Cuestionario de la consulta

American football, perhaps more than any other sport, lends itself to spread betting perfectly. The game has a good turnover of points, there are breaks in play to allow trading and to digest what is happening on the field and despite being based in the United States, the statistics for the game are probably more easily attainable and user friendly than for any other sport.

The other significant feature for anyone betting on NFL American football is the remarkable way it is organised by the sports administrators. While nearly every other professional sport in recent years has seen the best and richest teams become more and more dominant, almost exactly the opposite has happened in the NFL. The era when ‘America’s team’, the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco Forty-Niners won championship after championship has disappeared. Now nearly every team believes it has a chance of making it their year.

There are several reasons. One is the method of recruiting new players via a draft of young talent coming from the college levels. It means that the previous season’s worst teams get first pick of the best young players. The stars-to- be may take time to become the real deal, but they can give a poor team the new blood to be a force in years to come.

Of more immediate impact is the relatively recent development of the salary cap, limiting the amount that teams can spend on their total salary bill. The effect has been to give the sport a remarkably level playing field. Teams

that dominate one year can find that they struggle to keep their star players in the following seasons as they begin to demand higher wages.

The proof can be seen in the teams that have come to the fore—and faded from the scene—in the last few years. The season before the St Louis Rams won Superbowl XXXIV, they had won only four games and finished last in their division. The Baltimore Ravens had gone 8-8 the season before they won Superbowl XXXV while in 2001–2002 the New England Patriots came off a 5-11 losing season before landing the championship title. In 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the franchise who lost their first 26 games, the only side ever to lose every game in a season and with the record for longest run of consecutive losing seasons, won SuperBowl XXXVII. In the NFL, every dog does have its day.

Just as teams can suddenly become winners, so they can just as easily become also-rans. Denver won the Superbowl in January 1999, but failed to make the play-offs the following season. Baltimore won in 2000–2001, but started the 2002– 2003 season as 66-1 outsiders after being decimated by the salary cap system. In 2002 the supposed champions-elect, the St Louis Rams, who were expected to blast their way into the play-offs with their high-powered offence, lost the first five games of the season and failed to make the post- season play-offs.

The 2002–2003 season also saw another major change to further cloud the picture. The introduction of a 32nd team, the Houston Texans, into the NFL gave its administrators the chance to reorganise the league from its existing six divisions into eight, each containing four teams. The effects are open to debate, but one clear consequence will be the increased chance of a team winning a weak division with a losing record while a team with a winning record in a stronger division fails to make the play-offs. The importance of

winning the maximum number of games and securing a bye week in the play-offs should also mean less meaningless end-of-season games where neither team has anything riding on the result.

Suffice to say, the full impact of the change, and the trends it leads to, may take several years to come to light. What is apparent is that the nature of the league means more teams are in contention to win the Superbowl in the last few weeks of the season now than ever before, as the table below illustrates.

Year Teams in contention Teams in contention Teams in contention

with 3 weeks to play with 2 weeks to play with 1 week to play

2001 23 16 13

2000 19 17 16

1999 23 20 16

1998 22 19 14

1997 22 18 14

Teams in Superbowl contention in the last three weeks of the regular season

Source: NFL Record and Fact Book

Of course, there is an argument to be made that if the NFL season has become so difficult to predict then what chance do punters have? I would suggest that on the contrary the unpredictability can work in our favour. Bookmakers who price up the league on reputation and last year’s standings alone are asking for trouble. There is true value to be had on American Football whether it is a long-term bet or individual matches.

As always, research is the key and in a truly American way life has been made easy for the punter. For anyone serious about spread betting on American football, the annual NFL Record and Fact Book is a must. The game is run on numbers like no other. The average yards rushing a particular player

makes per game, a team’s average number of first downs, how likely they are to have penalties—almost any detail of the game can be put into statistics and they are nearly all available in the yearbook. The individual teams’ websites and the league’s own (www.nfl.com) keep the figures updated throughout the season. The latter will even break down the trends for a team coming into a game depending on the circumstances. So, for instance, the figures are available on whether a team has a record of playing well or badly when it plays on grass in temperatures below freezing after winning the previous week. This is taken even further with individual player performances extrapolated from their previous five weeks’ form.

As with most sports, individual game betting revolves around total points and supremacy. One good indicator is to follow the ‘Vegas line’, a handicap mark for each game which usually comes out on the Tuesday before the weekend games. The Racing Post includes the figure in their preview of the games, but it is worth five minutes on the internet tracking down the handicaps when they are first published. What particularly is worth noting are any major changes in the Vegas handicap mark over the week. The argument is that for all the knowledge of the spread firms’ traders, the massive betting market of Las Vegas and its teams of analysts are likely to have the best contacts and knowledge in the business. If they are moving the handicap, there is a lot to be said for following it. Look out also for spread quotes that are notably different to the Vegas line. This is a rare occurrence, but if a British trader is going out on a limb against the American- based experts, it is always tempting to take him on.

For the spreads, expect to see the points total in the low 30s for games involving strong defensive teams and up into the 50s for higher scoring teams. Supremacy spreads, particularly during the early weeks of the season, rarely rise above 7–10 and even in apparent mis-match games it is

unusual to have to give away more than 14 points (the equivalent of a two touchdown start).

As we have discussed earlier, there is a trend towards bringing teams together in terms of ability in recent years and the result can be seen in individual games as well as over the season. In the 2001–2002 season nearly half (48.8 per cent) of all games were decided by less than seven points and a quarter of the games were decided by three or less. Clearly if you are considering backing a team to win by more than seven, it is worth bearing these figures in mind. And if you are backing one of the league’s glamour teams—such as the high-powered St Louis Rams—expect to have to pay extra to buy their supremacy.

Year Games decided Games decided by seven points by three points

or less or less

2001 121 of 248 (48.8 per cent) 62 of 248 (25 per cent) 2000 109 of 248 (44) 61 of 248 (24.6) 1999 115 of 248 (46.4) 64 of 248 (25.8) 1998 113 of 240 (47.1) 50 of 240 (20.8) 1997 111 of 240 (46.3) 67 of 240 (27.9) 1996 109 of 240 (45.4) 47 of 240 (19.6) 1995 115 of 240 (47.9) 61 of 240 (25.4) 1994 115 of 224 (51.3) 60 of 224 (26.8) 1993 105 of 224 (46.9) 53 of 224 (23.7) 1992 88 of 224 (39.3) 48 of 224 (21.4) 1991 112 of 224 (50) 57 of 224 (25.4)

How close regular season games are in the NFL. Ten-year record of games decided by seven points or less and three points or less

Source: NFL Record and Fact Book

high profile names are involved. The big-name quarterbacks and wide receivers will command inflated prices if you want to buy their performance.

Many other live match markets follow along similar lines to rugby league and union games. Shirt numbers markets are related to total points—although with players wearing shirts going up to 99 it can clearly be considerably more volatile than almost any other shirts market. Starting quotes for high scoring matches can be over 300—a lot to pay when it is remembered that running backs who score a significant percentage of points only wear shirts numbered up to 40. And just as in association football, games do end up with shirt make-ups of zero—the nuclear result for buyers.

Performance markets are usually made up of components including winning the match, scoring touchdowns and field goals and sacking the opposing quarterback. Losing points is usually restricted to missed kicks and turning over the ball through a fumble or interception.

The quote is calculated statistically in the same way as in other sports, as are hotshot quotes (named players to score a touchdown), touchdown yardage (cumulative yards of touchdown scoring plays), touchdown minutes (total cumulative minutes that touchdowns are scored in) and individual player touchdown minutes. The latter has a lot in common with the individual player goal-scoring minutes in soccer and similarly sees vastly more buyers than sellers.

During the regular season, American football really only remains a game for the aficionado, particularly after Sky’s perverse decision to keep live matches on its digital Sky Sports Extra channel. But once a year the game’s showpiece occasion comes round and the spread firms go to town.

The Superbowl ranks with the FA Cup for its range of special markets. From the time of the first penalty to the length of the longest pass, the number of times the chain gang officials

come on to the pitch to measure for a first down to a match bet on which kicker will have the most successful field goal- kicking yards. All are potential winners, but as always, check the statistics. There probably will be an error somewhere— but hard work is needed to find it.

Super Bowl XXXVII saw the Oakland Raiders made 3–6 point favourites over a dour Tampa Bay team. Before the game, all the hype surrounded Oakland’s high-scoring pass-orientated offence (in the second half of the game they did not attempt a single run). In reality, the Buccaneers dominated the game with an overwhelming defensive display including three interceptions returned for touchdowns. The result was an upset, but in hindsight, it probably should not have been. ‘Defence wins championships’ is an old NFL saying and it still holds true despite all the turmoil in the league. Of ten Superbowls where a top-three ranked offence has met a top-three ranked defence, the defence has won on nine occasions. For all the razzmatazz and excitement of powerful offences, teams that can defend and keep themselves in the game and frustrate their opponents are well worth siding with as a general rule. Not only that, but because many people are taken in by the offensive fireworks of high profile quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers, they often tend to be better value as well.

American football, with its statistics for everything, makes judging the best offence or defence easy. The league puts it into numbers for us. But the rule of backing good defences is not a bad rule of thumb for any possession sport where stopping your opponents when they have the ball is as important as scoring when you have it.

As we have discussed in earlier chapters, the punter or the bookmaker who can spot a base change in a sport and how it alters the make-up of a market gives himself a huge advantage. As a side note to this chapter, one of the most brilliant examples of spotting a change almost before it happened was

highlighted by Paul Austin of IG.

His firm had noticed that in the 2002–2003 season teams appeared to be using significantly more passing plays than rushing. The reason was unclear—perhaps because better passers than rushers had been drafted in the last couple of years, perhaps because the overall ability of rushers had slightly dipped. But the effect was significant for spread bettors. More passing plays meant the clock was stopped more often during the game which meant significantly more downs were being played. The result was more possible scoring plays and an increase in the total points scored. IG deliberately raised their total points quotes on the back of the evidence.

The statistics at the end of the season proved the theory spot on as a record number of touchdowns were scored during the regular season.

Research tips

NFL Annual Record and Fact Book: The NFL’s official record book, containing detailed information on teams and players. Good section on the all-time record of every team. Statistics include teams’ record in specific situations such as on a Monday night and in particular months.

www.nfl.com: The NFL’s official website and the key to keeping updated with injury news, interviews with players and analysis for upcoming games. Full updated statistics on player and team performances and rankings. Also features a very useful forecasting option based on performances in the last five games. Full updated statistics and scoring available play-by-play on every game—well worth hooking into for games not on television, but which will have updated supremacy and points quotes at half-time.

www.wunderground.com or www.cnn.com: Extensive weather forecasting for the United States, including temperatures and, importantly, wind strength. A quick search on the internet may provide more detailed forecasts for a particular area.

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