at the end of the weekend.

As I did last week, I went through the entire NFL slate (save for Thursday night’s Denver-Cleveland game, and today’s Pittsburgh-Indianapolis game as there was no line on the game at the time of preparation) and I choose a winner of each game. I did this without performing any research. I simply relied on what I recognized when I viewed the two teams that would be competing against each other. I took the teams I decided would win and entered them into one parlay.

I then went back to each game to view them with the point spreads intact. There is an exercise I perform when viewing lines, which consists of me setting a line for each game, then comparing it to the Crowd’s Line and also the Vegas Line. I set my own line prior to looking at what the actual lines are. The Crowd’s Line is the line displayed on ESPN.com next to each game. Without going into too much detail, a visitor to ESPN.com can set the line for each game and then ESPN averages each selection to arrive at the Crowd’s Line. There are some inherent flaws in this, but for our purposes the flaws are not so overwhelming as to make the numbers obsolete.

This work is all done in order to have cues from which to operate the next type of heuristic. Understand that in the first parlay I was only deciding winners, and not trying to account for how many points a team may win by. Dealing with point spreads adds a level of complexity, and the recognition heuristic in my opinion is not powerful enough. So we will give ourselves some cues from which to infer an outcome.

One inference that can be made initially is any difference from my line, to the Crowd’s line, to the Vegas line. There are various ways that people will view a line that is different from what they believe it should be. I am not going to get into these right now as it unnecessarily complicates the process. Personally, I view a line that varies from my own line in different ways depending on other factors.

The point spread difference is not the only cue used, and in some instances it isn’t used at all. The process that followed was one of looking at each game with the point spread and identifying all the underdogs that I initially believed, via the recognition heuristic, would win the game. In these instances the point spreads are irrelevant. The next step is to attempt to use the point spread differences as a cue to a game. For example, I set the Seahawks-Dolphins line at Dolphins -4. The Crowd had the Dolphins at -7 and Vegas had them at -8. Being that I believed the Dolphins would win, the question in this regard is, “will the Dolphins win by more than 8 points?”. By my setting the line at Dolphins -4 my initial reaction is, ‘No, the Dolphins won’t win by more than 8.’ Since the Crowd also believed that the Dolphins would not win by more than 8, that gives me a bit more confidence in taking the Seahawks. To this point I have used two cues, but I needed a third cue for this game to make a decision. The cue that pushed me to choose the Seahawks is that 8 points signifies 2 scores, and I believe the Seahawks can keep this game within 2 scores.

Now, that may seem like a lot of work, but that whole process (except for the data entry of the lines) took less than 15 seconds. I could have gone and factored in a lot of additional statistics and trends, but they do not add any benefit in my deciding this particular game. That does not hold true in all instances, and in those games where the point-spread cue was not enough to satisfy me, I would then go to an additional cue. The additional cue is that of adding stats.

I will save the statistics cue for another time as all of us can argue over which statistics are the most relevant.

Today I am playing a 12 Team Parlay (Money Line), a 12 Team Parlay (Point Spreads), and a 4-Team 6 Point Teaser. The teams that comprise these wagers can be viewed HERE at The Fourth Down presented by Gear Live.

The Dean’s Week 10 NFL Picks can be viewed be viewed HERE

Today’s Wagers Made Using the Recognition Heuristic or something that attempts to apply this most basic of heuristics. What dooms this experiment is that I am not ignorant enough. When you stop laughing at me I will explain what I mean. The Recognition Heuristic says that while complete knowledge is better than zero knowledge when making a decision; neither is as beneficial as partial knowledge.

I applied the Recognition Heuristic to this week’s wagers at the Money Line level. To use this heuristic for with Spreads you first must answer the question ‘Who will win?’ before you can answer the question ‘Will the team I have decided will win cover the spread?’. With Spreads, the ultimate decision is not about the winner of the game. So this week I made it about the winner of the game.

Now, there isn’t a lot of value in betting Money Lines in football. Granted, there are the instances of huge dogs to winning,, but there is a reason the money line is so big, it is massively unlikely. Conversely, wagering on a huge favorite may ‘guarantee’ you a win, but you must risk so much for so littl in return. However, when parlayed you can create some bang for your buck. Answer this question. Do you think you could pick 50% of the winning NFL teams each week? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I do remember playing office pools where only winners were picked, and I remember routinely winning 10-14 games. Perhaps my memory favors me too much, so I am not relying on memory, instead I will begin to chart. Charting is awareness my friends, and awareness is the key to it all.

My NFL wagers this week are:
- 7-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 10.17% of my OI. All money lines.

- 14-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 452.72% of my OI. All point spreads.

- 14-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 295.75% of my OI. All money lines.

Listen to The Dean and his scouts!

Cole Trickle makes his 2008 debut! The Dean went 9-7 last week, listen for this week’s picks.

Tonight I am taking the Packers -2 and the Raiders +3. Click Here to read my breakdown of the games.

Listen to The Dean and his scouts!

A great and hilarious first show to kickoff the 2008 NFL Season! Listen, will ya?!?!?!

I cant keep it in anymore, I have to scream this out or I am going to hurt somebody, Brett Favre is a fucking asshole! Fuck him. Do us all a favor Brett and go kill yourself.

There I said it. Do I feel better? A little. But not 100%. If you aren’t familiar with the situation, let me give you a quick recap. Brett Favre, Green Bay Packer QB for the previous 16 years retired in March of this year. Brett had an awesome career. He came out of nowhere; playing QB at Southern Miss and being drafted by the Falcons he was traded to the Packers for a case of beer and ended up restoring pride and dignity to a storied franchise. Brett was a hero to many, and will always be an NFL legend. He won a Super Bowl, lost a Super Bowl and made many, many amazing plays, along with some really dumb ones. But that was part of Brett’s charm. He was a gunslinger, a gambler, a man from the deep south who wore his heart on his sleeve and embodied a spirit of resilience, energy and excitement.

I have never been a Brett Favre fan, personally thinking he has always been more lore than a solid QB. For every great play he made, he made two stupid plays. For every needle he threaded he also threw an interception that made his own fans scratch their heads. But one thing was always true, Brett played the game of football the way we all wish every player played it; with passion, with guile, and with a determination that was always admirable.

Brett overcame an addiction to painkiller (I have more to say on that topic in a moment) to admirably lead his team. His teammates have never said a bad word against him; coaches loved having him on their rosters.

But now back to March of this year. After a few years of talking about retirement and leaving the Packers in a position of having to wait and see what Brett was going to do well into each summer, Brett finally decided he had enough. The game had finally taken its toll on Brett; it was too much like work now and not enough of a game which he loved. His body now spoke louder than his mind when it came to whether or not the abuse was all worth it. Brett cried at his retirement speech and the world applauded him, cried with him and the gunslingin’ cowboy rode off into the sunset.

That brings us to the present. Brett began text messaging people in the Packers front office, hinting at a possible comeback. No one knew what to say. A few years back the Packers had drafted Aaron Rodgers out of Cal to be their QB once Brett hung it up. Rodgers was highly touted and in the moments he had to show his stuff he showed that his accolades were well deserved. The Packers were ready to move fwd with their new young, yet experienced QB. They had a team that went to the NFC Championship last year (a game that Brett lost with a horrible throw in OT) and were ready to get to the Super Bowl this year. The media then reports that GM Ted Thompson tells Brett they will talk when Thompson gets back from vacation. Brett then tells the Packers he wants an unconditional release so that he may pursue opportunities with other teams. You see, Brett still had 3 years on his contract so if he were to file for reinstatement, he would belong to the Packers and would either need to play for them, or they would need to trade him. The Packers declined Brett’s request and said that if he wants to come back they would welcome him to he the backup to Aaron Rodgers. This is where Brett begins to show his true asshole colors. He said he doesn’t feel welcomed by the Packers, he may want to play again and wants the Packers to tell him he can come be their QB again. But he doesn’t want to commit to coming back until the Packers commit to making him their starting QB. This is after the Packers have run mini-camp and the team is getting ready for pre-season camp to start. Brett just wants the reins handed back to him and doesn’t really care who else is affected by it. Then last night I see that his agent made the comment that Brett doesn’t need to file for reinstatement until Week 6 of the NFL season so it is in the hands of the Packers as to what to do next.

No, no it isn’t you asshole! If you want to pay football again then file for reinstatement and then the Packers can decide what to do, but understand that they have already said that Aaron Rodgers is the QB going into this season. In the meantime, Brett goes on Fox News and speaks to Greta, sends text messages to anyone that will listen, and had tried to make the Packers out to be villains.

This whole situation will eventually come to an end, but it won’t be soon enough.

In regards to Brett’s previously mentioned pain killer addiction. The only thing that is possible, that I find acceptable, is that perhaps Brett is bored and is finding himself drawn more to painkiller and other recreational drugs and realizes he needs the structure of football and something to prepare for to keep himself sane. If that is the case, and it has not been said anywhere but here, but if that is the case than I hope Brett finds the help he needs but please stay away from the rest of us Asshole!