In the FCS Huddle: Patriot scholarship decision will affect Ivy

NCAA Football Betting Lines

02/14/2012 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Some Ivy League football programs can look down the road and know their schedules already are completed for quite a while.

Princeton, for example, is booked through 2017, with some of the following seasons not far behind in the planning stage.

But some teams in the Ancient Eight might be double-checking to see if their schedules are marked in pencil and not ink. Monday's announcement by the Patriot League that it will start to offer football scholarships with the 2013 season will have some affect on scheduling with its sister league, the Ivy League, over the long term.

It's not that the non-scholarship Ivy schools are going to cut the cord on the Patriot League competition - far from it. But Ivy programs no doubt will look elsewhere for opponents a little more, especially when the maximum of 15 scholarships per recruiting class start to add up at Patriot schools and they get markedly better.

Princeton often plays all three of its non-league games against Patriot opponents, and it's the case on four of its next six schedules.

In future years, perhaps Princeton will schedule two Patriot opponents and look toward the Pioneer Football League, the only other non-scholarship FCS league beginning in 2013, or perhaps a scholarship school from a league lower in stature than the Patriot League, like the Northeast Conference or the Mid- Eastern Athletic Conference.

San Diego, from the PFL, already has built a relationship with Ivy competition, while Marist and Columbia are a strong geographical fit and have built a relationship.

PFL members like Butler (it has a home-and-home with Dartmouth over the next two seasons), Jacksonville, Dayton, Drake, Davidson, Campbell, even Mercer or Stetson when they begin play in 2013, could become more attractive to the Ivies. Such games would satisfy wide-spread alumni and develop more recruiting bases.

Ivy teams held their own this past season while going 3-3 against scholarship programs, but they were a combined 6-21 in the five prior seasons (2006-10), and that is not a welcomed trend to them.

Just looking to the past, Brown got out of its series with Holy Cross when the Crusaders had scholarships in the late 1980s and early 1990s and only renewed the relationship once the Patriot program dropped the scholarships.

Penn has played a lot of close games with Villanova in recent years, but the CAA Football program keeps winning them. The Quakers (Villanova and William & Mary) and Cornell (Fordham and Monmouth) are the only Ivy teams playing more than one scholarship program this season.

Harvard, like Penn a perennial Ivy power, has avoided playing scholarship opponents under veteran head coach Tim Murphy, enjoying rivalries with schools like Holy Cross and Lafayette. Of course, those Patriot League teams have scholarships on the way.

Georgetown will be in demand with more Ivy programs if, unlike the rest of the Patriot League, the Hoyas decide to keep offering only need-based financial aid and not the merit-based financial aid that is football scholarships.

Changes in scheduling between the Ivy and Patriot leagues might be subtle in upcoming years, but greater change is out there when future schedules start to have openings again and the Patriot scholarships keep adding up.

The two academically elite leagues have been great playing partners. Keeping the same relationship just may not be smart for the Ivy League.

Horseracong NCAA Football Betting News

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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