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"Mighty" Big 12?
Published: 8/28/2012 3:56 PM
Last Modified: 8/28/2012 3:56 PM

Many people around here are tired of hearing how great the SEC is.

There's no denying it.

But some think Oklahoma State could have played with, and even defeated, LSU or Alabama last year.

So will somebody kindly explain the following:

Tulsa is favored by one and a half points AT IOWA STATE!

Yes, that Iowa State. The Iowa State that defeated Oklahoma State. After Oklahoma State beat Tulsa something like 100-0.

Yes, that Tulsa. The Tulsa with a new quarterback. The Tulsa that is said to be pulling in its offensive wings to focus on defense.

Oddsmakers don't make teams favored for the fun of it.

It's business.

TU favored on the road against a middle of the pack Big 12 team?

Either TU is better than expected or the Big 12 is overrated once more.


Reader Comments 6 Total
colhi64 (6 months ago)
Oddsmakers don't don't make teams favored by who they think will win, they set the odds to bring in the bets. The odds change as the money comes in if the bets are favoring one team.
I would take the point and half. Maybe ISU and TU dont pull in a lot of bets because the spread has stayed at 2 and 1.5 a couple weeks.
241362 (6 months ago)
Wrong. Oddsmakers much prefer having the majority on the wrong side of the game. It seldom falls 50-50. In a great majority of the cases, the favored team is considered the best.
                    
colhi64 (6 months ago)
I stand by what I was trying to say. Bookies are in business to make money, and they do that by trying to get the bets as even as they can on each team. Bookies make money off the 'vig', not by picking a winner. If a bookie gets 100,000 bucks on team A and 100,000 on team B then that is 10K in the bookies pocket if the vig is ten percent. Point I was making is simply a bookie in Tulsa might favor TU, a bookie in Iowa might favor ISU, because locals are more likely to bet on home teams, and a national bookie will try as close as possible to make the bets come in even steven on both teams. I was trying to say the spread is not set to be predictive of a winner, its set to be predictive of how the bets will be placed.
Soonertrain (6 months ago)
Mr. Picker... as you can see from the 1st and only two comments, you need to run your blog from last year trying to explain how "oddsmakers" work their business. 241 came a little closer to correctness but stated the obvious..."the favored team is considered the best." Please take no offense 241 but a more appropriate statement would be "never bet the underdog, unless you firmly believe the underdog can win the game outright, without the benefit of added points to their total." Sorry... just sayin. There's a big difference. Help me pick. Run last year's lesson... or don't.
hootie (6 months ago)
Different teams, different players. IMO, the oddsmakers are blowing the spread on this game. They also blew the spread on the first 1/2 of OSUs games last year.
cbrummett (5 months ago)
oklahma state would hav had a tough time with arkansas bama or Lsu would have detroyed them
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Out Pick The Picker

The Picker began entertaining – and infuriating – sports fans in 1993. Each week during football season, he writes about his picks of college and NFL games in his Thursday Sports column. He's never afraid of sharing his opinions about the game and the personalities who play it. Readers have a chance to go against him each season in the Outpick the Picker contest. He welcomes the competition.

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