Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894.
The first Monday of every September is reserved to celebrate the accomplishments of American workers.
At first blush, sports betting doesn't appear to be a labor-intense activity.
FanDuel recently produced a television commercial mocking a sports bettor who cashed a first-inning wager on a baseball game from his mobile app.
In a virtual-reality press conference, FanDuel spokesperson Lisa Kerney posed a question to a bearded sports bettor sitting on a couch in his living room.
Kerney asked the age-old sports question, "How do you feel?"
"All those nights of studying film really paid off," said the sports bettor.
Kerney responded incredulously, "You mean, watching baseball?"
"That's correct," said the sports bettor.
Portraying sports betting as a simple, mindless task is a slap in the face to FanDuel's customer base.
Parody, after all, is a form of ridicule.
Winning sports bettors invest at least 40 hours a week researching relevant data to handicap games.
They then work overtime to secure the best possible prices from trusted outlets at their disposal.
Show me a part-time sports bettor and I'll show you a full-time loser.
Off days?
No such thing.
Vacation time, while optional, is viewed as a missed opportunity.
There are no paychecks, bonuses, insurance plans or retirement benefits.
And then there's the negative societal view of gamblers aside from the misconceptions of the skills necessary to gamble and win.
Contrary to popular belief, sports betting does not offer a binary choice between Team A or Team B.
There are, in fact, three choices: Team A, Team B or most importantly, PASS.
Experienced sports bettors know their biggest advantage in the face of 11/10 odds is selectivity.
We can pick and choose where we see fit.
Many games or outcomes are properly priced to make the house edge of 4.54% stand up.
The aggressive sports bettor must attack only when the perceived odds are on his side.
The house posts odds on every game in every sport along with a slew of proposition wagers, not to mention all the algorithm-generated in-game wagering available these days.
This is not your father's side-and-total betting menu.
Many of the best wagering opportunities are now presented after kickoff.
Here's one dedicated gambler's Top Five notes from a busy Labor Day weekend of college football action:
1) Free agency has come to college football.
More than 3,000 scholarship players and 2,200 FCS players entered the transfer portal over the past 12 months.
Amazingly, nearly half of all starting quarterbacks at the FBS level are transfers.
Massive roster overhauls are the order of the day, especially for first-year head coaches taking over moribund programs or underperforming veteran coaches on the hotseat.
If you're not following the mass influx of athletes into the college football transfer portal, then you should not be wagering on college football in early September.
And I thought the coaching carousel was difficult to follow!
2) College coaching really matters.
It's so much easier to coach or manage a pro team than a college team.
Professional athletes are playing for keeps and their performance is tied directly to their livelihood.
College kids -- name, image and likeness deals notwithstanding -- must be motivated to play for the coach, university and fellow teammates.
Loyalty to one school is a thing of the past.
The college kids are more immature and unpredictable than their professional counterparts.
Plus, there are many more Division I college players (11,000+) than the select NFL fraternity (1,700 players).
Fifty-three players comprise an NFL roster while there are 85 scholarship players -- and sometimes as many as 105 players overall -- on a big-time college squad.
Additionally, NFL teams are allowed at least three preseason games before the games count.
College teams are expected to be ready after only 25 fall practices over 29 days with no real dress rehearsal.
Only eight of the 25 practices are fully-padded, making a total of 17 practices free of any tackling to the ground.
Two years ago, BYU destroyed Navy in an early-season game, 55-3, prompting Navy head coach Ken Niamutalolo to remark, "It was the softest our team has ever been."
Niamutalolo added, "It's like sending someone into an MMA fight without the proper training."
3) The ability to tackle in space is critical.
Search for underdogs that strike hard defensively and rarely give up that extra yard or two after first contact.
Pursuit to the football is also a critical quality for solid defensive squads.
Elite defensive teams in the SEC and Big Ten, like Georgia's defense last season or the 2019 Ohio State defense, are among the best tackling teams in the country.
One hit and that's it.
On last year's NFL rosters, the SEC was the best-represented conference with 335 players, followed by the Big Ten with 266 and the ACC with 208.
4) College teams have a difficult time playing behind the chains.
We see a lot more panic than poise with Saturday's amateur athletes.
When faced with a dire down-and-distance situation, NFL teams wisely cut their losses and play to live another day or down, as it were.
In the NFL, third-and-long from a team's own end usually produces a safe play call like a draw or screen.
Not the case in college football where overmatched underdogs find trouble when trying to make something out of nothing.
Check out the Rice-USC game from last Saturday at the Coliseum in downtown Los Angeles.
If you took 35 points with the underdog Owls, you were sabotaged by not one, not two, but three interception returns for touchdowns, one shy of the NCAA record for Pick 6's.
Shrewd handicappers look for underdogs that chew clock and play conservatively, not ones who throw caution to the wind.
5) Look for college teams that adopt a professional approach.
Forget emotion, you want to support college football teams that are steady, businesslike, penalty-free, turnover-free and most importantly, efficient in all they do.
As a corollary to the above angle, I sometimes look to back professional teams in the NFL or NBA that play with the joy and emotion of an energized college team.
Superstar quarterback Tom Brady once said, "Ninety percent of all NFL games are lost, not won."
Brady's theory applies to the college game as well.
This past weekend, LSU, Utah and West Virginia made silly mistakes or foolish decisions late in the fourth quarter that gifted wins to Florida State, Florida and Pittsburgh, respectively.
The first Monday of every September is reserved to celebrate the accomplishments of American workers.
At first blush, sports betting doesn't appear to be a labor-intense activity.
FanDuel recently produced a television commercial mocking a sports bettor who cashed a first-inning wager on a baseball game from his mobile app.
In a virtual-reality press conference, FanDuel spokesperson Lisa Kerney posed a question to a bearded sports bettor sitting on a couch in his living room.
Kerney asked the age-old sports question, "How do you feel?"
"All those nights of studying film really paid off," said the sports bettor.
Kerney responded incredulously, "You mean, watching baseball?"
"That's correct," said the sports bettor.
Portraying sports betting as a simple, mindless task is a slap in the face to FanDuel's customer base.
Parody, after all, is a form of ridicule.
Winning sports bettors invest at least 40 hours a week researching relevant data to handicap games.
They then work overtime to secure the best possible prices from trusted outlets at their disposal.
Show me a part-time sports bettor and I'll show you a full-time loser.
Off days?
No such thing.
Vacation time, while optional, is viewed as a missed opportunity.
There are no paychecks, bonuses, insurance plans or retirement benefits.
And then there's the negative societal view of gamblers aside from the misconceptions of the skills necessary to gamble and win.
Contrary to popular belief, sports betting does not offer a binary choice between Team A or Team B.
There are, in fact, three choices: Team A, Team B or most importantly, PASS.
Experienced sports bettors know their biggest advantage in the face of 11/10 odds is selectivity.
We can pick and choose where we see fit.
Many games or outcomes are properly priced to make the house edge of 4.54% stand up.
The aggressive sports bettor must attack only when the perceived odds are on his side.
The house posts odds on every game in every sport along with a slew of proposition wagers, not to mention all the algorithm-generated in-game wagering available these days.
This is not your father's side-and-total betting menu.
Many of the best wagering opportunities are now presented after kickoff.
Here's one dedicated gambler's Top Five notes from a busy Labor Day weekend of college football action:
1) Free agency has come to college football.
More than 3,000 scholarship players and 2,200 FCS players entered the transfer portal over the past 12 months.
Amazingly, nearly half of all starting quarterbacks at the FBS level are transfers.
Massive roster overhauls are the order of the day, especially for first-year head coaches taking over moribund programs or underperforming veteran coaches on the hotseat.
If you're not following the mass influx of athletes into the college football transfer portal, then you should not be wagering on college football in early September.
And I thought the coaching carousel was difficult to follow!
2) College coaching really matters.
It's so much easier to coach or manage a pro team than a college team.
Professional athletes are playing for keeps and their performance is tied directly to their livelihood.
College kids -- name, image and likeness deals notwithstanding -- must be motivated to play for the coach, university and fellow teammates.
Loyalty to one school is a thing of the past.
The college kids are more immature and unpredictable than their professional counterparts.
Plus, there are many more Division I college players (11,000+) than the select NFL fraternity (1,700 players).
Fifty-three players comprise an NFL roster while there are 85 scholarship players -- and sometimes as many as 105 players overall -- on a big-time college squad.
Additionally, NFL teams are allowed at least three preseason games before the games count.
College teams are expected to be ready after only 25 fall practices over 29 days with no real dress rehearsal.
Only eight of the 25 practices are fully-padded, making a total of 17 practices free of any tackling to the ground.
Two years ago, BYU destroyed Navy in an early-season game, 55-3, prompting Navy head coach Ken Niamutalolo to remark, "It was the softest our team has ever been."
Niamutalolo added, "It's like sending someone into an MMA fight without the proper training."
3) The ability to tackle in space is critical.
Search for underdogs that strike hard defensively and rarely give up that extra yard or two after first contact.
Pursuit to the football is also a critical quality for solid defensive squads.
Elite defensive teams in the SEC and Big Ten, like Georgia's defense last season or the 2019 Ohio State defense, are among the best tackling teams in the country.
One hit and that's it.
On last year's NFL rosters, the SEC was the best-represented conference with 335 players, followed by the Big Ten with 266 and the ACC with 208.
4) College teams have a difficult time playing behind the chains.
We see a lot more panic than poise with Saturday's amateur athletes.
When faced with a dire down-and-distance situation, NFL teams wisely cut their losses and play to live another day or down, as it were.
In the NFL, third-and-long from a team's own end usually produces a safe play call like a draw or screen.
Not the case in college football where overmatched underdogs find trouble when trying to make something out of nothing.
Check out the Rice-USC game from last Saturday at the Coliseum in downtown Los Angeles.
If you took 35 points with the underdog Owls, you were sabotaged by not one, not two, but three interception returns for touchdowns, one shy of the NCAA record for Pick 6's.
Shrewd handicappers look for underdogs that chew clock and play conservatively, not ones who throw caution to the wind.
5) Look for college teams that adopt a professional approach.
Forget emotion, you want to support college football teams that are steady, businesslike, penalty-free, turnover-free and most importantly, efficient in all they do.
As a corollary to the above angle, I sometimes look to back professional teams in the NFL or NBA that play with the joy and emotion of an energized college team.
Superstar quarterback Tom Brady once said, "Ninety percent of all NFL games are lost, not won."
Brady's theory applies to the college game as well.
This past weekend, LSU, Utah and West Virginia made silly mistakes or foolish decisions late in the fourth quarter that gifted wins to Florida State, Florida and Pittsburgh, respectively.
Last edited:
