by Robert Ferringo - 1/18/2012

Apparently defense does still win championships.

San Francisco will host New York at 4:30 p.m. EST on Sunday for the NFC Championship Game. The winner advances to the Super Bowl (you may have heard of that) to face either Baltimore or New England.

The 49ers and Giants advanced to the NFC Title Game thanks to incredible defensive efforts last week, o ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 11/25/2011

Family and feelings are the enemy of good gambling and good writing about gambling. So I apologize for the soggy lead in this week, but I am trapped in Northern New York with my kin and only have a quick moment here in between dodging passive-aggressive barbs from my in-laws and skirting out to refill my cocktail from my depleting liquor supply to pass on this ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 11/10/2011

The weather is getting colder, the hits are getting harder, and the games are getting more critical as teams ride the elevator of expectations and expanded standings. In my opinion, November is the most crucial of months on the NFL schedule because it really sets the tone for the stretch run: some teams gain momentum and find the will for a strong finish, whil ...  read more

by Alan Matthews - 10/21/2011

In my Week 6 player props story, there weren’t too many immediate results for us to look back on – in other words I tackled a few season-ending totals for NFL players, such as 50-yard field goals for Oakland’s Sebastian Janikowski (he was two-yards shy of adding one in Week 6), sacks for Minnesota’s Jared Allen (he added No. 9.5 against the Bears on Sunday) or t ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 10/7/2011

We are a quarter of the way through the NFL schedule, and we have four teams — Indianapolis, Minnesota, Miami, and St. Louis — that haven’t won a game yet. It’s always interesting to watch which team stays winless the longest. Tracking futility is especially significant this year, though, since the worst team in the league will have a chance to draft Stanford’s An ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 10/3/2011

Blake Wheeler of the Winnipeg Jets

If you have ever met a Winnipeger — and they are everywhere because it seems like everyone leaves the city when they are old enough to do so — you have heard about the Jets. A Winnipeg native is incapable of speaking for more than two minutes without mentioning the Jets. It’s a law.

The town was obsessed with their te ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 9/22/2011

Who needs the preseason?

Scoring is through the roof in the National Football League and through two weeks of the year seasoned quarterback play and horrendous defense have been front-and-center. With the lack of a traditional offseason and with a truncated training camp the thought was that teams would be a little sluggish out of the gate and that we may ...  read more

by Darin Zank - 9/22/2011

This NFL season may be headed into Week 3, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to search out value in the NFL futures betting market. There have been a few early surprises this season, such as the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins, and some early disappointments, like the Kansas City Chiefs. The trick now is to figure out if there's any long-term value in an ...  read more

by Matt Severance - 9/6/2011

Hello again readers here at Doc’s, it’s that time of year that we all love the most: football season. And of course that means I’m back to deliver my weekly Survivor Pool picks advice column for Week 1 of the NFL 2011-12 NFL season.

For those of you who may not know what a Survivor Pool is, it’s pretty simple: You pick one team per week that you are most su ...  read more

by Alan Matthews - 8/8/2011

We continue our look at some NFL player props with the biggest regular-season award of them all: the league’s Most Valuable Player. We will offer some predictions for the NFL MVP along with futures odds for 2011.

And in essence, the MVP has become the NFL’s version of the Heisman Trophy. By that I mean the MVP is only going to go to a quarterback or running ...  read more

by Alan Matthews - 5/11/2011

Since we may not see any NFL transactions for months, depending on a June 3 court hearing on the lockout, and with the draft still fresh in everyone’s memory, let’s take a look at one of the few NFL player props out so far this year: the 2011 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year (check back at Doc’s for a story on the Offensive Rookie of the Year as well).

Wage ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 4/13/2011

The NFL is a copycat league. If a team has even a modicum of success, however fleeting or trivial, it seems like the rest of the league immediately enters an unsanctioned race to mimic Said Team’s path to success.

The Cover-2. The 3-4. The audible attack of Peyton Manning. The blitz-crazed schemes of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia or the New York Giants. Zone b ...  read more

by Richard Gardner | Bodog Sportsbook Manager - 4/7/2011

The Baltimore Orioles have been a bad team for a long time. The last time they won 70 games was 2006. The last time they had a winning season was all the way back in 1997. Trapped in the AL East with the free-spending Yankees and Red Sox, making the playoffs has been a challenge to say the least.

So when the Orioles won the first ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 3/10/2011

Every year there are teams that are surprisingly strong at the NCAA Tournament. They might not get a whole lot of attention coming in, but they are ready to play, they are talented, and they make some noise. Obviously it’s not always easy to see these Cinderella teams coming -- if it were then they wouldn’t be surprises. You can make a guess about who will come th ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 3/6/2011

If you weren’t sure, the Philadelphia Phillies are pretty good.

Philadelphia made the most daring and surprising move of the offseason when they usurped Cliff Lee from the Rangers and Yankees. Lee has become the final piece to what is potentially one of the best starting rotations in recent baseball history and has automatically made the Phillies one of th ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 2/17/2011

All I know is this: 68 is a whole lotta teams.

For those of you that have been kicking it with the Tea Party/mountain folk in the hills of Tennessee over the last few months, I am here to remind you that the NCAA Tournament has actually expanded this year. The Big Dance will now feature 68 teams, with four at-large squads taking on four automatic qualifie ...  read more

by Alan Matthews - 1/26/2011

Is betting on the Super Bowl coin toss one of the most inane bets out there? I certainly think so, but it’s also one of the most popular Super Bowl bets there are (hey, bettors want to start the game off right and reinvest their winnings), and that’s why Bodog has had odds up on the Super Bowl coin toss, for example, since well before the 2010 NFL season even beg ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 1/25/2011

After a very long, often brilliant season we finally have our Super Bowl matchup set. After everything that has happened, it’s interesting to note that this is one of the more predictable finals we have seen in a while. The last five years we have seen at least one Super Bowl team that could be called a surprise. This year, though, both teams came into the season ...  read more

The AFC Wild Card Round has two evenly matched games going over the first weekend. The New York Jets will travel to Indianapolis looking for revenge after the Colts eliminated them last season in the AFC Championship game. The experienced Ravens once again are back on the road and will travel to Kansas City to take on the young but extremely talented Kansas City Chiefs. Regardless of the Winners t ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 12/30/2010

After a two-year absence, the Michigan Wolverines (7-5) return to bowl action -- they face the Mississippi State Bulldogs (8-4) in the Gator Bowl. Game time is 1:30 p.m. EST on New Year’s Day in Gainesville, Florida. This is the first time the storied programs will meet.

The lead story here is the coaches. Michigan’s Rich Rodriguez is as unstable in his job ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 12/4/2010

I’m guessing not a lot of prognosticators had Dec. 5 circled as a critical juncture in the trajectory of the 2010 NFC South.

But when Atlanta hits Raymond James Stadium at 4 p.m. on Sunday to face Tampa Bay, the division is going to take a significant swing one way or another. This game is not only a crucial one for both of the teams involved, but also it ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 10/22/2010

It has been a very strong year for the Public Action Report, and this past week was no exception. Three of the six games that were identified wound up being winners, so there would have been a slight loss betting all games against the spread. It was straight up, though, that the report shone - the three underdogs that covered were all upset winners - Wisconsin, M ...  read more

By Nicholas Tolomeo of Doc’s Sports A – Al Michaels. In a previous life the NBC commentator must have been a degenerate gambler. Always mindful of the point spread and willing to discuss it on the air, Michaels apparently even follows preseason football point spreads. His reaction along with color commentator Chris Collinsworth was almost as stunning as the shocking ending in the San Francis ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham of Doc’s Sports

It’s amazing how much things can change in the NFL - even when games aren’t being played. Back in February I wrote an article looking at my Super Bowl picks for the upcoming season. Since then we’ve seen the NFL Draft, free agency, more trades than we are used to, some injuries, a couple of holdouts, a few suspensions, and all sorts of other changes. Looking b ...  read more

San Francisco 49ers vs. Indianapolis Colts (NFL) - Aug 15, 2010 1:00 PM EDT Play on : San Francisco 49ers

Very seldom do you see a road team favored by this many points during the preseason. The reason is the quarterback rotation and the 49ers have a major edge once the Colts replace Peyton Manning in the first quarter of this afternoon game. After Manning expect to see a combination ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 8/11/2010

Never have we seen a situation quite like this one. In January QB Jeremiah Masoli led the Oregon Ducks to the Rose Bowl. Neither he nor his team had a good day in Pasadena, but he showed enough last year that he was a logical, strong Heisman Trophy contender heading into his senior season. But then things really went to hell.

First he was suspended for the s ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 7/5/2010

Brett Favre just couldn’t handle being out of the news. Maybe it was all the attention everyone is paying to where LeBron James will play next year. Or maybe he was jealous because Phil Jackson, the second most diva-ish retirement fiend behind Favre, has been gaining headlines surrounding his indecision (although he re-signed with the Lakers yesterday). Or perhaps ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 7/7/2010

The Heisman Trophy futures have been posted, and they give us a lot to think about. Anyone who pays attention to the Heisman process knows that the winner very often isn’t being talked about at all right now. That makes it even more fun to speculate and look at the odds that are available. 5Dimes has odds listed for 26 different players. Here’s a look at 10 of the ...  read more

by Doc Sports

Our second team-by-team NFL schedule breakdown focuses on the second-place team from last season, the Indianapolis Colts. And other than death and taxes there seems to be one sure thing in life: Indianapolis winning at least 12 regular-season games, as it has done for a record seven seasons in a row.

In reality, the Colts haven’t lost a regular season game that they gave ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 4/27/2010

The NFL Draft is in the books and there were, as always, plenty of successes and failures. As always, we won’t be able to accurately assess how each organization managed until about three or four years from now, but based on value, addressing need, and overall talent hauled in I have put together my 2010 NFL Draft grades.

In the meantime they overlooked a ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 3/24/2010

Northern Iowa did more than just pull off a miracle on Saturday night - they also exploded a stunning number of March Madness brackets. The stats are beyond belief - 98 percent of the 4.8 million people who filled in a bracket on ESPN.com had Kansas in the Sweet 16, almost 60 percent had them in the Final Four, and more than 40 percent had them winning it all. The ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 2/18/2010

I've analyzed the last five years of the mid-February mid-major hoops orgy known as Bracket Buster Weekend to see if I could establish any useful betting angles or trends. Instead of working over every single "official" Bracket Buster game I squared my focus on the ones that featuring the mid-major conferences that were routinely wagered upon. That includes the ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 2/10/2010

It was another great NFL betting season at Doc’s Sports and I couldn’t leave it without a wrap-up of thoughts on another excellent Super Bowl. So here is a special edition of the Ferringo Report on Super Bowl 44:

- Whenever I talk to people before the Super Bowl they still all say the same thing, “I just hope it’s a good game.” It’s as if the blowouts of ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 2/4/2010

Drew Brees Saints quarterback

Apparently, defense isn’t allowed in the NFL anymore.

This January we have seen a dizzying display of offensive artistry as points have been a-plenty through the 10 games that we’ve witnessed. And the two teams that have survived the splurging are – not surprisingly – the two best offensive clubs in the NFL, Indianapolis ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 1/15/2010

I'm a fan of the NBA, but it's not a sport that I follow as closely as others, and I don't handicap it very often. When there are sports that I'm not avidly following I find that I like to have little rules in my mind that I can use to quickly get a sense of how a team is performing - a snapshot of where they are at.

In the NFL, for example, I can get a sens ...  read more

by T.O. Whenham - 1/8/2010

We are well into college basketball conference play now, so teams have played more than enough games for us to get a sense of what they really are and how we should be dealing with them. Here's a look at 10 teams that have proven themselves trustworthy on totals so far this year - the ones that most consistently stay ‘under’ or go ‘over’. (‘over/under’ record follo ...  read more

2009 Sun Bowl Odds and Predictions

Last year at this time Oklahoma was prepping for a National Championship Game and ready to go pimping in Miami. Now they are tuning up for the Sun Bowl in sweet El Paso. What a difference a year makes, eh?

Oklahoma will match up with No. 21 Stanford at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 31 in the Sun Bowl. The Sooners are presently 10-point favorite ...  read more