Another way to bet your team

By Jeff Haney

Monday, April 6, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The broad story line of today’s NCAA Tournament championship game has North Carolina — the juggernaut, the powerhouse, the team that was “supposed” to make the title game — facing upstart Michigan State, the underdog trying to pull off a nearly impossible mission.

The betting odds do back up that assertion in the most general sense. But to what degree?

To paraphrase that one bracketologist at the end of “The Great Escape”: “That depends on your point of view, Hendley.”

When this year’s tournament began, North Carolina was listed as the favorite to win it all at odds of 4-1. Michigan State commanded somewhat longer odds, going off at 15-1.

Gamblers in Las Vegas could not have done much better than those prices at the start of the tournament. Unfortunately, they could have done much worse, as some sports books had North Carolina at less than 2-1.

In events such as playoffs and postseason tournaments, another way to make the same bet is to play your selected team on the money line in each of its games, rolling over the profits into the next bet every time. (Money line wagers are based on the outright winner of the game regardless of the point spread.) You’re risking the same amount of money on the same outcome, but with a potentially different payoff.

Let’s examine the remaining two NCAA title contenders.

North Carolina opened the tournament as a 27-point favorite against Radford. If you could find a money line on the game, it would have likely been in the range of minus 12000 (risk $120 to net $1).

Next, the Tar Heels were about minus 900 on the money line against LSU. In its subsequent four games including today’s, North Carolina was favored by 7 or 7 1/2 in the point spread and minus 350 to minus 370 on the money line. (Money lines fluctuate like all sports odds, but these are prices a typical bettor could have found fairly easily.)

Crunch those numbers and you’ll find the money-line approach would have yielded a payoff of about 2-1 if North Carolina wins today’s championship game. So if you were playing the favorite in this tournament, you would have been better off taking the 4-1 offered in a future book at the beginning of the tournament.

That conclusion stands in stark contrast to Michigan State’s situation.

The Spartans advanced to the title game by winning as a favorite against Robert Morris (minus 1500), USC (minus 195) and Kansas (minus 115). They were underdogs against Louisville (plus 280) and Connecticut (plus 170). They’re a plus 280 ’dog today against North Carolina.

A victory in the title game would equate to a payoff of about 116-1 for a Michigan State bettor taking the money-line parlay approach — exponentially more profitable than the 15-1 on the board at the beginning of the tournament.

Of course, you cannot always be certain about a team’s forthcoming opponents when analyzing a potential money-line parlay. But you can usually take a pretty good guess and come up with a reasonable range of likely results.

The point is not necessarily that odds on long shots in Las Vegas sports future books are a ripoff — though some certainly are — but that there are often alternate ways of considering a wager before risking money at the window.

With a No. 1 seed and a No. 2 seed meeting for the championship, perhaps it’s not surprising that No. 1 seeds and No. 2 seeds on the whole have overachieved vis-a-vis the over/under set on their number of outright victories in the tournament.

Even before today’s game, both No. 1 seeds and No. 2 seeds collectively have already gone “over” their posted totals.

No. 1 seeds — UConn (4 victories), Louisville (3), North Carolina (5) and Pittsburgh (3) — have won 15 games combined, surpassing the over/under of 13 1/2 available in Las Vegas before the start of the tournament.

No. 2 seeds — Duke (2), Memphis (2), Michigan State (5) and Oklahoma (3) — have won 12 games, surpassing the over/under of 9 1/2 victories.