Public favorites hurt Books
By Micah Roberts

For the second straight week of college football action, the sports books got the type of favorite/underdog ratio results they love as the favorites went 23-21-1. However, just like last week, it was the public favorites grouped into parlays that kept the sports books from having a good day.

Big favorites like Wisconsin (-20½), Alabama (-10), Oregon (-27) and most of all, Stanford (-21), led the way as the most popular public plays and they all came in easily. In each of those cases, the line didn’t move much as they respected the straight bets with disregard for the parlay action. “We always seem to get beat or break even in the first couple weeks of college football with all the large favorites against the sacrificial lambs,“ said Coast Resorts race and sports director Bob Scucci. “It hasn’t mattered how high we make some of these teams, because the public still bets them and they all seem to cover.“

Conventional bookmaking wisdom tells the bookmaker to move numbers based solely on straight bets allowing parlay and teaser risk to fall as they may. They can only control what happens based on money that is bet on each individual team. When a result comes in, it’s posted and the parlay risk from that games moves on to the other games.

If the sports book moves a game too high, then the Sharps will jump in and feed off the gift spreads like chum to sharks, something the books don‘t want to do considering their high win percentage.

No game was more apparent of the respect sports book have for the Sharps than the Stanford-Duke game where action on the game might have warranted moves up to -22 or -23, but each time they attempted to move up because of overwhelming public play, the sharks started circling and chomped on the number pushing it back to -20½ or -21. Despite the Sharps play, the game was overloaded with small public money.

“I couldn’t believe the action on the Stanford game, it was the largest of the day,” said Scucci. “Every time I moved past 21, we’d get a bet immediately sending me back. Stanford was by far the most popular side of the day.“

Most other books also reported this game as having the largest handle of the day with certainly the most parlays attached to it on the Stanford side. Chances are if you asked to see anyone’s parlay ticket on Saturday that Stanford would have appeared on it. That game alone was the gateway to success for many in the betting public. Although it appeared Duke would play a tough game after watching the first 28 minutes where Stanford only led 10-7, they ultimately closed it out and won 44-17.

When a team wins big for the public, they don’t stop playing them meaning that this week’s game at Arizona where Stanford is favored by a mere 10-points should be equally as popular a play.

A game where the sports books moved rapidly because of public play on both straight bets and parlays, where the Sharps wanted no part of the other side was Minnesota, which moved from -18½ to -22½ with no resistance by kickoff. New Mexico State, considered one of the worst teams in college football, won the game outright 28-21.

In the beginning, it looked like Saturday was shaping up to be a big day for the sports books when the favorites went 2-7 in the early games with Ohio State (-17) not covering, but the tide quickly turned the public’s way in the afternoon. Had it not been for the Michigan's fantastic come back or UCLA not covering their large 21-point spread in the late games, it would have been a disastrous day.

At the end of the day, it was either break even or a small loss for the sports books.

The popular public choices this week will be Boise State (-18), Wisconsin (-16), Texas A&M (-36), TCU (-28), Alabama (-45) and of course Stanford. The books will be hoping to beat at least two of those games and most of all, hoping Arizona plays a great game at home.