Here’s an NFL pick that really goes against the grain

By Jeff Haney

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 | 2 a.m.

One day Banzan was walking through a market. He overheard a customer say to the butcher, “Give me the best piece of meat you have.” “Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. “You cannot find any piece of meat that is not the best.” With these words, Banzan was enlightened.

— A Zen koan

Although I’m far from enlightened, I’m reminded of that paradox every football season in Las Vegas with the onset of those “handicapping contests” sponsored by one sports book or another.

You know the drill. A select group of supposedly high-level sports bettors compete for a cash prize by predicting the outcome of football games against the point spread. Positioned behind a microphone in a designated area inside a casino, they recite a litany of reasons and the rationale for each of their picks. The whole shebang airs on a local radio station.

(All too often, the “professional handicappers” in the contest have way too much trouble beating a hypothetical coin-flipper, but that’s another story for another day.)

Anyway, there are several phrases you can bank on hearing during these competitions. They’re sure things. You could devise a drinking game based on them — although that’s probably not a very Zen thing to do.

My favorite is the “Contrarian Declaration.” A contestant takes the mic and intones, “Well, you know, I’m a big contrarian bettor and I’m not afraid to make predictions that everyone else hates, so I’m picking ...” It sounds good, until the next guy also claims to embrace the contrarian style, and the guy after him calls himself Mr. Contrarian.

You have to figure Banzan would have appreciated it. After all, by definition, not everyone can be a contrarian, just as every piece of meat can’t be the best.

By the way, here are the other two most reliable handicapping-contest standbys:

• Just before taking one of the heaviest favorites on the board: “I’m usually an underdog bettor and I hate laying so many points, but ...”

• Before taking a 6-point underdog that had been getting 7 points all week: “I normally won’t make a play after the line has moved against me like this, but ...”

I thought of the Contrarian Declaration, though, after a July 9 column predicting three NFL season-win over/under plays. I suspected two of them (the Ravens “over” 8 1/2 and the Patriots “under” 11 1/2) would meet with approval from avid bettors and the third (the Buccaneers “over” 6 1/2) would be an unpopular pick.

In other words, I considered the Buccaneers a contrarian play.

Those suspicions were well-founded. The most vocal criticism of the pick came from Fezzik, the one-name Las Vegas professional gambler. Fezzik expressed concerns about new Tampa Bay head coach Raheem Morris, who took over for Jon Gruden in January, and about the Bucs’ tough schedule, which includes a “home” game against the Patriots on Oct. 25 — in London.

“Here’s why I hate the play,” Fezzik said. “There are so many easier bets to make out there right now. It flies in the face of basic strategy to find a team with a hard schedule with a 32-year-old, unproven, brand-new coach. They have a game in London that should be a home game.

“With all the problems the Bucs have, everyone’s going to pick up on it and bet it under.”

The betting marketplace does like the Bucs under 6 1/2. In fact, Fezzik used a mild profanity to describe what the market is doing to my pick of the Bucs over. Although the line on Tampa opened at a solid 6 1/2, bettors now must lay upward of minus 140 on the under.

Call this one my first official contrarian play of the 2009-10 NFL season.