SportsInsights

With the Belmont Stakes taking place this Saturday, it was fitting that I managed to catch a midnight showing of “Let It Ride.”  As far as gambling movies go, it’s not a classic, but it falls somewhere between “Rounders” and “Money Kings.”  As a hapless gambler who has a once in a lifetime day at the track, Richard Dreyfus sums up things quite nicely when he says, “There is a fine line between winning and losing.  The  finish line.”  Today, we walked that fine line, but the inability of some teams to come through down the stretch left us grazing in the pasture and looking at just another day at the office.

With the handle up from last Saturday, we were feeling pretty confident going into the early games.  Surely inspired by the black magic antics of illusionist David Blaine, the public was back to their old tricks.  They were relying heavily on favorites to cover large spreads.  In some cases, Joe Public was willing to give two or three touchdowns in order to affirm their prognosticating abilities. Specifically, they liked Minnesota laying 17.5 in a big decision.   They also liked Pitt, Nebraska and Texas Tech, all favorites in intra-conference matchups

Illinois scored a second half field goal to cut the gap to 13 but failed to hold off a Minnesota rally that accounted for two fourth quarter scores.  Minnesota covered easily, handing us a sizable loss.  Syracuse failed to score in the second half and Iowa State failed to score at all, resulting in two conference losses and two losses for us.  The lone bright spot came when Missouri won outright, handing Texas Tech a 31 point loss and handing us a few bucks back.

The premier game of the day came in the late afternoon as Michigan and Purdue squared off in a highly anticipated Top 25 Big Ten matchup.  Since most folks liked the Boilermakers getting 6.5 on the road, most folks did not like the Wolverines delivering them 28 point loss and breaking up a ton of exotics.  But we certainly liked the Wolverines delivering us our biggest win on the day.  However, the Michigan win was the only positive during the late afternoon as Alabama went to overtime but failed to cover and Wake Forest could not cover despite a three touchdown spot.

Despite our inability to have our side come through down the stretch, shear volume helped us come close to breaking even going into the late games.  A Mississippi win and a Colorado cover helped balance out Auburn and UNLV losses, leaving us hovering around the line between winning and losing.