LVSC Head Man Makes Appearance On ESPN
Ken White, C.O.O of the Las Vegas Sports Consultants, was a guest on ESPN today talking about some of the NFL Futures Season Win Totals on the board out in Vegas right now. It was a good chat and gave some decent insight into what the books were looking at, but moreso just gave the opinion on certain football teams – college and in the NFL – from one of the most influential men in Vegas.
Here were some highlights:
- Colin Cowherd released his top four NFL season win totals futures bets and his top four college football season win totals futures bets on Wednesday. He like the Bears ‘under’ 8.0 wins, but White actually disagreed. White is high on the defense in Chicago and thinks that the Bears should be closer to 10 wins this year.
- White agreed with Cowherd – and I have to say that I have felt this way all offseason as well – that the New York Jets are way overrated. I couldn’t agree more and am glad we’re on the same side there.
- White is high on Arizona in college football and feels that Mike Stoops has them “rolling in the right direction”. He quickly ran through the schedule and said that, “This is a team that could top the eight wins and could get to 10.” That’s interesting to me because I think it means that Arizona will be favored over Iowa this year in a key nonconference game.
White mentioned that his shop has five NFL handicappers (so if you go it alone in the NFL season it’s really one-against-five), and I would love to be there to see how some of the disagreements shake out in those rooms on a Sunday night when it comes to releasing lines.
And once again, that’s why I like Colin Cowherd. I’m not a junkie and I don’t listen to his show very often. But I have nothing but respect for that guy because he’s a Realist and because he is pragmatic about gambling. Of course, ESPN is the perfect example of the clear and utter hypocrisy about gambling in this country. They will talk about odds, have handicappers and oddsmakers come on their programs and platforms, they will discuss betting, they will have radio jockeys release against the spread picks all over the country every week, and they will basically have no problem with wagering. But they wouldn’t hand out Doc’s Sports Journal in any of their ESPN bars and restaurants because they are owned by Disney and Disney is a “family company”. So at the corporate level the Disney Corp. is 100 percent against gambling (and Jews, at least when Walt was running the show) but sports betting and the culture of sports betting is ingrained in all of the sports programming that ESPN does.
Anyway, the interview was quick and besides those three points there really wasn’t much to be taken from it. (Also, White loves Aaron Rodgers. For what that’s worth.) But I thought I’d pass it on.
