Paterno Adds Brown With School

NCAA Football Betting Lines

State College, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Joe Paterno, the legendary coach of Penn State who was ousted from his job in November, has succumbed to lung cancer. He was 85. The family announced his death Sunday morning.

 

McGregor led three scoring drive in the first quarter, finished 11 of 12 for 123 yards and rushed for a touchdown while leading the North team to a 51-3 romp over the South. He was named his team's most valuable player.

 

"It's weird," said McGregor, who also caught a 7-yard pass in his one quarter of work. "I was MVP from a small school (Belle Glades Day) in my high school all-star game and now in college."

 

McGregor, from Royal Palm Beach, Fla., ended his career 23rd on the all-time FCS list with 11,230 passing yards and was sixth in touchdown passes with 111.

 

Providence, RI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Among the many people in college football mourning the death of legendary coach Joe Paterno are those at Brown University, his alma mater. Paterno, who died from lung cancer at age 85 Sunday morning in State College, Pa., is a 1950 graduate of Brown and a member of the Ivy League university's athletic Hall of Fame.

 

"This a sad day for the Brown University community and the Brown football program," Brown head football coach Phil Estes said. "My heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to the Paterno family.

 

As a defensive back, Paterno still holds Brown's all-time career interceptions record (14). He was named to the Bears' 125th anniversary all-time team at defensive back.

 

After his senior season, Paterno took an offer from Engle to work on a part- time basis with the team's quarterbacks while awaiting graduation. Shortly after, Engle was named the head coach at Penn State and Paterno joined him as an assistant coach.

 

Paterno was named Penn State's head coach in 1966 and went on to become the winningest coach in major college football history with 409 career wins. He was fired by trustees in November in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case.

 

Paterno was no spring chicken at that moment and he was certainly a selling point to be a part of that Penn State tradition. I graduated in the fall of 2000, granting my father's wishes that my stay in Happy Valley coincided with Paterno's tenure as head coach. I was fortunate enough to work with great minds such as former PSU publicist Bud Thalman and SID Jeff Nelson, talented players and an intelligent coaching staff during my time in State College. However, I only had once chance to meet Paterno face-to-face and it was during a media event outside the practice facility of Holuba Hall.

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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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