Declan Hill:

It is the time for the fixes.

Here is what I know.

The fixers are in South Africa. They have been desperately trying to contact various teams. They have various runners and old contacts coming in and out of the hotels and training camps. They are trying ‘to do the business’ with various players and administrators.

Given these circumstances which matches should we red-flag for possible corruption?

1)Games where one team has nothing to play for. Even if they win the teams will not progress to the next stage of the competition.

2)Teams which have a history of not paying their players properly. It is the phenomenon of relative exploitation which drives fixing. The officials receive lots of money, the players comparatively little.

The games I will be watching closely are Cameroon vs. the Netherlands and Honduras vs. Switzerland. In no way do I want to suggest that I have heard anything about players on these teams being open to fixing matches. In no way do I want to suggest that even if they had been approached the players would have taken money. But I do want to say that if either of these teams loses by more than the Asian ‘spread’ of goals (2 goals and above) then FIFA should bring in their toothless tigers of investigators and begin to ask questions.

Have to post this:

Goal! Goal USA!

South Africa PK +170 vs. France is on strike

Going with the point spread here. This will push on a draw. I have a small amount on SA +280 straight up as well.

Uruguay/Mexico o2 +175
I’ll be livebetting this one and putting my 100% live betting record at risk in this one. The draw for this game has gone from -150 to nearly even as the 2nd place team will have to face Argentina in the second round. Mexico will not be playing for a draw. Not willing pick a result up front, but I really like the over 2. I also loved the over 2 on both of Chile’s games, but their lack of finishing turned those bets into losers. We’ll see what Mexico and Uruguay have today.

EDIT: Knockout round scenarios entering the final group games are here.

Denmark & Cameroon meanwhile looked incredibly poor in their opening games and laughed at o/u 2 as neither team defended well or with much interest.  The 2-1 final should have been more like 3-3.

Action we are adding:

o2½+140 (IVORY COAST/BRAZIL)

o2+120 (SWITZERLAND/CHILE)

TO WIN – FIFA WORLD CUP URUGUAY +3500

We know from the given match odds that Uruguay is roughly 75% likely to win their group, doing so with a win or draw against Mexico.  If they succeed, their reward is a 2nd round game against Greece/South Korea/Nigeria, all three of whom they will be favored against.  Getting 35:1 on a team that’s a favorite to advance to the quarterfinals is good value.  Also keep in mind that the way the bracket shakes out, teams from Groups A-D won’t face Groups E-G until the semifinals.  There’s a decent chance pre-tournament favorites Spain and Brazil will face each other in the round of 16.  Uruguay winning their group would also see them avoid Argentina in round 2.  Should Uruguay fail to win their group, any value at 35:1 will cease to exist.

Lastly, the Marlins gave away vuvuzelas to all fans attending last night’s game against Tampa. 

Looking to feed off World Cup soccer buzz, the Marlins gave away plastic air horns to fans as they entered the stadium, the toy instruments creating a loud and never-ending soundtrack for the night. Similar to the vuvuzelas that dominate the audio landscape at matches in South Africa, the buzzing of the horns blared from long before the first pitch, and some were still going at the end.

The horns might have been a hit with fans, but they were a big miss with those on the field, especially because all the noise could have prompted a lineup-card miscommunication between Gonzalez and Barksdale.

“It was the most uncomfortable baseball game I’ve been a part of in a long time because of that,” crew chief Tom Hallion said. “Whether that had anything to do with it, I don’t know, but it could have. When’s the last time you heard something like that at a baseball game? Never. You don’t see this kind of stuff at baseball games.”

Said Maddon: “I really believe the horns should be banned from Major League Baseball.”

Added Marlins second baseman Dan Uggla, who, like the umpires, resorted to earplugs: “That was the worst handout or giveaway I’ve ever been a part of in baseball. This isn’t soccer. I know the World Cup is going on, but this is baseball.”

And this from Marlins center fielder Cody Ross: “It was awful, awful. I can’t tell you how awful it was.”

Uruguay hit an over yesterday in the second group game and Argentina has an early goal this morning, so things are looking up.  Having not looked at the lines in detail for this second batch of games, there has to be some value in some overs going forward.  I wonder if the weather has anything to do with it?

Also, we’re adding a play England -450 vs. Algeria

Uruguay to win Group A +350

This one is already off the board as Group A starts today, but this was also available at +400.  Even odds for a team that should be slightly better than that in the most wide open group of the eight.

New Zealand Total Goals Under 1.5

New Zealand failed to score at the Confederations Cup in 2009 against Spain, Iraq and South Africa.  They scored one goal in 180 minutes against Bahrain to qualify.  They haven’t scored more than one goal in a competitive game in a very long time (games against fellow South Pacific island nations excluded).  That said, they’ve been very good in warmups, beating Serbia 1-0 and nearly drawing Australia, losing 2-1 on a stoppage time goal.  They still haven’t scored more than one goal in a game though.  NZ plays Italy, Paraguay and Slovakia in the group stage and this bet says they won’t score in two of those games.

Greece – South Korea 0-0 Draw +600

Greece is quite possibly the most boring team in the tournament and +600 or so is probably going to be offered on this exact bet for all three of their games.  South Korea will likely have to manufacture a goal from open play as Greece are very good on set pieces, which will also be their best chance to score.  The over/under for this game is 2, not 2.5, so not a lot of goals are expected.  This, along with New Zealand, is a high variance play.

Brazil -1000 vs North Korea

Brazil has to win this game over 90% of the time for this to be profitable.  It’s very, very difficult to envision them losing to a North Korea team that we know almost nothing about but isn’t particularly good.

Portugal/Ivory Coast Over 2.5 Goals +135

A little secret about these two teams is that neither of them are particularly good at defending.

Brazil Goals for the Tournament Over 6.5 -110

This is not the most prolific scoring Brazil team to grace the World Cup, but they aren’t up against the strongest defensive teams either.  This will may hinge on how many goals they score in their opener if Brazil have problems in their group.  Brazil have scored 10+ goals in six of the last seven World Cups.

Les Habitants

From Puck Prospectus:

December 19th is the line of demarcation for me. That’s when Montreal’s prime mover, defenseman Andrei Markov, returned from a freak injury suffered on opening night. At that point in the season––through 37 games––the Canadiens had gone a poor but rather fortunate 16-18-3 (.473 winning percentage) given the fact that they were 8-3 in extra time. Montreal detractors––which includes essentially everyone writing or talking hockey right now, from the conventional pundits to my sabermetrically savvy colleagues at Puck Prospectus––point to the uninspiring results of those early season Price-led, Markov-less Canadiens when explaining away how fortunate the Habs were to upset the Capitals and why they have no shot against the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. But you’re talking about two completely different teams. Whether conflating those two teams indiscriminately, or conflating them in the name of collecting a larger sample size, you’re bound to get fooled by these Habs, and surprised by the results.

After Markov’s return, the Canadiens finished the final 45 games of the regular season with a fine 23-15-9 (.589 winning percentage) run – as hot as any Eastern Conference team over that stretch of games, other than––of course––Washington. Even more impressively, with Markov in the lineup and Halak in goal, Montreal transformed from a team scoring 2.47 GF/game (30th in NHL) and allowing 2.88 GA/game (18th in NHL) with -0.41 GD/game (25th in NHL) to a team scoring 2.91 GF/game (8th in NHL) and allowing 2.48 GA/game (4th in NHL) with a 0.42 GD/game (5th in NHL). Sure, the team that beat the Capitals may have been the “16th overall seed”––lucky to get in the playoffs over the Rangers with a mere 88 points––but don’t get fooled: it was the 5th best team in the league upsetting the best team in the league with the help of an outstanding performance in goal.

But December 19th is not just for the Canadiens; it provides an illuminating starting point for looking at the Penguins as well. Through 36 games, Pittsburgh was a scalding 25-10-1 (.708 winning percentage), fourth in the NHL at +25 GVT, a hair’s breadth behind Washington’s league-leading +30 GVT. Yet over the next 46 games, the Pens went a tepid 22-18-6 (.543 winning percentage), their lackluster performance camouflaged by the wins and points accumulated in October and November. Keeping in mind that a .561 winning percentage is average––given the additional points given for overtime losses––you’re talking about a below average team over the course of more than half the regular season, regardless of their pedigree as defending Stanley Cup champions, regardless of their marquee exposure, regardless of their big name superstars. Perception is about as far from reality as you can get – With both teams.

The series is currently tied at 2-2 and you can get the same price on Montreal to win the series, roughly +300, as was available four games ago. I’ve also got small action on Montreal wo win the East and the Stanley Cup at +900 and +2200 respectively.

La Liga

It’s the second to last week of the season and once again time to involve the favorite team of Miracle Covers: Athletico Madrid.
Opponents Sporting Gijon are -150 at home tomorrow.

Since mid-March, two teams have been playing their La Liga matches as though the tournament were a sporting version of Asterix’s Roman Legion: an entertaining way to know new cities, make some friends and get food for free. Atletico are one of them.

Atletico’s week passed by placidly, talking about their upcoming Europa League final, with happy statements from players and coach (Quique Sanchez even said: “We work to bring happiness to the people”, and I can’t even think of a politically correct pun here). They even managed to beat Valladolid on Wednesday, in an almost unintended way, taking advantage of Clemente’s team wasteful first half and subsequent hara-kiri after Atletico scored first.

Sporting aren’t totally free of trouble yet, but they will be after playing Atletico’s B side on Saturday.

Lastly, the Round Rock Express have a new pitcher.

EDIT: Current lines from Pinnacle are here.

Unfortunately, this isn’t 2008 when Tampa and Seattle provided two of the easiest covers available in the past decade, both clearing by August. It’s not even 2009 where the same Seattle team covered again thanks to their outfield defense, this time on the over. There’s not a whole lot of value out there and as such, these plays are going to be on the small side. Both of mine are in the AL East.

Tampa Bay Rays OVER 88.5
What keeps teams like St. Louis and Anaheim so damned good every year is not only their great players being great, but the lack of suckiness throughout the rest of the team. A completely average team with 1-2 superstars will win 90+ every season. Throw in a replacement player or two and you’ll only be good for 80+. Tampa won 84 games last season despite having near black holes in CF, RF and DH. It’s VERY hard to win when 1/3 or even 1/7 of your lineup is an automatic out. Those holes weren’t expected, but they were there and it’s very hard to compensate.

As far as this season, Zobrist will likely regress but so long as he’s average and not the Zobrist of 2007 that’s OK. They could use an upgrade at catcher, but so could 15 other teams, and we’re only looking for a 5-win improvement. The pitching staff is solid from top to bottom and players like Andy Sonnanstine and Reid Brignac are valuable trade chits should injuries strike.

Toronto Blue Jays UNDER 71
Crap starting pitching. A commitment to rebuilding. No one outside of Canada who doesn’t play fantasy baseball could name more than three starters for this team who also conveniently play 60+ games versus TB, BOS and NYY. It’s easy to get caught out on under bets when a team is not legitimately rebuilding (Houston) and will happily punt September to give it’s young players playing time. That won’t be a problem here. Toronto’s rotation had problems without Halladay’s near-guarantee of 200+ innings and a sub-3.50 ERA. Replace those starts with more from Romero, Cecil, Richmond and Purcey and it’s not going to be pretty. You want to look for teams whose own players really won’t give a crap when September rolls around. You want the Toronto Blue Jays.

Pinnacle has a line (below) for “Will a Boat Sink?” currently at -1650. I know most of you don’t enjoy betting large favorites, but a boat has only sunk 5 times in 156 races and none in the past 30 years. The flip side is that the odds opened at 33-1 and have been cut almost in half thanks to poor weather being forecast and mildly heavy betting on the sinking side.

Boat Race 2010 Odds

I think I’ve written about this before, but rowing was THE sport, similar to NFL in the United States now, in the 19th century, but it’s popularity waned as gambling scandals and fixing became more and more common. There is much to read here (rowinghistory.net) but these two stories stood out:

Another tactic used by the unscrupulous backers was to try to influence the betting odds. Faking an illness just prior to a race is one way to boost the odds and make for a bigger pay-out after the unexpected victory, but there were other ways as well. Cleaver wrote in The History Of Rowing about a race between the Australians, Harry Searle and Julius Woolf, on the Parramatta River in 1866.

Woolf had been defeated by Stansbury a fortnight earlier, so he was not much in favor with the betting public, and it looked as if Searle’s backers would have to be content with the bare prize-money. John Spencer [Searle’s manager] refrained from betting at all before the start of the race, and instructed Searle to hang back and “feel” Woolf in the early stages, and, as soon as he was sure of his man, to shake his head from side to side, but not to go to the front until he got a signal from Spencer, who was in a boat following the race.

The race had barely started when Searle’s head was seen to wobble violently. This caused loud laughter among those who had never seen Searle race before. Meanwhile, his commissioners were snapping up every bet offered, with Woolf still leading and going great guns. Suddenly Spencer waved a red handkerchief and in a hundred yards Searle was a length ahead, and the issue beyond doubt.

The Town of Barrie [Canada] was holding its second annual regatta on Kempenfeldt Bay and had invited an American, James H. Riley, to row against Hanlan. The champion [Hanlan] had agreed, against his better judgement. He was not in good condition after his recent trip across the Atlantic, and halfway through the course Hanlan had to stop. Riley was stunned and refused to cross the finish line. He had obviously placed bets on Hanlan and would lose his money if he won the race. The judges were flabbergasted by the whole affair, ruled the race a draw and ordered a re-row. Hanlan declined, preferring to forfeit the prize money.

Two stories today:

From The Daily Fix:

What makes the Big East’s start so poor is that the selection committee gave top-three seeds to five of its teams, suggesting that those five should have been good bets to reach the Sweet 16. That makes the 6-6 record even worse than if the eight teams all had mediocre seeds.

Overall, the Big East’s seeds could have been expected to collect 6.5 first-round wins and 3.9 berths in the Sweet 16. Instead they collected four and two, respectively, for letdowns of -2.5 and -1.9 — or 39% and 49%, respectively. In absolute terms, the Big East was by far the most disappointing conference. The SEC’s four representatives won two first-round games, compared to an expected 2.9 — but those two winners, Kentucky and Tennessee, also won in the second round to exceed overall expectations for the conference. And the Big 12 had two Sweet 16 teams, compared to an expectation of 2.9, but did outperform slightly in the first round, with five wins compared to an expectation of 4.9. In percentage terms, Conference USA and the Western Athletic Conference were worse, with neither league having a single tournament win, but neither could have been expected to have a Sweet 16 entrant.

Notes from the NCAA Hoops Head Coach Meat Market (Sports Economist)

Welcome to the sausage making factory, hoops fans. Former St. John’s coach Norm Roberts was unable to sign big name recruits from the Big Apple. Why? He played by the rules. Some of the quotes in this article are shocking. “You got to hustle here, bend some rules or do something…” Russel Smith, a coach with the New York Gauchos, a prominent NYC AAU team. “At St. John’s, they’re not getting certain types of players because they’re doing things the right way.” Kenny Wilcox, head coach at a junior college in Brooklyn.

It’s also worth noting that 12-seed Cornell (+9 versus Kentucky Thursday) absolutely shredded two of the better defenses in the country in Temple and Wisconsin over the weekend. Cornell is the top 3-point shooting team in the country, but unlike other top 3-point teams Utah St. and BYU haven’t hit a dry spell yet. Kentucky has a very good defense and Cornell will need to rebound and continue to shoot well to have a chance.

Just got going on MLB season win totals, hope to have those up in the next week or so as the NCAAs (and NIT) are winding down.

Lastly, the Onions Award for the 2010 tournament will be given for this shot, and I can’t think of any circumstance that would cause me to change my mind.

There are two schools of thought on being tested by a lesser opponent early in the tourney. The optimistic view is that a close game like that serves as a useful wake-up call, and that most teams play such a close game somewhere along their NCAA Tournament path. The pessimistic perspective is that struggling in the early rounds reveals weaknesses that better teams can take full advantage of in later rounds.

Can we learn anything about these situations from the numbers? Using the incredible new treasure trove of NCAA history offered by sports-reference.com, I went through the last 10 NCAA Tournaments to find examples of top-three seeds playing games decided by five points or fewer in the first round. In that span, no No. 1 seed has gotten such a serious scare from a 16, but five No. 2 seeds have eked out victories and nine No. 3 seeds have won by five points or fewer.

The second seeds who were tested in the first round indeed struggled the next time out, going just 2-3. By comparison, No. 2 seeds who were more dominant in their opening-round wins won 58.8 percent of the time. (One oddity from these numbers: Third seeds were more successful in the second round overall than second seeds over the past decade. In 2000, three of the four No. 2 seeds failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen.)

At the same time, third seeds saw little to no carry-over. They went 7-2 in second-round games, which is better than their peers who got off to a better start.

Official color commentator of Miracle Covers Bill Raftery was the subject of a recent SI article. He had the quote of round one telling America that Scottie Reynolds, “stroked it admirably today,” and causing anyone who was playing the Bill Raftery Drinking Game to take a sip. Unofficial onion count : 1

“He’s the only person I know who can say, ‘F— you’ and make you think it’s a compliment,”

Projected Conference Win Totals

I definitely didn’t expect it, but the Big East under certainly looks appealing. Unsure probability wise how 1.5 wins stacks up with the +115 on the under (Needs to hit 47% to break even), but it’s about as anti-public as you can get.

EDIT: After some feedback from a couple of people, I re-ran these numbers using the Pomeroy projections and this morning’s changed lines. MUCH better.

There have been some attempts to try and predict teams by using the number of minutes returning and then a variable to represent the quality of freshmen, but I’m not aware of anything that’s actually worked and worked well. See Texas on this year’s list as a perfect example. They were winning unimpressively (and not covering) before finally starting to lose games when 2010 rolled around.

The tom and bottom teams on this list are always going to be the ones most over/under valued by the general gambling public. Finding & betting on these teams before they get all popular is kind of the idea.

For example, anyone who was paying attention to Notre Dame basketball noticed their sudden transition into a slower paced team in February.

“I went to sleep that night and just thought, ‘We’ve got to do something different,’’ Brey said of his Solomon-inspired epiphany. “We’ve had burn – where we run the clock in the final four minutes – in our playbook forever. So I just told the guys, ‘We’re going to extend burn to 40 minutes.’’

The burn has scorched opponents. Since Brey put the brakes on the usually run and gun, up and down Irish, Notre Dame has ripped off five wins in a row and gone from not being in the NCAA Tournament conversation to playing for a seed. The Irish defeated Seton Hall 68-56 Wednesday night.

Notre Dame lost by a basket against West Virginia in the Big East semis, ending their six game win streak, but every since their 91-89 loss to Louisville has hit the under.

John Gasaway from Basketball Prospectus added this bit of goodness:

Notre Dame defense, first 14 Big East games vs. last five
Pace: possessions per 40 minutes; Opp. PPP: opponent points per possession

Pace Opp. PPP
First 14 65.8 1.13
Last five 56.9 0.97

Speaking of transformations, this is not a matter of a coach simply taking his foot off the accelerator. More like yanking the emergency brake so hard it flew off. Notre Dame is now locked in a pace cage match to the death with Wisconsin and Arizona State for the title of slowest late-season major-conference team.

Why is the Irish D so much better all the sudden? Partly it’s because in their sassy new Big Ten look ND has improved noticeably on the defensive glass while committing fewer fouls. (Again, feel free to draw a Wisconsin parallel.) But far and away the largest single before-and-after difference here is opponents’ threes. They used to go in (over the first 14 Big East games) 37 percent of the time. Now (last five games) they go in just 24 percent of the time.

Interestingly, everything else has stayed the same, even at the dramatically slower pace. Just like before, teams playing Notre Dame never turn the ball over and, indeed, opponent two-point percentage has actually gone up a hair. It pretty much all comes down to the threes.

Certainly I can envisage the Irish playing better and more locked-in perimeter D in games this slow, just like it makes sense that more minutes for a 6-7 athlete like Carleton Scott would have an impact.

It took bookmakers three full games to even have a hint as to what was going on, and it wasn’t until after the fifth game against notoriously uptempo Seton Hall that the lines even started getting adjusted. And Notre Dame has still been smashing the under which means the lines still weren’t right. Here’s the list:

The Irish play Old Dominion in an early game Thursday and the line is currently 122. Old Dominion plays at a similar tempo to UND’s last two opponents Pittsburgh and West Virginia. It’s worth a look if not a play. Of course, those that actually watched the games over the last few weeks (hint: not me) and took action already should be sitting on enough cash to make this play.

One last bit of reading material to recommend for bracket selections: Seth Davis, who you’ll see on TV a lot over the next three weeks, called a bunch of coaches and asked them for their off-the-record thoughts on a bunch of teams in this year’s field. The insights are very telling. I’ll quote my favorite below and then tell you to read HERE and HERE.

KENTUCKY: The main question with them is obviously their inexperience. Regardless of what people say, freshmen are freshmen, and all it takes is one freshman moment in a single-elimination tournament to end your season. The second thing is their perimeter shooting. Statistically their percentages are respectable, but their volume of outside shots is not high. Nobody gets up and down the floor like John Wall, but when you get into the tournament, the pace tends to slow down. Teams that are averaging 75 points a game are going to get 70 or fewer. If people put a premium on possessions, they are going to have to make perimeter shots. DeMarcus Cousins’ emergence offensively has taken the focal point off of Wall, and to [John] Calipari’s credit they’re going more inside-out. Against Wall, you have to change your looks and try to get him confused, and he will turn it over by trying to go too fast. Then at the end of a shot clock, you have to make him make jump shots. There is no doubt Cousins is the best post player in college basketball. He’s a load on the block, and it’s incredible he gets one of every four shots taken off the offensive glass. [Patrick] Patterson is almost an afterthought, but he hit the big three against Vanderbilt, so you know he’s going to make big plays.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/seth_davis/02/22/hoop.thoughts/1.html

Completely unrelated, it seems as though the European Poker Tour was recently robbed of over a million euros during a live taping. Video Below. Maybe they got their idea from the World Series of Dice?

First, a fascinating look at scalping tickets at the winter games.

Olympic ticketing has its set process. Organizers generally sell seats as far ahead of the Games as they can, slowly releasing batches for the premier events first — in order to maximize cash flow in the years leading up to the festival. Pools of seats are then made available to citizens of the host nation, and anything that’s left goes to general sale nine to 12 months before the Opening Ceremony. So the Games are usually either “sold out” or “95 percent booked.” It only takes one visit to the Olympics to know that this type of news is all useless misnomer that should be completely ignored.

Apolo Ohno – Old Person?

Why Scandanavian countries aren’t any good at figure skating.

A majority of Canada’s hockey players are left handed. I don’t know hockey well enough to say, but maybe there’s a strategic advantage in being left handed, like in baseball, creating a self selection bias toward those players.

Roughly 60 percent of the Easton hockey sticks sold in Canada are for left-handed shots, Mountain said. In the United States, he said, about 60 percent of sticks sold are for right-handed shots. Figures over the years from other manufacturers have put the ratio discrepancy between the two countries as high as 70 to 30.

The difference even trickles over into golf, where the swing is not unlike that of a slap shot. According to the Professional Golfers Association, 7 percent of Canadian golfers play left-handed, which is proportionally more than any other nationality. The reason is probably that Canadians pick up a hockey stick first and are therefore imprinted by the time they take up golf. Especially if they are from Quebec, where hockey players are even more left-handed than players in the rest of Canada.

Oddly, British Columbia — sometimes said to be the most American-like of the Canadian provinces — skews the other way. “The rest of the country goes 2 to 1 in favor of left sticks, but it’s reversed in B.C.,” said Marc Poirier, a customer service representative who handles Canadian orders for Warrior Sticks.

Europeans also tend to be left-handed shooters. The International Ice Hockey Federation does not keep figures by European nationality, the communications director Szymon Szemberg said. But, he said, lefty shooters have predominated. “For long spells, the great Soviet teams of the ’80s never had a player who shot right,” Szemberg said.

Boston.com has a kickass photo blog for the Olympics so far.

As if curling wasn’t cool enough, the US curling team has it’s own condom.

Lastly, what’s better than a women’s hockey brawl in an Olympic qualifier? Don’t miss the score.

I was encouraged to hear that Michael Vick, in advance of his reality show that debuts Tuesday on BET , is saying he led “a double life,” and I use the word “encouraged” advisedly. Because you don’t know how many times I’ve asked myself and asked people who worked inside the building at 4400 Falcon Parkway if I/they had any hint — any hint — of what was to come.

And I did not. Which might make me the world’s worst reporter, except that I’ve not yet found anyone within the compound who saw it coming, either.

I know, I know. People on the outside will harrumph and say they knew it all along because he wore his hair in corn rows and dressed in a manner different from, say, Peyton Manning. But I grew up in the ’60s and have had some fairly extravagant hairdos myself, and I attended my high school graduation wearing platform shoes with four-inch heels. Me, I stopped judging on appearances long ago.

And even if you believed Vick mightn’t have been a model citizen, you knew this … how? Before the Ron Mexico civil action was filed in 2005, there wasn’t a hint of misdoings, and he’d been a Falcon since April 2001. In hindsight, the weird part wasn’t that we “knew all about” the most famous person in Atlanta but that we knew, as in really knowing, hardly anything.

That’s why I’m intrigued by “The Michael Vick Project”, and what it might reveal. I thought I knew him. Turns out I only knew what I was allowed to see. I’m intrigued to see how he kept his lives compartmentalized. I’m intrigued, as the spies in John le Carre’s fictional Circus would say, by the tradecraft.

Vick in an Atlanta radio interview this week said the following:

On whether or not people ever saw the best that he could’ve been:

“No. Not at all. I think if I woulda applied myself, there was a lot more I could have done off the field and also in the film room that could have elevated my game to a totally different level. I was complacent at the time, somewhat lazy, and I kinda settled for mediocrity. I thought what I was doing was enough. I thought that would suffice and I didn’t have to do anything else. I thought as my career went on I would continue to play at a high level. Everything that I was doing off the field, in regards to the marijuana and everything else, it didn’t slow me down, but it definitely slowed my developmental process because it made me lazy in a sense and I wasn’t really focused and didn’t take things seriously. Now, I want to make the most out of the next couple of years out of my career. I want to play my best football up until the age of 34 or 35, so that’s my plan. I’m gonna put everything into it. Put my all into it.”

On the fact that he still had success even when he didn’t dedicate himself completely:

“Just imagine what I could’ve been doing if I really would have been applying myself. That’s a regret that I have. I’m just glad that I have an opportunity to make amends for what I didn’t do and try to recap that. That’s what I wanted to show in my documentary because people didn’t know that. I wanted a clean slate, I wanted to put all of that out there so that once this documentary aired and the series is over, then I can move on with my life and I don’t have to answer a lot of questions. I can just answer them through my actions.”

Judging by the above paragraphs only, it sounds like he’s growing up.

Why Germany will win the upcoming World Cup.

Did Avatar mercilessly steal from Pocahontas?

Lastly, Lamar Odom entertainingly pimping Powerbars. Or something.

Team Odds
Indianapolis 6.5
San Diego 8
New England 10
New Orleans 10
Pittsburgh 11
Dallas 12
Green Bay 12
Minnesota 12
Philadelphia 16
Baltimore 20
NY Giants 20
NY Jets 25
Tennessee 25
Atlanta 30
Cincinnati 30
Arizona 35
Chicago 35
Houston 35
Carolina 40
Miami 45
San Francisco 45
Seattle 45
Denver 50
Jacksonville 50
Washington 50
Buffalo 100
Cleveland 100
Detroit 100
Kansas City 100
Oakland 100
St. Louis 100
Tampa Bay 100

Defending champions at 10:1??? Atlanta at 30 is also appealing. It’s really tempting to take the top 8 NFC teams, banking on the fact that one of them should make the Super Bowl and then hedge the moneyline on an AFC team a year from now. Probably not worth the effort considering you’d have to tie up your money with Bodog of all places for a year, but it’s something to think about.

Saints at 10:1 still doesn’t feel right, though maybe I’m just biased based on the last few seasons.

Comment away, especially if I’m missing something.

EDIT: Lombardi makes an excellent point this morning I overlooked yesterday in that teams in the last 8 of the playoffs (IND, SD, NO, DAL, MIN, BAL, NYJ, ARI) cannot make significant free agent additions unless replacing a departing player.

If you leave out those 8 teams, the top plays would seem to be NE, PIT, GB & ATL. Still awfully hard to tie up any significant $ on something a year away without a good feel for an outcome.

Other sites have much more detailed analysis here and here. If you are participating in a square and want/need to calculate your odds of winning, that link is here.

Dallas Clark over 68 yards receiving (-110)

This is a really high number for a tight end, but Dallas Clark is more of a hybrid slot receiver than even Antonio Gates or Jason Witten, so this number is probably very close to the true line. This is a high variance play, but I think Clark will see single coverage all day and will likely be the recipient of many checkdowns thanks to the Saints blitzing. Another similar play is Joseph Addai over 2.5 receptions or over 18.5 receiving yards.

Total Penalties

If anyone can find a prop bet on this, please let me know. The Colts and Saints are two of the least penalized teams in the league and referee Scott green, to my complete and total joy almost never calls roughing the passer. He’s thrown only seven flags for roughing the passer over the past three seasons, including zero during the entire 2008 season. Many of the roughing the passer penalties are simply things that happen in a game called “football” and it’s fantastic that a referee that subscribes to this belief will be in charge of the game.

Highest Rated Commercial Anheuser-Busch +200

These odds have been heavily slashed from the +900!!!! opening, but there’s still value here.

I think there is tremendous value in Anheuser-Busch and Doritos at Bookmaker here, and it goes beyond just comparing their odds to Bodog’s. Busch won ten years in a row before Doritos broke their impressive streak last year. Even in defeat, Busch showed very strong, with their ads placing both second and third. In 2008 Busch placed first, fifth, and sixth, with Doritos coming in fourth. And in 2007 the two companies dominated the standings, monopolizing the top seven spots. Even at +900, Busch actually has the shortest odds of any of Bookmaker’s 35 options; it’s like BM was aware that they should be the favorite, but had no idea just how dominant they’ve been.

As for this year’s game, the Clydesdales won’t be appearing, but Busch has purchased five minutes worth of ads, and their non-Clydesdale commercials have scored well in the past. Doritos is running a similar contest to the one that landed them the top spot last year; they’ll have three commercials during the game.

Likely more degeneracy to follow between now and kickoff.