Controversies and Scandals Have Handicapping Lessons

Recently sports have seen minor controversies to major scandals that all have direct or indirect handicapping lessons. In short, they can be summed up in what we preach time and time again.  The key to successful sports betting is getting an edge as often as possible.

This is exactly why coaches are notoriously secretive about the injury status of key players and also why we sports bettors exercise every source to get the accurate lowdown. 

Coaches believe the more he knows about the injury status of his and his opponent's key players, the more of an edge his team will get. It's the same way with gamblers against their sportsbook opponent.

It's precisely the reason the now infamous scandals of disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy and likely soon-to-be former Texas A&M football coach Dennis Franchione are so significant. Investing is sports scores is much like Wall Street betting. "Inside information" that coaches and refs have access to is the sports broker's version of insider trading.

So is the lesson for the sports gambler that if we don't get the state's evidence directly from a coach or referee that we are out of luck? The answer is absolutely not. "Inside" information is far from the only way to get the upper hand on betting the odds.

A lot of valuable insight is out there. Just because information is public does not mean it's widely circulated.  

So often the keenest intelligence comes to light after the odds have been posted, often somewhat limiting how sportsbooks can act in response. We've long touted Google News as our favorite aggregator of sports betting information such as injuries, expert analysis on how teams match up, motivation recognition and other very useful bullet points.

However, Topix and ESPN have also teamed up to try to compete with Google News. Replacing their "Sitelines" section, ESPN has partnered with Topix to create "ESPN local". This new feature aggregates articles of interest to the sports fan and gambler. That being said, Google News still reigns supreme, but the ESPN/Topix synergy has potential for the handicapper.

We move on to a minor controversy, but certainly an example of a coach pulling out all the stops to get the leg up on the competition or more accurately to counter the eminence of their foe.

Georgia finally ended Florida's series domination in college football. In said game, the Bulldogs had a choreographed excessive celebration penalty after their first touchdown. Head coach Mark Richt admitted he told the team, "I expect you guys to celebrate to the point where the official will throw a flag for excessive celebration."

Richt said his instructions were intended to fire up his team because he felt they needed to play with more passion. He did not specifically verify, but we strongly suspect that the fact that Florida had won 15 of the previous 17 meetings was motivational factor No. 1.

The handicapping ramifications are to never underestimate the importance of emotion and the psychology of sports. Of course most players on both Florida and Georgia were being potty trained when the domination started. Each team has gone through several coaching changes during the era. Despite all that, clearly Richt knew that a well publicized one-sided rivalry leads to swagger from one team and a "culture of losing" from the other.

Sports bettors should not completely disregard historical data even if the period precedes every player and coach who will affect that outcome of the game being handicapped. I honestly believe if Georgia had the 15-2 series edge, Richt would never have felt the need to manufacture boastfulness and confidence.

Then there was the short-lived, though periodic speculation about the Indianapolis Colts piping in crowd noise during home games. For our purposes, the veracity of these accusations is not as relevant as the fact that there is a reason why opponents care if the Colts are bending rules.

Again, crowd noise can give a home team—we will say it again—"the edge". Few coaches or players will dispute the affect of the "12^th man" in football or the "6^th man" in basketball.

This is why we love it when we read that a team has for example "only the third sellout in two years" or that the small town mayor held a noon pep rally the day of a big game.

Not that a game or pointspread is necessarily going to be affected by a pep rally, but such seemingly innocuous events are symptoms of how significant a specific game is and how passionate the hometown crowd is going to be.

In college, we always keep an eye out for when the non-elite college basketball teams are playing home games while the student body is on winter break. The level of home court and home field advantage is fluid and will vary game-to-game, especially with lower profile schools where sellouts are far from a given.

What the average gambler takes for granted, the sharp player yearns for. No edge is too banal for smart money players. Best of all, one need not always have access to a private booster newsletter or collude with a rogue official. So often the most indispensable information to the gambler can be in the fourth paragraph of a squad's hometown newspaper or within the official team press release.

Joe Duffy's sports betting selections are at www.GodsTips.com   He is former General Manager of the Freescoreboard scorephone network and CEO of OffshoreInsiders.com, the premier hub of world-class handicappers and free sports betting information.