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Boise State shows it's a grown up team nowNCAA Football Betting Lines09/07/2010 - They didn't need to dust off the ol' Statue of Liberty play, never thought of pulling off a fake punt. Save those for, say, Jan. 10 in Arizona. That may be the only time this season that Boise State has to dig into its bag of tricks. OK, so the hugely entertaining win over Virginia Tech doesn't exactly guarantee the Broncos a spot in the BCS title game. There are still lots of games to play, even more polls to take, and a lot more debating to do. But after yet another sterling performance on a national stage one thing is clear: Boise State is a grown up football team now, and maybe it's time to start treating them as such. The voters in the Associated Press Top 25 poll already do, rewarding Boise with a No. 3 ranking. The teams they will face with a giant bulls eye on their backs the rest of the season certainly will. And if the Broncos run the table in the regular season for a third straight year, the people running the BCS surely better. This isn't the little team that could anymore. This is a big team that really can. The Broncos had just 60 minutes Monday night to prove they weren't just pretenders. An hour of football to state their case or spend the rest of the season as an afterthought on gaudy blue turf. They needed almost every second of it to win a thriller over Virginia Tech that was so big many Boise State players celebrated by taking a victory lap around FedEx Field. ``Certainly we're proving people right right now,'' quarterback Kellen Moore said. Probably winning a lot of fans along the way, too. Say what you will about their weak schedule, but the Broncos always seem to find a way to step it up when it really matters and are certainly a lot more fun to watch than the two teams ahead of them in the national rankings. The fun this time took place on the road before 86,587 mostly hostile fans. Up early, behind late, Boise State found a way to come back and win on a touchdown pass to Austin Pettis with 1:09 remaining. A team that first gained national attention with trick plays that beat Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl also showed it can play football the old-fashioned way, too, more than holding its own in the trenches against a tough and physical opponent. Indeed, the Broncos answered every question except the one about their schedule. They had to, because they will have no other chance. Their coach tried to downplay it all along, insisting it was just one game in a long season. But the players, college students that they are, were too smart for that. They certainly understood the difference between the BCS title game and the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl that one lucky Western Athletic Conference team will be in this year. ``We know how much was at stake for us, so it was kind of like a bowl game,'' Pettis said. Whether the win over No. 10 Virginia Tech will be enough to keep the Broncos in the national title chase despite their weak schedule will be debated endlessly over the upcoming weeks by the talking heads on television. Oregon State is really the only team left on the schedule with an outside chance of an upset and the Beavers have to play in Boise, where the Broncos just don't lose. So Boise State will run up the score on Wyoming, and try to win style points by blowing out New Mexico State. They'll need to win big against teams that have nothing to lose by trying to pull their own big upsets. They'll have to satisfy both the voters and the computers, and they can't afford to let anyone even play them close. ``We're heading off to Wyoming, and it's going to be the biggest game at Wyoming ever,'' Moore said. ``That's the way it goes, and that's the way we like it. We like to be everyone's biggest game.'' In years past, beating up on bad teams would have gotten them a pat on the back and a conference title. The competition simply wasn't good enough for Boise to move all the way up in the polls. That changed this year, though, which is what made the game against the Hokies so big. Boise came in as the No. 3 ranked team in the country, just behind Alabama and Ohio State, two teams with a lot more football pedigree. The Broncos don't need to climb. All they need to do is tread water and hope that the two teams ahead of them can't make it through much tougher schedules undefeated. Nothing terribly tricky about that. ---- Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.orgCopyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Betting FootballNFL Football Betting OnlineIs there such a thing as a trap game in the NFL? I once asked that question to Pete Korner, who at the time was office manager and a senior linesmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants. Korner almost ripped my head off. There is no such thing as a trap game, he loudly berated me. It’s a myth. The numbers are made using power ratings, he said. There are trap games, though. They just might not be what you think. The perception is of a good team, say Philadelphia, laying a small number against New Orleans. Using the highly-respected power ranking from The Gold Sheet, you’d find the Eagles with a power rating of 4 and the Saints at 8. When you factor the game being played in New Orleans, you could see why the line opened so short at less than a field goal. For some, this makes it enticing to take the Eagles. That’s not a real trap game, though. A real trap game, says professional gambler Dave Malinsky, is thinking you’re getting value betting a bad team, which brings us to the Oakland Raiders-Denver Broncos matchup. The Raiders are +15 in this long-standing division rivalry. Denver is on a short week having dispatched Baltimore Monday. However, the Raiders haven’t covered the spread their last 10 games. Many bettors don’t trust the Raiders to give a full effort. Few think much of Art Shell and his Oakland’s coaching staff. So oddsmakers have to do something to make Oakland attractive if they hope to get equal action. Now Malinsky is a value shopper. But he won’t touch the Raiders even getting more than two touchdowns. “I try to eliminate the undisciplined, unfocused teams because they’re the ones most likely to suffer the bad beats,” he said. Near the top of Malinsky’s list of stay-away teams is the Miami Dolphins, who have yet to cover a spread this season. “Whatever you think of Nick Saban, you have to look at the penalties and turnovers,” Malinsky said. It’s easy to point out the Dolphins failed to get the money this past week against New England because Olindo Mare missed a field goal and had another field goal blocked. But even though the Dolphins outgained the Patriots, 283-213, they committed eight penalties. Bad teams not only cost themselves victories, but pointspread covers as well. The Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers are two more examples. The Cardinals couldn’t have been in a better position this past Sunday, up 14-0 at home against a mediocre Kansas City Chiefs squad. But they couldn’t hold it. The Packers got a push against St. Louis, but also could have won losing by three when Brett Favre fumbled at the St. Louis 11-yard line with 44 seconds left. “The Packers were in a position to beat Philadelphia, too,” Malinsky said. “But they couldn’t even cover double digits. “These teams just make mistakes and it costs you … they always will look good from a value standpoint. They really will. But that’s the trap.” Houston and Tennessee rank among the six-worst teams. Malinsky wouldn’t be afraid to take either of these teams, however, if the price were high enough. The Texans are bad, Malinsky said, but they have some discipline. The Titans showed they could not only come up with an outstanding game plan, but execute it as well, losing by one to the Colts on the road as an 18 ?-point underdog this past Sunday. “Jeff Fisher is a worker,” Malinsky said of the Titans coach. “I’m not sure how hard Art Shell wants to work when he gets out of bed.” Fisher, though, could be out as Tennessee coach after this season. Is he still worth backing in the right spot, with the right price, as a lame duck coach? “It’s in his nature to keep working hard and not worry about any possible lame duck status,” Malinsky said. “He’s coaching for his resume.” Note: Monday night game will be picked Monday. Lines used are from football betting lines. American Idol Betting Season 6 Strategies It's that time of year folks. Betting on American Idol Season 9. And we have plenty of American Idol Season 6 strategies appearing below. With the Top 24 finalists revealed, online gambling sites will be offering betting odds on each of them, including MySportsbook.com. No other “event” has been growing as fast as wagering on American Idol. It has turned into a huge betting event with reasonably high limits and all sorts of profit-making potential for sharp bettors. Last year, MySportsbook.com experienced unprecedented traffic as a result of the American Idol betting craze. Whether a fan of America’s top-rated show or watching only because of a wife or girlfriend, here are some of basic strategies to use when betting American Idol. A better strategy is to look for performers who don’t necessarily get the praise from the judges, but show flashes of the talent necessary to go the distance. Understand that the great state of Alabama has a mighty edge when it comes to American Idol. Every week MySportsbook.com anticipates offering a prop on who’ll be eliminated from the show each Wednesday night. A suggestion to handicap this is to gauge an overall feel for who’s the least popular contestant left in the competition. Generally the least popular performers have recently appeared in the bottom three and will have been the target of repeated criticism from the judges. Last year, resources included dialidol.com and votefortheworst.com. Dialidol.com measures the volume of each contestant’s voting line. While by no means a perfect science, it does give a good indication of who is generating votes and who isn’t. Meanwhile, votefortheworst.com is a site that attempts to build support for the worst competitor to keep them in the competition for ‘entertainment’ value. The site has a proven track record of keeping performers around who most feel should have been voted off a long time ago. Watch for American Idol betting odds on each of the contestants shortly and good luck with these American Idol betting strategies. To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com - this sportsbook accepts credit cards. |
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