THIS WEEK at Sportsreporter.com: SPORTS REPORTER and MIDWEEK UPDATE College Football + NFL!
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AID
AND A-BET
by Bobby Smith
Sports Reporter Editor
AUGUST 26, 2019 -- Welcome, football folks, to our coverage of 2019 College Football, Week 1. Next week, NFL Week 1 will be presented along with College Football Week 2 and we’ll be off and running with our weekly task of finding value, which we don’t know is successful or not until the results are final. A lot of people, especially if they work for ESPN, or once worked for ESPN, think that value is merely taking points: +8, or +15, or +21. Oh, they’re giving me points! What value! They have no idea what they are talking about. Any line can be value. A -10 favorite that wins by 11 is value. A -10 favorite that wins by 21 is value, too. Comfortable value. We want to be on sides that cover the spread by a lot, because it steers clear of bad officiating, bad play-calling, and bad execution of plays by players. We can’t use any of that as excuses. Got screwed by a bad referee call, or non-call? Hey, it happens, sometimes many times in any given game. Can’t complain. Gotta be on the sides that can withstand bad input from the turkeys in striped uniforms who, unfortunately, have some percentage of influence over these proceedings. The thing that burns me the most when watching a football game is the instant make-up call. That’s when the entire world knows that a team was wronged by a bad call or non-call on the previous play. I always say to myself, Here comes a holding call on this snap! Often, I am right. Basically, the refs are saying, We stink, and we’ll make more stink to help even our stink. Sometimes, the ball gets moved by penalties farther than it does by players. To me, this is the sign of a bad product, and less and less value in return for our time spent watching and listening. But that’s one of the reasons we evolve into betting on the games. The mounting rules, the mounting number of infractions, the mounting number of replay waits, the mounting number of weather delays, the mounting number of long commercial breaks, the really bad announcers who flap their gums and say mindless things, all combine to create bad telecasts that can only be made better by the challenge of becoming enriched by the eventual results. MORE
