It’s amazing how powerful just the thought of football is to people everywhere, especially here in Las Vegas with betting.
We’re just getting into June with baseball in full swing, the UNLV baseball team is playing UC-Irvine in the Corvallis Regional Friday, the NBA Conference Finals are going on, but none of that seems to matter as much when the topic of football comes up.
Over the weekend I talked sports a lot with several bettors while shooting videos for The Linemakers at the South Point sports book, and there’s the normal chit-chat with all the sports, but their eyes always seem to light up and get bright whenever there is any mention of football. It’s like a learned mechanism – Pavlov’s theory applied to football.
We’re right in the middle of our football drought. We’re starving for it and with OTA’s just about to happen in the pro’s, it’s a sign football is close, and we get excited.
The sports books around town are posting football props earlier than ever. You can bet every game of the regular season at CG Technology books. The LVH has all of their NFL Games of Year posted and the South Point has had season win totals posted since March.
I ran into former bookmaker Chris Andrews at the South Point, who was having a Pittsburgh pow-wow in a booth with other Steel Town natives Jimmy Vaccaro and Bert Osborne.
Andrews made season win totals for his website AgainstTheNumber.com. I shared some of those numbers on teams with other people and they went absolutely nuts. Andrews made Oregon, Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio State all at 10.5 wins each. Heat-Pacers Game 3? No big deal. College football talk in May? A home run!
Andrews’ numbers definitely got everyone’s football juices flowing. People don’t necessarily want to bet the numbers now, they just want to talk about their teams and conferences. Both the South Point and LVH will have their own college football season win totals posted in July.
In two weeks, Tony Miller will post 200 college football Games of the Year at the Golden Nugget, which he’s launching this year with a party everyone is invited to, and he’s seen first-hand how excited his guests get anticipating the June 13 release.
“It’s just that time of the year,” Miller said. “It’s like, as soon as the NFL Draft ends it’s go time for everyone, and then mini-camps start, more coverage on TV – they just get fired up and I am, too.”
Miller already has all 200 of his games picked out and is now finalizing his power ratings on all the teams that will determine the spreads
World Cup Fever: Jeff Sherman over at the LVH tells me he’s diving in strong this week with his World Cup props. He’ll be posting an assortment of props like over-under total wins and goals scored by key players.
Station Casinos is setting up all kinds of promotions at their books to provide a great viewing experience for their guests. And my favorite pub in town, McMullan’s next to the Orleans, will be having daily outdoor viewing parties for the entire World Cup to accommodate the large crowds expected.
Micah Roberts is a former Las Vegas race and sports book director, one of The Linemakers on SportingNews.com , and longtime motorsports columnist and sports analyst at GamingToday. Follow Micah on Twitter @MicahRoberts7 Contact Micah at [email protected].