I am thinking of making some easy money. Right now it feels like more of a necessity than a luxury. Easy money = NFL Betting, right? What could go wrong? A quick view of some of the odds on that site has me thinking...but first, let me explain how I got here. There is one specific activity I would like to avoid ever performing myself again.
Moving is moving is moving is a pain in the ass. This is probably something that most of you already know. Hell, I thought I knew it, but I talked myself out of it. "This time it'll be different," I was telling myself. "It's only a block away. No problem. I don't need to rent a moving truck or enlist the help of friends, I'll just take things over at a nice relaxed pace. I can just take things in my car or walk things over. No problem."
In retrospect, I am a dumb-ass. This was the move that never ended. Trip after trip, I turned what should have been the move with the least amount of travel time into the move with the most amount of travel time. It is a special talent to turn something easy into something complicated.
In my overconfidence, I didn't plan or prepare and I found myself living in the dark ages. No cable or Internet for a week. It was a hard and depressing time. I began to get a little "funny" in the head as desperation set in. I tried in vain to get my wife and infant son to reenact my made up highlights as I described them Sportscenter style. "That's not how Pujols swings! You're doing it all wrong!" I tried to help them through it, but my constructive criticism was met with excuses.
"I've never swung a bat before," and "do your own highlights, you crazy asshole," and "goo-goo-gaga."
I saw through their excuses, but knew I would not be able to change the results. So, I began reenacting world events with shadow puppets. Sometimes schizophrenia is welcomed calamity.
Don't tell them about us!
What? I wasn't....
The world can't know about us!
No, I didn't tell anyone. No one else will see this. Our secret is safe with me. Would I lie to us?
Sorry about that. As I was saying, things got a little Lord of the Fliesish here. Lucky for me this horrendous time of forced personal introspection and detachment from the world came during one of the quietest points in the NFL off-season. Oh, and I went to a Tool concert, which was great, but didn't really help the whole readjust to reality thing.
I am now re-acclimated and back to thinking Raiders and just in time. One week until camp starts. This is fantastic! Like Saint mentioned in his post below, I find myself more reasonably opptimistic about the season than I have in a while. Looking at the comments in that post, it seems everyone is expecting improvement.
The same cannot be said for those outside the Nation. I am not going to sit around and bemoan the lack of recognition the Raiders improvements are receiving. That would be letting them off too easily. I am going to exploit them!
In the above linked site, one play really caught my eye and had me reaching for my wallet. The over under on the Raiders wins for the season is at 6 wins. That is some tasty looking candy baby. I think I'll take it.
This team, as it is now, feels like a .500 team to me. I think 2 wins or 2 losses is a reasonable variance for any NFL team, to account for lucky breaks, injuries etc. Of course, there is always the possibility that things will go unreasonably right or unreasonably wrong, but to be unreasonable it has to be rare. That's reasonable, right?
Given this logic, my bottom end of the Raiders win spectrum is 6, which would make this bet a push. In the betting world, this is a smart play. Personally, I try to stay away from betting on the Raiders as it is too easy to look at them through my-team-doesn't-suck-purple-drank-like-water-and-they-are-about-to-kick-ass colored glasses, but right now it feels like this team is our little secret.
We know that this team would've cleared 6 wins had they actually played with a real QB all season. We also know that the offense is young and making strides and suffered some key injuries last year. We also have seen the personnel improvements this team made on the defensive side of the ball.
What a better signal than the first pick in the draft that this record low tide is rolling. This is the moment that the waves begin their ascent back up the beach. This is not a time to harp on the doubters, but a time to start walking back up to drier land so that we can laugh at those with wet feet, shocked faces and empty wallets.