SportsInsights

Everyone goes through a stretch in their life when it seems like they will never catch a break.  When it feels like you are destined to grind out a meaningless existence with no real prospect of making the one big move that will put you over the top.  But then one day, without making a conscious decision to change anything, you wake up and everything falls into place.  You go from geek to sheik overnight.  You are on top of the world, but you have no logical reason why.  All of the sudden you are Ali Landry.  You can not explain why things are suddenly different, but you are not going to bother asking either.  That is the kind of day it was for the good guys at Oasis Casino this past Sunday.

Since the opening Sunday of the NFL season, a weekend in which we handed sizable losses to the public, our handle has steadily decreased each successive weekend.  However, considering our inability to deliver a knockout blow, it was only a matter of time before the public got impatient and came back hungry.  This was that weekend. 

With all but four games going off at 1 PM, everyone was forced to get in on the action early or lose their chance for a payday.  While the usual suspects did not change, the stakes of the games increased significantly.  We needed familiar faces like Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Arizona for big money.  More money than we had seen on any other Sunday during this young season  Throw in the fact that we needed a handful of legitimate contenders like New England, Green Bay and Denver, this was shaping up to be the kind of day where the shift drinks are on the company brass.  But then again, anytime the mortgage payment is contingent on Chi-town and Cincy covering, you could be warming up the Winnebago real soon.

Lucky for the house, it just turned out to be one of those days.  New England took care of business.  Denver covered.  The Bengals continued to defy logic and provided us with a huge decision.  The Bears, a team that should have “fired their head coach at halftime of Monday night football” according to Steve Stone, won outright.  We did not win every game on the slate, but we came close.  And the hits we did take did not hurt us too bad.

Washington and Detroit provided the only major decisions of the late afternoon.  The Lions covered and the Redskins scored a last-second touchdown to close a 4.5 spread. Both results pushed the day’s total further in our favor.  With the Browns covering the first quarter and halftime lines, en route to an outright victory, we were not only able to make the mortgage payment, we had enough left over to finish the basement and build a wet bar, complete with a mirrored stage and stipper’s pole.