Look for the 2005/06 NCAA Men's Basketball champions to again reside in North Carolina this year. But cast your glance about 15 miles southwest of Chapel Hill, down Tobacco Road to Durham, where the Duke Blue Devils, not the defending champion UNC Tar Heels, are the team to beat.
The Patriots may have won three of the last four Super Bowls but the oddsmakers at The Greek Sportsbook believe that both the Eagles and the Colts have a better chance to capture this season's NFL Championship.
Defending National Champion USC is an even money future book favorite to win a second straight BCS title. This season's final No. 1 ranking will be decided next January in the Rose Bowl, a home field advantage for the Trojans if they qualify for the championship game.
Every sport has its nuances, quirks and unique aspects, differences that challenge both the bet maker and bet taker. One constant, however, is that it very much matters where the game or event is played.
Bettors hardly need anabolic steroids to get pumped up for a 2005 Major League Baseball season that begins with the greatest rivalry in all of sports, the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox visiting the storied Yankees in New York on Opening Day, April 3.
Players with an eye toward catching lightning (or a lightning fast horse) in a bottle still have time to place a future book wager on the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, May 7.
There's no evidence - empirical or anecdotal - that the term "March Madness" has anything to do with gambling. But wagering on the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship has generated such frenzied enthusiasm that the moniker surely applies.
Oddsmakers at The Greek Sportsbook opened teammates Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon as modest 5/1 co-favorites to win the 2005 NASCAR Nextel Cup Championship.
Paul Simon came up with 50 ways to leave your lover but there probably are more than 300 ways to wager on Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Florida, February 6th.
An estimated two billion people will watch the telecast of the 77th annual Academy Awards, Feb. 27, 2005, reason enough for The Greek Sportsbook to offer wagering on the entertainment extravaganza.
When the Boston Red Sox rebounded from an 0-3 deficit to beat the New York Yankees in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series in October, technical handicappers were stunned.
The college basketball season begins this month and with it comes the best future book in sports. In fact, the prices are so bettor-friendly that The Greek Sportsbook lists only one team with odds in single digits and others, such as perennial powers Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, Connecticut, Arizona, Maryland, Syracuse, Oklahoma State, Texas and Gonzaga, ranging in price from 12/1 to 40/1.
You're about to match cash to conviction and risk some dead presidents on the impending NFL season and you're wondering, "What one factor will determine whether I win or lose?"
"On any given Sunday...," goes the old refrain, arguing that even the worst NFL team has a chance for victory against the best NFL team if that funny shaped ball takes a couple of peculiar bounces.
Southern Cal, which was denied a chance at the Bowl Champion Series title when the BCS computers went on tilt last year, has been installed as a solid 7/2 favorite to make amends this season by winning the FedEx Orange Bowl in Miami, Jan. 4, 2005.
Injuries, we're told, are a part of the game. That's true in football, basketball, hockey, baseball, boxing, tiddlywinks or any other sport or competition.
The difference between betting on, say, baseball, which utilizes a run line, and football, which employs a pointspread, is as different as the shapes and sizes of the balls used in those two games.
Squares don't bet enough and journalists don't know enough to have their words carry much weight so if you're curious about handicapping theory and betting practices, it's prudent to listen when those rare individuals who actually earn a living betting thoroughbred racing speak.
If you think choosing one survivor out of 65 teams in this year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was challenging, try experiencing what golf bettors endure on a weekly basis when they attempt to find a winner at this month's US Open.
With the exception of horse racing, where the vigorish is so deep that all but a handful of bettors are drowned in it, no sport offers more daily wagering opportunities than Major League Baseball.
Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but value is in the pen of the oddsmaker. And the oddsmakers at The Greek Sportsbook have determined that the Yankees chances of winning the 2004 World Series now are significantly better than they were before New York put Alex Rodriguez in pin stripes.
The late Hall of Fame trainer Charlie Whittingham once compared thoroughbred racehorses to strawberries. "They're wonderful but they can spoil quickly," observed the Bald Eagle.
One of the best things about the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is that everyone - or at least everyone that's considered among the top 65 college hoop teams - gets a fresh start in March.
Because it doesn't have an off-season, thoroughbred racing provides more wagering opportunities than any sport. In fact, given its global reach, there probably isn't a minute in the day when someone, somewhere isn't placing a bet on a horse.
Whatever modifications NASCAR makes to its scoring system - stock car officials still were mulling possible alterations as we went to press - like the drivers themselves, both bet takers and bet makers will have to adjust to those changes when the new season shifts into high gear with the running of the Daytona 500, Feb. 15.
It's still unclear whether The Greek Sportsbook, which established a world record when it posted a phenomenal 303 propositions on the 2003 Super Bowl, will exceed that mark this year.
The NFL playoffs kick off the first weekend in January but underdog players hoping to gain an extra point or two probably will have to keep their canines on a tight leash one more week before firing away at the plusses.
When teams meet in the Humanitarian Bowl, Dec. 29, it will kick off a dangerous one-week, 19-game post holiday college football bowl season during which the element of risk will greatly outweigh the opportunity for reward for most bookmakers.
While betting on the NBA or college basketball may appear to be pretty much the same thing, the two disciplines actually have about as much in common as the three-point shot and the three-second violation.
Connecticut and Duke are 6/1 co-favorites to win the 2003/04 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship but if you're a bettor who insists on receiving odds of 15/1 or better on your future book selection, The Greek Sportsbook is offering 49 other teams for your consideration.
Having had their screenplay for a fourth consecutive NBA Championship rejected last June, you just knew that the Lakers were going to add a few new leading men to their cast and submit a fresh script for this season.
For fans of sports betting, October has to be the best month: Major League Baseball begins its post-season, heading to the World Series; The NFL and NCAA football seasons are underway; a new NBA campaign tips off and pucks begin flying in the NHL, Oct. 8.
This is the time of year when turf writers and handicappers with resumes thinner than Calista Flockhart feel compelled to lecture the rest of us on which thoroughbreds do and do not have the right stuff to win the Kentucky Derby, May 3.
The cry of "Play ball" will be heard across stadiums this month as Major League Baseball begins another season with a familiar refrain: For the sixth year in a row, those "Damn Yankees" are the team to beat.
If you were nuts in January, crazy in February and plan on being insane in April, then understanding the intricacies of March Madness may be as simple as merely going a few days without your Prozac.
Fortunes are probably won and lost more often in horse racing than anywhere else in the sports betting world. But even better than the tales of woe, which, let's face it, are far more interesting than stories of success, are the jokes.
Although there are obvious similarities between automobile racing and horseracing, developing a wagering strategy for a motor sporting event in the same way that you might for a horse race would be as monumental a mistake as filling a car's tank with hay, oats and water or feeding gasoline to a horse.
Every industry has its own vernacular, a set of words and phrases so familiar to those speaking them that there's almost no consideration that an outsider might not understand.
Soon, one of the great secrets of our time, which athlete will be selected Sports Illustrated's "Sportsman or Sportswoman of the Year" will be revealed.
Go to a horse track, visit an off-track wagering facility or check out the past performances with your buddies and, invariably, the first question from someone's mouth will be, "Who do you like?"
Take away the poorly dressed, sweat-drenched coaches and the relatively ink-free, pimpled face players who have yet to sign their first million dollar contracts and college basketball, which tips off its 2002/2003 season this month, isn't all that different from the NBA brand of hoops.
