News just keeps happening
For as long as I've written about sports betting, starting full-time with Daily Racing Form in July 2000, I've had people ask me how I come up with topics for my columns. "Don't you ever run out of ideas?" they'll ask.
My standard reply is along the lines of: "Just look at the sports calendar. There is always an overlapping of seasons. There is always something going on, so in my mind it's always pretty easy to find things to write about. A lot of times it's much harder to sift through all the news and sort out what's the most newsworthy because there's almost always more material than space available (of course, that's when writing for a print product . . . it's much less of a problem on the Internet).
This past weekend is a beautiful case in point. The last weekend of July should be pretty uneventful with baseball being the only "major" sport going on, but the sports headlines keep coming. And if a lot of people are following the action, there's also a lot of people betting on it.
And, in the case of a lot of events this past weekend, familiarity breeds success.
* Tony Stewart won the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. At the Station Casinos in Las Vegas, the Indiana native was co-third choice at 9-1. It was Stewart's second straight Nextel Cup victory and his second career win at the Brickyard.
* Jim Furyk won last years' Canadian Open and entered last week's tourney as the 6-1 favorite at the Las Vegas Hilton. Aided by a hole-in-one on the fourth hole Sunday, Furyk repeated with a one-stroke victory over Vijay Singh. It's too bad no books offered an exacta wager as Singh was the second choice at 9-1 and would have been a nice little exacta in an 156-player field.
* Speaking of winning traditions, the San Jose SaberCats won their third AFL title in six years with a 55-33 victory over the Columbus Destroyers in ArenaBowl XXI in New Orleans. The majority of bettors were on the winning side as well as the winning total. The SaberCats were favored by 6 1/2 or 7 most of the past two weeks at sports books around town but were bet to 7 1/2 at most books on the Strip (Caesars/Rio, MGM Mirage, and Leroy's outlets). The total opened at 118 and was bet down around town, closing as low at 113 1/2. No crying for the sports books, however (not that that's likely to happen anyway) but ArenaBowl is nowhere near the Super Bowl in terms of handle so it's not like they lost a lot.
* On Saturday night, Vernon Forrest won a unanimous decision over Carlos Baldomir for the vacant WBC light middleweight belt title. Forrest, a former welterweight titleholder, was a 1-2 favorite (expressed as -200 as a money line) and the over/under was set at 11 1/2 rounds with the over at -250. Actually, I wish I had planned my vacation better as I came to Seattle this weekend for the Ultimate Qualifying Tournament at Emerald Downs this Sunday and would have worked in a side trip to the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Wash., if I hadn't automatically deleted my boxing credential request form since it was an out-of-state match.
My standard reply is along the lines of: "Just look at the sports calendar. There is always an overlapping of seasons. There is always something going on, so in my mind it's always pretty easy to find things to write about. A lot of times it's much harder to sift through all the news and sort out what's the most newsworthy because there's almost always more material than space available (of course, that's when writing for a print product . . . it's much less of a problem on the Internet).
This past weekend is a beautiful case in point. The last weekend of July should be pretty uneventful with baseball being the only "major" sport going on, but the sports headlines keep coming. And if a lot of people are following the action, there's also a lot of people betting on it.
And, in the case of a lot of events this past weekend, familiarity breeds success.
* Tony Stewart won the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. At the Station Casinos in Las Vegas, the Indiana native was co-third choice at 9-1. It was Stewart's second straight Nextel Cup victory and his second career win at the Brickyard.
* Jim Furyk won last years' Canadian Open and entered last week's tourney as the 6-1 favorite at the Las Vegas Hilton. Aided by a hole-in-one on the fourth hole Sunday, Furyk repeated with a one-stroke victory over Vijay Singh. It's too bad no books offered an exacta wager as Singh was the second choice at 9-1 and would have been a nice little exacta in an 156-player field.
* Speaking of winning traditions, the San Jose SaberCats won their third AFL title in six years with a 55-33 victory over the Columbus Destroyers in ArenaBowl XXI in New Orleans. The majority of bettors were on the winning side as well as the winning total. The SaberCats were favored by 6 1/2 or 7 most of the past two weeks at sports books around town but were bet to 7 1/2 at most books on the Strip (Caesars/Rio, MGM Mirage, and Leroy's outlets). The total opened at 118 and was bet down around town, closing as low at 113 1/2. No crying for the sports books, however (not that that's likely to happen anyway) but ArenaBowl is nowhere near the Super Bowl in terms of handle so it's not like they lost a lot.
* On Saturday night, Vernon Forrest won a unanimous decision over Carlos Baldomir for the vacant WBC light middleweight belt title. Forrest, a former welterweight titleholder, was a 1-2 favorite (expressed as -200 as a money line) and the over/under was set at 11 1/2 rounds with the over at -250. Actually, I wish I had planned my vacation better as I came to Seattle this weekend for the Ultimate Qualifying Tournament at Emerald Downs this Sunday and would have worked in a side trip to the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Wash., if I hadn't automatically deleted my boxing credential request form since it was an out-of-state match.
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