If your team never gives you any hope of winning, the loss often won’t sting as bad. You can simply write it off as a bad decision, try to learn from it and move on.
Saturday’s Wake Forest-Boston College game seemed to be one of those types of games for anyone who bet the Demon Deacons.
Here’s the situation: You’re laying two points with a home favorite. Your team just scored a go-ahead touchdown and now leads 10-6 with 2:30 left.
Which opposing NFL quarterback would you most like to be facing in that situation?
Oakland’s JaMarcus Russell, if not the unanimous first choice, has to be in the discussion.
First, Bad Beats would like to offer its sincerest condolences to Chicago Bears fans, who lost linebacker Brian Urlacher for the year during Sunday’s loss to Green Bay.
Now, we would like make fun of Nathan Vasher, Lovie Smith and Jay Cutler. Nice work, guys.
College football welcomed back bettors with a LaGarrett Blount right hand instead of a friendly handshake.
The opening week featured backdoor covers, favorites who forgot to score in the second half, a last-minute safety that affected a total and a meaningless touchdown on the game’s final play that hurt.
The BCS has made running up the score a smart move instead of an unsportsmanlike one.
The embattled system forces coaches to emphasize their dominance, because, like it or not, style points matter.
Those style points also can lead to a bad beat.
Ben Burns
Last week ‘s Bad Beats column either spawned the most intellectual conversation ever had in a Sports betting forum or the dumbest, depending how you look at it.
To quickly summarize, some of you believe there is no such thing as a bad beat. A loss is simply and ultimately a bad bet.
Losing stings when a game goes just like you thought it would, but you end up on the wrong side.
Those times when your team’s running game was way too much for the other team’s injury-ravaged D-line. But a tipped pass is intercepted and returned for a meaningless touchdown, preventing you from covering.
Or when you play the under in hoops, and the game is 30 points under at the end of regulation … before going into overtime.
One man’s greatest comeback victory is another’s worst beat.
That was the case in last Tuesday’s Red Sox-Orioles game.
We’ll go out on a limb and bet the majority of you who were invested in that game were on the Sox.
Through Saturday, the Twins had committed the second fewest errors in all of baseball.
That’s what makes Wednesday’s loss in Milwaukee so tough to swallow.
Leading 3-2 with two outs in the eighth inning, emerging Twins ace Nick Blackburn (+$154 on the season) was cruising toward his second straight complete game, when J.J. Hardy blooped a harmless single into center field.
Rules are rules … sucky, freakin’ rules.
Sometimes a sportsbooks rules help us. But more often it seems they don’t.
Everytime one goes against us, it acts as a reminder that the odds are stacked heavily against us. Take Friday’s Brewers-Tigers tilt in Detroit.
What in the world was in the Gatorade this week?
(Vodka goes best, by the way).
Pop-ups were causing havoc in New York and Tampa. Birds were doing the same in Cleveland. And in Chicago, Milton Bradley still doesn’t have a clue.
We’ll start at the backyard known as the new Yankee Stadium, where Gold Glove-second baseman Luis Castillo handed Mets’ backers an atrocious bad beat that may not be topped this season.
Going by the Book guarantees nothing.
But it would be nice if your manager at least acted like he was aware when he was taking huge statisical gamble.
For example, in Tuesday’s Diamondbacks-Dodgers game, Arizona manager A.J. Hinch’s squad was in a bind.
There have been just 44 complete games tossed through the first two months of the season.
They have occurred in less than six (5.8) percent of this year’s games.
In contrast, there have been 209 blown saves-about 28 percent of games–already this year.
Burns’ Bad Beats
Nothing hurts more than when a player intentionally elects not to score the uncontested and, for bettors, winning touchdown or basket.
Those of you who had over 193.5 in Game 1 of the Rockets-Lakers series know exactly how it feels.
Fantasy players might remember when Brian Westbrook did it against Dallas in 2007.
David Payne writes for Ben Burns.
If times weren’t tough enough, does it feel like our little hobby, betting college hoops, is becoming more and more difficult?
That’s because it is.
David Payne writes for Ben Burns
Come March, it pays to have paid attention to BracketBuster Saturday.
Since its inception in 2003, the made-for-TV event has produced an average of 14.5 NCAA tournament teams per season.
