Nurse the Hate: My New System

There was once a time when I had a certain amount of expertise on betting on football.  I remember that time vaguely, like trying to remember a dream where a pretty girl smiles at you while you sit on a ledge with your face in the warm breeze.  It seems so real at the time, yet the harder you try to remember the details, the more they disappear.  In the end, all that remains is the impression of something that might have happened, but there is no concrete proof.  It’s as if you saw it as a child, and the memory is now a flickering ghost growing ever fainter.  In the end, that memory may have been no more real than a unicorn.  Did anything in the past ever happen like we think it did, or do we constantly evolve this memory into whatever we need it to be?  What is reality anyway?  Did I think Houston +2 was a good pick last week?  It seems like the ravings of a lunatic.  

I have lost any sense of how to win money betting on football.  The feel has left me completely.  Imagine if you once effortlessly rode a bicycle, and now when you climb on it’s like you are trying to walk a tightrope over a dangerous gorge in gale force winds.  Whereas I was once able to play guitar like Clarence White, I now move ham-fisted unable to coax even a simple tune from a guitar.  I have lost “it”.  I now feel like the kid I once was in algebra class, hoping to high heaven that I wasn’t called upon for the answer.  I am squirming in my seat with no idea of what that final answer is or even how to begin to get there.  I am lost.  A voice howling in the wilderness.

I used to spend much more time and effort on football gambling.  Let me tell you the real secret to gambling on sports.  The key is to always go the other way of consensus.  I cannot explain why, but if the public believes one thing, it is always the other.  It doesn’t matter if it is the favorite or the underdog.  Over time, the public will always finish on the wrong side.  I have seen the inside of gambling operations, and that is the simple truth.  There is no real explanation, is there?  How could a large group of people, generally those with great attention and focus on the games being predicted, be unable to predict who will win less than half the time?  It seems impossible, doesn’t it?  Yet, Las Vegas has mammoth luxury hotels with fake lakes in the middle of a fucking desert to prove this inarguable point.  The Public doesn’t know what the fuck they are talking about.

This led me to the idea of “counter selection”.  How can I continually pick against consensus?  The easiest way would be for me to pick all the games, and then bet against whatever I had initially thought.  Of course, this strategy will fail because I will know I am going to reverse my picks later and I will either consciously or subconsciously alter my initial selections to reflect my real intentions.  Bottom line?  You can’t outsmart yourself.

My next theory was to bet against the teams the media was touting as “sure things”.  These dopes on ESPN don’t know anything either.  You need to understand that.  I work in the media.  It’s an industry filled with C-average students that didn’t have anywhere else to go.  How do you think I got there?  Because investment banking had bad hours?  You think I decided at the last minute not to get into plastic surgery?  The astronaut program was too far from home?  Nah, broadcasting is just filled with underachievers.  It suited me.  It also allowed me to look behind the curtain.

When you realize that just because Terry Bradshaw played QB in the NFL 35 years ago it doesn’t mean he knows anything more than you do about the Atlanta Falcons, it is a revelation more useful than The Theory of Relativity. (Well, to me anyway…)  There are entire networks on TV and radio devoted to spending 24 hours a day to do nothing but talk up sporting events with whatever the mutually accepted story line happens to be that week.  “Denver is unstoppable.  They will never lose.”  While that is somewhat true in actual games, Denver is 4-3-1 against the spread.  It’s all disinformation.  Half of the talk means something, but which half?  How can we find an edge?

The key might just be to eliminate all potential human error from the equation. If I can’t win the game I’m playing, I need to change the game.  I need to move outside of patterns of failure and place myself into a position where I can win. I must take out all the variables and let the games be selected by a mind that is pure and uncluttered.  First I considered a child or a person with mental handicaps, but even then the risk of having a tainted viewpoint from the poisonous seep of ESPN concerned me.  That’s when it hit me.  Who has the most uncluttered mind of anyone I know?  A mind that would make the Dali Lama look confused?  There was one choice, my male basset hound Montgomery.  That dog takes zen to a whole new level.

As a trial, Montgomery will be selecting all the games I have interest in over the next few days (i.e. will be on TV this weekend).  I have set up two treats equidistant from where I kept him contained.  I told him, for example, that the treat on the right is Oregon -10 while the treat on the left is Stanford +10 at home.  I realize that his language skills are limited, but he seems to have a good grasp on “car”, “ride”, “walk”, and even knows “mail”, so he probably knows that “Oregon” represents a group of hired gun criminals that exist to sell more overpriced Nike bullshit.  He’s quick on the uptake like that.

Here's the good news.  This test was conclusive.  Montgomery definitely feels strongly about Stanford +10 this Thursday night, or at least that’s what his strong move to the Stanford treat signified to me.  I think it’s because he believes that Stanford’s defense has proven it can shut down the big play, and ten points at home in a game this big is money in the bank.  The hound can’t talk, so he couldn’t elaborate.  Whatever his reasons were, and I’m sure they were sound, he believes that Stanford with the points is the play.  Frankly, that’s good enough for me at this point.   

Montgomery has made the call.  Stanford +10.