Frustration a safe bet for NFL gamblers - Ingles

It’s almost that time again, when the entire family gathers around the 54-inch HD to kneel, hold hands, bow their heads and give thanks for the three-team teaser parlay.

Yes, once again the NFL is upon us, and for those who think this game is brilliant sporting theatre that can be viewed without any kind of financial investment, turn the page and move along. These eyes can’t watch it, or hear its ridiculous shills in the announcers’ booth deifying its coaches and so on — at least, not without a wager.

The NFL was built into the colossus of sport because of three things, and the order is interchangeable: 1) Its back-scratching relationship with television. 2) The anabolic steroid. 3) Gambling in several forms.

Whether it’s betting online or in Las Vegas, action with the local barbershop bookmaker (who, bless him, lets his customers bet on credit), those wildly popular fantasy leagues, office pools, parlay cards or man-to-man water-cooler bets, the majority of those who watch each Sunday have some kind of action on the NFL.

There are, naturally, certain rules for betting and here are the certainties:

• If your team misses a convert, you will lose your bet by a half-point.

• If you are getting 3 ½ points in overtime, the other team will score a touchdown.

• If you are laying 3 ½ points in overtime, your team will stop driving and kick the winning field goal.

• If you bet the under, there is a guaranteed return touchdown, whether on kickoffs, interception, blocked field goal or whatever. (Now that the NFL, in a bid to reduce injuries, has moved up the kickoff line, there are more touchbacks and kickoff-return TDs will be as rare as Detroit Lion playoff tickets. Still, I’m pretty sure I know when they will come.)

• When the referee goes under the hood, he always comes back with bad news. He is not, of course, looking at the replays but, as the immortal Dan Jenkins maintains, is calling his girlfriend in Las Vegas or his banker in Zurich.

• The bad beats never, ever are balanced out by the lucky wins.

That should be the first rule of gambling. Anybody who has ever risked money on a sports event can remember historically difficult defeats with far more clarity than the fluky wins, which he tends to consider as merely confirming his initial good judgment.

Right now, bettors are nodding and remembering such delicacies as the Pittsburgh-Jacksonville game from a decade ago when Pittsburgh, down by two points but getting 3 ½, lined up for a game-winning field goal on the final play. Jax blocked it and returned it for a TD to cover, double-slaughtering Steeler backers.

There also was that time in the late ’90s when the Bills were incensed that the Patriots, trailing 21-17, were awarded a pass-interference call on a Drew Bledsoe Hail Mary in the end zone on the game’s final play. Given the extra snap, they punched in the TD from the one-yard line to lead 23-21. Bills bettors didn’t care, because Buffalo was getting 3 ½ points. But the Bills certainly cared and walked off the field in protest of the call, allowing the Pats to walk in the two-point convert for a 25-21 cover.

Others will recall the Troy Polamalu TD return on the game’s final play that provided a six-point Pittsburgh cover a couple of years back, except the zebras inexplicably (or perhaps not so, eh?) called it back and blew the whistle on Pitt’s 11-10 win.

There are more, of course. We can’t forget them. Yet we can’t leave them out of our lives. This article was written by Dave Perkins and appeared in The Toronto Star.