x m o v or
the bet m g m line or
m g m total
What I wanted was that story that said who plays who in college football and which team is expected to win.
USAToday used to help me out with a story that listed the Top 25 games as picked by their 6 college football reporters.
Each pick was shown by the teams logo.
Took a long time for the story to load online but once it popped, there were all the logos in nice straight lines, usually all matching except when someone went a little crazy and picked, you know, Michigan over OSA last year.
That used to be the lead story on USAToday on Saturdays but this week, I had to search for and it wasn’t easy to find.
Scrolling through the New York Times, I came across and clicked on the article, College football Week 8 projected scores: Model predicts every FBS vs. FBS game, thinking this would tell me what I want to know.
Who wins, who loses today.
What I got was a game by game listing of something called the XMOV, the BETMGMLINE, the XTOTAL and the BETMGMTOTAL.
Most of the XMOV scores were negative numbers.
For a sport where points are score by 1,2,3 and 6, one game showed an XMOV score of -0.5.
I have no clue what I was looking at and in the case of the -0.5 game, does the means San Jose State should win or lose?
I just don’t know.
To paraphrase Grantland Rice, Its not whether you win or lose, but how you bet the game.
Sports betting and the immediacy of the world wide web and the constant presence of the hand held device is beyond and doubt a match up devised, produced and supported by Hell.
But is new or just its overwhelming presence.
Recently I was paging through the memoirs of Alistair McAlpine, a British businessman, politician and author who was an advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
His book is titled, Once a Jolly Bagman and he relates this story of his Father, who was addicted to betting on horse racing.
Television was not much favoured by my father until he discovered that not only could you watch the racing at one racecourse, but by changing channels you could see what was happening on another racecourse at the far end of the country. Within the year my father’s bookmakers at Henley-on-Thames had installed a direct telephone line to my father and his television. Shortly afterwards (undoubtedly aided by the large sums of money my father had spent with him), Sam Cowan, a bookmaker in the then small town of Henley, opened a London office. My father was rather pleased by his telephone, for his calls to the bookmaker were free and he could also listen to what was happening on a third racecourse via the Bookies Blower and the telephone link. The idea that our family should sit over their meals and ‘make’ conversation with each other came to an abrupt halt just before two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, at which time my father moved to the sitting room where he remained, cigar in hand, until five-thirty, switching channels, a telephone tucked under his chin, with the Sporting Life laid across his knees and his head and shoulders shrouded in cigar smoke illuminated by the flickering black-andwhite light of the screen. It is not hard to imagine how much his pleasure was increased when the broadcasts began to be in colour and he could spot by the jockey’s colours how a particular horse, neglected in the race reader’s commentary, was doing.
Dating this from the description would put in the early 1950’s but then he is writing about Great Britain so maybe this was in 1980.
But sports betting and the latest media has been matched up forever.
All through history, a match up devised, produced and supported by Hell.
Witness the movie The Sting where they convince the mark they can intercept horse racing results that are sent by the latest and greatest … telegraph wire.
I just wanted to know who might win today.
I don’t understand the over and under or the xtotal or xmov or anything like that.
Who might win.
Who might lose.
I am so confused.
Some where in my mind is a memory of a Bob Newhart show where Jerry the Dentist wants to make a bet on a football game and he explains the over/under and this and that of sports betting (back in 1978).
Bob listens and finally says something like … “tell you what Jerry. I’ll bet you a quarter.“
No Haiku For You 