A good sports betting column should be backed by a profitable gambler with a proven track record. It should offer picks generated by a sophisticated and conceptually sound model. Most importantly, it should treat the subject with the seriousness it warrants.

This is not that column.

Instead, this will be an off-beat look at the sports betting industry-- why Vegas keeps winning, why gambling advice is almost certainly not worth the money, and the structural reasons why even if a bettor were profitable, anything they wrote would be unlikely to make their readers net profitable, too.

While we're at it, we'll discuss ways to minimize Vegas' edge and make recreational betting more fun, explain how to gain an advantage in your office pick pools, preview games through an offbeat lens (with picks guaranteed to be no worse than chance), and tackle various other Odds and Ends along the way.

Pulling Back the Curtain on The System

A lot of the stuff I do in this column-- like occasionally picking both sides of a single game or retiring the name of my "lock of the week" when it's not performing well-- is tongue-in-cheek. But, like any good joke, there's a kernel of truth to it. So-called touts really will change the names of their picks to inflate their record (when they don't just lie about their record outright). And in one of the best-known scams in the industry, they really will pick both sides of the same game. Why would they do that? Let me introduce you to "The System".

In the least sophisticated form, a potential scammer gets a large pool of potentially interested gamblers and gives them a "free pick". For half of the pool, the scammer will tell them to pick one side. For the other half, the scammer will tell them to pick the other. This way, it's guaranteed that he gave the correct pick to half of the pool (ignoring ties and pushes). The half that gets the wrong pick shrugs their shoulders and moves on; after all, what more would you expect out of a free pick?

The scammer then takes the half of the pool that received the correct pick and gives them a new "bet of the week". Again, he or she will split the pool, giving half of it one side and the other half the other side. Again, half of the pool gets an incorrect pick and moves on with their lives, while the other half has now gotten two correct picks in a row.

Then, the scammer repeats it and repeats it. Every week, the size of the pool gets cut in half, but the remaining gamblers have gotten more and more correct picks in a row. Eventually, the scammer says, "I've now given you six consecutive picks, and every one of them has been correct; I have three "locks of the week" available, and I'll sell them to you for the low price of (insert absurd price here)". The recipients of six consecutive correct picks are unaware of the thousands and thousands of incorrect picks the scammer has given along the way, so many of them will pay only to find out that the scammer has no real edge after all.

There are lots of variations on this scam, but they all revolve around finding a group of people who see all of your correct picks and none of your incorrect ones. In one of my favorite examples, a user on Twitter correctly predicted very specific details of a World Cup match the day before to "prove" that the game was fixed. But it turned out the user had simply made thousands and thousands of predictions the day before, watched the match, and then deleted all the ones that were wrong.

At the end of the day, it's much harder to beat the house than it is to trick people into thinking you can beat the house. I'm not saying no one is ever profitable betting sides, but there's a reason profitable bettors hire other people to submit their picks for them-- the quickest way to lose an edge is to let people know you have it.

It's a dangerous world out there and you should be careful who you trust. Except, of course, for me; you should trust me completely.

Tracking the Unders

In 2022 and 2023, mass-betting the unders was incredibly profitable over the first 6 weeks and essentially just broke even after that. I hypothesized this year that maybe all we needed to do to make a killing was to start our "mass-bet the unders" strategy earlier in the season. What a fortuitous hypothesis; unders went 10-6 last week, bringing them to 21-11 since we started betting them.

If you put $10 on the under in every game (and you saw the exact same lines I saw and got all action at -110), you'd have made $30.91 last week, bringing your profit to $80.91 for the year. (Briefly consider quitting while you're ahead.)

I said we'd be tracking two different betting strategies-- placing $10 on every game vs. starting with $160, rolling over our winnings from week to week, and placing an equal amount of our remaining bankroll on every game. Because of the strong start, the "snowball strategy" is picking up steam. Our bankroll is up to $250.57, which is about $10 more than the "$10 on every game" approach.

More impactfully, we're now betting $15.67 per game, so that bankroll will continue to grow at an even faster rate. Unless we have a bad week. Iin which case, it'll shrink at a much faster rate. Such is the nature of compounding gains and losses.

Lines I'm Seeing

As I mentioned, winning in football is all about Wanting It more than the other guy, and winning in betting is the same. To that end, we've been making our picks this year based on my patented "Motivation Differential" model. (Okay, the patent office told me they couldn't patent "Wanting It", but I think that's just because they didn't Want It badly enough.)

After starting the year slow because we weren't sufficiently Hungry, we've now evened our record at 3-3. Last week we didn't just Want It, we NEEDED It, we Had To Have It. Not only did our picks go 2-0, but they beat the spread by an average of more than 20 points per game.

Now you might think "amount you beat the spread by" is a meaningless stat-- whether you beat the spread by 0.5 points or 37 points, the bet pays out the same. And this is true. But what you're not considering is that tracking this gives me another thing I can point to when it makes me look good and conveniently ignore when it makes me look bad. Having lots of different ways to measure success that I can shift between as needed helps me look like a better bettor than I really am.

(I'm not satisfied there, though. After all, the best bettors best the better bettors unless the better bettors better their bets. So let's get on with bettering our bets.)

Miami (-1) vs. Tennessee

The Titans are bad, but this is nothing they haven't grown accustomed to. Quarterback Will Levis alternates between looking like he Wants It more than anyone in football and less than anyone in football on a snap-to-snap basis.

Miami is also bad, but this is not something they're accustomed to. They've fallen from 2nd in points and 5th in scoring differential last year to 32nd in points and 30th in point differential so far this year, ahead only of the Jaguars and Panthers. I don't know if they Want It, but I bet they at least Want It To Stop. Will that be good enough? We'll see next week, because we're taking the Dolphins and giving the point.

Minnesota (+3) vs. Green Bay

Malik Willis has been my favorite story so far this year. After falling much further than projected in the 2022 draft and starting just three games for Tennessee, the Titans traded him to Green Bay for a seventh-round pick. After a Week 1 injury to Jordan Love, Willis found himself back in the starting lineup.

The Packers have crafted a run-heavy game plan to keep him on schedule and comfortable (he's averaging just 18 dropbacks per game over the last two weeks), and Willis has, in turn, been efficient. He has completed over 70% of his passes, averaged 9.5 yards per attempt, and chipped in 57 rushing yards per game. Most importantly, he has yet to turn over the football.

But it's not just his play on the field; Willis is a very easy guy to root for. When asked if he was motivated to show his former team they'd made a mistake by getting rid of him, he declined the opportunity to air grievances, saying the Titans "did a great job by him" and he was "more than blessed for the opportunity".

Does Malik Willis want to prove the Titans wrong, per se, if he starts Sunday?

“I could care less, bro. I think I got paid the whole time I was there. I’m more than blessed for the opportunity they’ve given me. They brought me into this league, whether those guys are there or… pic.twitter.com/0S26gyDvkp

— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) September 18, 2024

Jordan Love has returned to practice, and the Malik Willis experience is likely nearing the end of the road. So enter my second-favorite storyline of the season: Minnesota defensive coordinator Brian Flores and the special misery he is concocting for opposing quarterbacks.

Here's Brock Purdy, the most efficient passer in the NFL last year, in disbelief about what he just went through.

#49ers QB Brock Purdy to #Vikings DC Brian Flores after Sunday's loss:

"Your scheme is crazy."

(? @mattblively)pic.twitter.com/sHUTSlVooQ

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) September 16, 2024

Here's C.J. Stroud, reigning offensive rookie of the year, looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world at that moment.

Brian Flores has CJ Stroud in hell right nowpic.twitter.com/azU2rraXWV

— Sam Monson (@SamMonsonNFL) September 22, 2024

Flores was fired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins after back-to-back winning seasons. Tua Tagovailoa, his former quarterback, made a point this offseason of saying how miserable it was to play for Flores. Minnesota's defensive players don't seem to share that assessment.

Willis may not have wanted to prove to the league that it had made a mistake, but Flores looks like a man who very much does, and whoever winds up lining up under center for the Packers this week is going to join the parade of quarterbacks who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Void of Space Lock of the Week

I promised last week that if our Stone Cold Lock of the Week continued to underperform, it would get the hook for a Lock of the Week with more promise. The random number generator responded by picking against Patrick Mahomes II and the Chiefs, which... was probably not the best strategy. So the Stone Cold Lock of the Week is no more.

Perhaps the problem with the previous name is it wasn't cold enough. Leave a stone in the sun for a while, and it actually gets pretty warm. Maybe the solution is to pick something so vast and frozen that even the sun can't possibly warm it.

Pittsburgh (-1.5) at Indianapolis

We picked the Steelers -1.5 last week, and the Random Number Generator apparently wants to run it back again. That's alright by me-- if it's going to recycle my picks, I'll just recycle my analysis: "I'm sure the Steelers would love to bank a few extra early-season wins so they can start their late-season collapse a little bit earlier and still finish above .500 for the 87th consecutive season."