My Ears Are Bleeding

It's always a mistake to take sports radio too seriously. But listening to Colin Cowherd is painful today.

He's assessing the line on the game and talking nonsense in every direction. He says that the Steelers are so clearly better than the Seahawks that the line should be eight points. He saying that Vegas thinks Seattle is better because everyone always bets the favorite and the favorites always cover. So why not a bigger number on the Steelers?

Where to begin? First of all the Steelers are not clearly better than the Seahawks. I have a pretty extensive objective analysis of how teams rank in the statistics that most correlate to winning and Seattle scores better than Pittsburgh. You can quibble with quality of opposition. That's a reasonable argument that could play in Pittsburgh's favor. But it's far from conclusive proof of anything. And I'll concede that Pittsburgh is No. 1 in my two most important categories: YPA Net and net points per pass attempt. But Seattle is solid across the board and ranks higher in net red zone possessions, a late entry to the Index but one that correlates nearly as strongly as the two stats previously cited.

I will not deny that betting psychology favors Pittsburgh and that Vegas factored that into the line. There are many more Steelers fans than Seahawks fans because so many front-running 35-year-old guys across America were in their underoos when the Steelers were last winning Super Bowls. Plus, the Steelers are the "team of destiny," which fools always back mid-story and are most often wrong about. That's why the line is out of whack here (it should be, at worst, a pick 'em on the numbers).

Secondly, not everyone bets the favorites just because they've covered 31 of 39 times. Lines stabalize when there is equal money on both teams. If there's not, the line keeps moving until the action evens out. Some argue that this might be the case in Vegas, but not necessarily on the street. That's true, of course, but, statistically, there is a very small chance that the betting tendencies in any community outside of the home cities varies significantly from what's going on in the legit gambling houses. In other words, if a four-point line evens out the action in Las Vegas, Nevada, it very, very likely does the same in Hoboken, NJ.

The game opened at 3.5. It's gone up to 4 in most places. That means that the line is pretty good. Again, most of the action will be placed in the coming days but statistically it's very unlikely to differ in ratios of Steelers and Seahawks money than what's been placed to date. And you don't need a math degree to be able to understand that, just an informal education on bookmaking and gambling from the streets (I got mine on the School of Union Avenue at the University of Paterson, NJ). Lesson one: bookies and casinos don't make their money by gambling. They want the tidy 10 percent on every bet, which they only get if the scales are in balance.

What's going on here is the thing that always happens in gambling. Everyone is a winner. All those people who bet on all those Super Bowls bet the favorites because the favorites won. And everyone who goes to Vegas or Atlantic City always wins a little. We're all so smart. Yet those casinos are so big.