Predicting Winners at the FanYard, Better Than Odds
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by Ninerman
I am not a betting man, except for the odd $5-20 bet with a friend. Even then, I don't care about the money so much, just the bragging rights. I am not morally opposed to gambling I tend to think of organized gambling like organized religion; it cuts at the very fabric of what it is representative of.
This was rarely more clearly shown than when the NBA had one of its official implicated in a gambling scandal earlier this year. When it comes to college sports, gambling is even more heinous, as we can't even begin to imagine how many of these kids - even down to a high school level - are approached to throw games or fix points. If someone can talk an NBA official into doing it, they can surely sway a few kids trying to get through school on a tight budget.
As things were, up until this year - and I'll explain more on this later - the only way to find out who was supposedly favored in any game was to check the media for the betting odds. What the public has been tricked into thinking is that the odds on a game represent an indication as to how much a favorite is favored by and how big of an underdog the other team is.
This is, in fact, not the case at all. In fact, the odds on games indicate what the books think will be the numbers that divide the betting money coming in on each game. By dividing the betting money, the books are trying to get themselves into a position where they can't lose money, no matter who wins. Ideally, on any point spread, the book will get an even number of bettors taking both sides of the game. Then, when either team wins, the people betting on that team get their money back, plus their winnings. Those winnings come from the money given to the books by those who picked the losing team.
Books keep the remainder of the cash as a sort of surcharge for the service of providing the betting platform, called the juice, or vig.
The NCAA has even gone so far as to testify before Congress to try to get them to outlaw betting on collegiate games. Of course, some casinos paid some very good lobbyists who - I could only hazard a guess - likely gave some upstanding Congressmen a few free trips to Vegas and passes to few of its more notorious perks. That ensured betting could still take place on college games.
The NCAA also approached the Associated Press Sports Editors Association and told them that the NCAA was considering revoking press privileges from papers that continued to place odds on collegiate games in their papers. The APSE countered with the fact that, according to a Harris Poll, only 11% of people who checked the odds on games did so in a manner related to betting. Most people simply looked at lines to get an idea of who was favored.
Again, the public thinks the betting lines indicate who is favored in a game and by how much. By default, betting lines often do indicate the team that is favored to win the game, but when it comes to how many points it is thought they will win by, there has been no real indicator of what the public thinks.
Until I found this site.
There is now a site called FanYard, where the public finally is able to not only see by how much a team is favored by, but fans can also participate in setting the spread for each game. The FanYard calls this measurement of public opinion the Yardstick and there is a Yardstick generated for each NFL and college football game.
The concept is brilliant. By giving the public what they are looking for and allowing them to help in its creation, the FanYard team has executed a coup that will hopefully turn into the coup de grace for college betting odds in newspapers across the country.
A few other things I found very interesting about FanYard.
1) It is totally free to use and participate in. 2) It is very user-friendly and easy on the eyes. 3) There is a page for each game, called the Game Yard, where users make their predictions and discuss aspects of the game in a social networking-style platform. 4) The Game Yards and user picks are stored and easily accessed in perpetuity. 5) If you use the Contact links and write to someone at FanYard, they actually write you back! When I asked, they said they have not and do not plan to have any business interaction with betting companies. They seem to have the same view of betting as I do.
So, hopefully now, newspapers across the country will take into account two things. First, that gambling lines are inherently wrong for collegiate sports. Second, their argument for keeping gambling lines on college sports was at best misguided and there is now a site that actually does give the public an indication as to how many points people believe one team is going to win by.
In one fell swoop, papers could remove college betting lines and give the public what they wanted in the first place. Those who are looking for betting lines can go find them somewhere else. They have no place in our nation's papers.
Write a letter, or copy this one, to your local papers if they carry gambling odds on college games. I think it is the right thing to do.
