Introduction

The 2020 NFL season is finally here! In a year that has lasted way too long, it’s nice to have a little reprieve and a return to *some* normalcy for us sports fans. 

For the last several years, I (Sam) have dabbled in the sports betting arena. I never really saw myself as a gambler, but after listening to so many podcasts (namely the Bill Simmons’ Podcast) and mulling it over, I thought what the hell, I basically live and breathe sports news and information. Like many of you, I spout my (un)informed (half-baked) opinions on which teams are good and which are trash like they are the truth. Gambling was pretty straightforward and I soon realized that the experience only enhanced the peaks and valleys that every sports fan is far too familiar with. Last year I moved to New York City and had a little more time on my hands, so I started to formalize some opinions and strategies and share my weekly NFL bets with some buddies. I can talk and talk and talk about sports, so this year I wanted to take the next step and publicly share some of my thoughts, opinions, and most importantly my weekly bets for the season.

One of the buddies I referred to earlier, Yank, and I have gone back and forth on bets for basically as long as I have been gambling and so it was only natural that we work together on this project. Yank lives and works in Indiana, the second state where sports betting was legalized which was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Much like me, he likes to put a couple Greg’s on a game to reinforce his loud opinions now and again. He’s resigned to Giants, Mets and Notre Dame football fandom so don’t expect him to start winning now. You’ll like him. 

Instead of keeping our picks and conversation to the iMessage thread, we are going to produce this blog post weekly for the duration of the season. Now with some of the background out of the way, we wanted to lay out the groundwork for this schtick.

The Rules

We are both relatively wimpy gamblers, but we both love winning and it doesn’t matter if it’s $5 or $100. We throw a little cash here and there on some bets but don’t ever really bet big. So, the schtick is, we are each going to start with $100 at the beginning of the season and see where we end up. The idea is that if we somehow get to $0 before the end of the season, we’re out, so you won’t see us tossing around big chunks of change early. Additionally, we’ve built in a little competition too, because someone always has to win. Every week we will each pick three bets as follows:

1. The Collaboration – This is a consensus pick between the two of us. Throughout the season, we usually identify some guiding principles and strategies with varying degrees of success (Yank: can’t stress varying enough). You will see a lot of those come up in the discussion of this pick.
2. The Confrontation – This pick will always be a bet on the spread and we have to disagree about which side we are on. Historically we bet together on principles, so this pick will have the most intriguing impact on our totals this season.
3. The Isolation – The third pick will actually be separate bets for the two of us. We will both pick individual games to focus on and go back and forth about the risks and pros for each bet. These bets can be on the spread, ML, points totals, etc. 

We are hoping to have this blog come out Sunday morning, just in time to gear up for a Sunday afternoon full of football. Feel free to play along with us, but keep in mind that may be bad for your wallet. As the season progresses, we will layout various Principles. Many will start as nominated principles and will either get pulled down or solidified throughout the season. Additionally, we will provide an update on our totals at the beginning of each new week.