So I’m at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas this Saturday helping out in the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) high end drafts.
In between events, I race to the Bellagio sports book to check on the day games. One of the games I have involvement with is the over in the UMass-Colorado matchup. Not surprisingly, the game isn’t on any of the many TV screens.
No worries, though. Colorado is leading, 48-14, at the end of the third quarter. My play is on the Over and it’s already gone over 61, which was the closing number. I have scaled Mount Everest.
When I finish up my last draft, I return to the sports book to check final scores of the day games. Could the huge state-of-the-art lit up Bellagio scoreboard have malfunctioned? It’s still showing Colorado 48, UMass 14. The game ended hours ago.
It did. Turned out there was no scoring in the final quarter. My over ticket on the game was 62 1/2. I had bet it early in the week before the total came down. I had reached the tip of Mount Everest and now can’t climb down.
Talk about feeling like dog excrement. It was the same feeling I experienced last Thursday when I had Patriots minus 7 with the cover safely tucked away until Ben Roethlisberger completed a textbook back-door cover throwing a touchdown pass to Antonio Brown on the final play of the game, That touchdown meant absolutely nothing for real football purposes but caused the Patriots to win by only seven points.
I understand the need to provide psychological help for those with gambling problems. I don’t have a gambling problem. I do have a problem handling games where I believe I had the right handicap yet didn’t get paid for it.
There should be a new form of medical practice called psychotherapy for sports bettors where trained psychologists listen to venting and bad beats story and then advise you how to move on with your life. This could become quite a lucrative field for medical professionals given how many of these football games play out.
