[The Seer]

This number was dropped right after the SEC Ch Game


BCS National Championship Game Odds: Oregon Early Favorite Over Auburn

2011 BCS National Championship Game odds are only starting to trickle in, but it looks like the Oregon Ducks will start out as a very slight favorite over the Auburn Tigers. ESPN's gambling guy, Chad Millman, says the Hilton's line opened at Oregon -3 but has already slipped to Oregon -1.
Vegas probably started out with the line in the Ducks' favor because their offense has been even more explosive than Auburn's and they've only had one close call all year. Auburn has won six games by a single score, including a 24-point comeback, four by three or less, and an overtime win. Oregon's only single-score win came by two points over the California Golden Bears.
Early bettors moved the line down, likely because of (1) Cam Newton and (2) the SEC. Oregon's offense is one of the best ever, and its defense is very good too, but Newton might be the best college football player in decades. And the SEC has won four straight BCS title games -- that alone could swing them into being favorites within the first week of betting.

[wrongturn]

Did he get them reversed?

[The Seer]

Did he get them reversed?

I don't think so. This article is from Dec 5th. The line was put out there by the Hilton first but offshore opened with Aub as a fav later, most likely after seeing what happened with that.
http://atlanta.sbnation.com/2010/12/...-oregon-auburn
it's at the bottom of the page plus I heard it elsewhere

[TR88]

so whats the play ? oregon ?

[The Seer]

so whats the play ? oregon ?

that's up to you. I just saw alot of people posting that Oreg was never a favorite. I wouldn't put much on this game but I'm going with Aub. The better competition and the edge in the offensive and defensive lines should be the difference, not to mention the Cam Newton factor.

[TR88]

that's up to you. I just saw alot of people posting that Oreg was never a favorite. I wouldn't put much on this game but I'm going with Aub. The better competition and the edge in the offensive and defensive lines should be the difference, not to mention the Cam Newton factor.

thanks for that answer, odds for auburn going up, should I wait and bet them for better price?

[tony_come]

Auburn will slow down the game

[jjgold]

Every wise guy in world on Oregon

This is an easy one

[Fishhead]

Every wise guy in world on Oregon

This is an easy one

[Fishhead]

Game is a PK at the GOLDEN NUGGETT and the great M RESORT in Vegas.............

[The Seer]

thanks for that answer, odds for auburn going up, should I wait and bet them for better price?

It's hard to say. With such a heavily bet game, the line can be moved either way at any time.

[The Seer]

Every wise guy in world on Oregon This is an easy one

they were on VTech too and we saw how that turned. There was so much reverse line movement in that game it was ridiculous.

[yisman]

I read Chad Millman and I saw that.

Oregon was favored at the Hilton, not at offshore books.

The Hilton made a mistake with that line.

Millman wrote about it on his blog on December 6.

This is something I had been looking forward to all season, mainly because there has been a disparity between the teams human beings feel are the best team in college football and who computers say is the best team in college football. That's one of the reasons I started doing the The Early Line columns on Wednesdays. Every week since the BCS rankings were first introduced, the teams that would be favored were not the teams in the top spot. Early on, Oregon and Boise State were both favored over Oklahoma. Then the Auburn Tigers took over the top spot and Bob Scucci, the bookmaker at The Orleans, had Oregon favored by 7.5 over them. "I think Auburn is overrated," he said back then. "It is not even the best team in the SEC. Alabama is. Auburn is on par with Georgia and Florida . Meanwhile, Oregon is playing better than any team in the country. Auburn could not keep up with Oregon."
(It's worth noting that, in the same column, Sal Selvaggio of madduxsports.com posted Auburn as minus-1 over Oregon, saying, "The one glaring weakness Oregon has is stopping the run. Not that it has some leaky run defense, but when we are comparing the elite teams even a small advantage can be the difference in winning the game. If we take a look at the four best teams Oregon has played, it has allowed 5.7 ypr [yards per rush] to Tennessee, 5.7 to Arizona State, 6.1 to Stanford and 3.4 to UCLA. That average of 5.2 ypr would not bode well against a team like Auburn, one of the best rushing teams in the nation.")
Sal was in the minority at the time. Oregon, clearly, had such an explosive offense and was garnering such praise from the media, that sports books were finding that games involving the Ducks produced some of their biggest handles of the season. The wiseguys liked them. Squares liked them. Their lines consistently closed much higher than where they were posted. And they still seemed to cover, going 7-4-1 against the spread this year.
Auburn, meanwhile, was no doubt awesome. But both the public and the handicapping community were decidedly less enthusiastic about the Cam Newtons. Part of it was the constant cloud of allegations the team played under. Week-to-week, no one knew if Newton would be ruled ineligible because of the shadiness surrounding his recruiting. And part of it was the perception of Auburn. When the season began, this was not the SEC team that was supposed to be in contention. It didn't have the profile of LSU or the NFL-caliber talent of Alabama. In very subtle ways, Auburn was getting the same treatment from bettors that Boise was getting from the computers: Everything we are seeing is a mirage, it can't be true.
It culminated in the Tigers' going to Alabama as underdogs, despite being undefeated and having the likely Heisman winner at quarterback and a top-10 draft prospect in Nick Fairley at defensive tackle. Not just 'dogs, but 'dogs professional bettors and the public were both fading, meaning they were betting on Bama. In wiseguy speak, everyone believed Auburn was a fraud.
And then it came back from 17 down to beat the Tide at home. A week later it put a beatdown on South Carolina in the most competitive conference championship game in the country.
Naturally, you can see why I wanted to be by my phone and my blackberry when the games ended. What would the lines be, given Auburn's rise?
Alas, I was stuck at dinner. My BlackBerry was dead. My phone was on its last bar. In a bold and courageous move, I swiped my wife's smart phone from the table and fired off e-mails to several bookmakers I know that began, "Hey, it's me, Chad." I didn't want them to be confused by my wife's e-mail address. Then I asked them what they were doing with the line and told them to buzz me up. Two of them called back, on my fading phone. The first was Jay Kornegay, who is the boss at the Hilton. "We are putting up Oregon minus-3," he told me. "It might have been a little higher a few days ago. But now we think we will get a lot of public money on Auburn."
That was the first indication I got that this was going to be a crazy line to set. All season Oregon had been a public team, while Auburn hadn't been getting much support at all. So I asked Jay why that was. "The past two weeks the perception has changed so much for Auburn," he told me. "Beating Bama and then killing South Carolina. We still think Oregon is better, but Auburn is much more of a public team right now."
Less than an hour after posting Oregon minus-3, Kornegay texted me: "We're down to Oregon minus-1."
Then I got an e-mail from Scooch, who said he was opening Auburn as a 1.5-point favorite. It was just six weeks ago when he had Oregon as a 7.5-point favorite in The Early Line column. But his opinion now wasn't all that different than what was happening at a lot of the offshore sports books that wiseguys like to play with, too. They were all favoring Auburn -- previously unloved, unappreciated Auburn -- over the Ducks. I used my cell, now blinking with a low-battery warning, to call Scooch and ask him, "What gives?" His response: "My first impressions on the game would be close to pick 'em, but because Auburn looked better down the stretch, beating Bama and South Carolina, it makes them a slight favorite. But the rating is pretty close to pick 'em."
An hour after that, I got another e-mail from Kornegay: "We now have Auburn minus-1."
In just a few short hours, Oregon had moved from being a 3-point favorite to a 1-point underdog. "The main reason our line moved so much was due to offshore books posting Auburn the favorite," Kornegay e-mailed me Sunday morning. "This is very typical of a lot of games on a weekly/daily basis. Right now, that line is Auburn minus-1. Offshore books opened Auburn minus-3 so I guess they were closer than we were but we had a slight opinion on the Oregon side.
"Most people are betting on what they have seen lately. The buildup of the SEC and Auburn playing well during two big games on national television has swayed the public's opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if the game ends up Auburn minus-3. The sharps will wait until they feel the line has topped out and will take the Ducks.

[tony_come]

Public/wiseguys/sharps/sharks

the bottom line is...

too many opinions

[xlilsp1keyx]

oregon will be the play? too much hype with auburns QB

[No coincidences]

they were on VTech too and we saw how that turned. There was so much reverse line movement in that game it was ridiculous.

Stanford opened at -1 and was immediately hammered up to -3.

Again, I'd be careful reading too much into this most recent line movement, given a lot of books opened at Auburn -1 and it almost immediately moved to -2.5. The line's not done moving IMHO.

[fury]

The HEISMAN CURSE LIVES!

[RudyRuetigger]

yea oregon opened -3 at hilton, but i dont think that has any meaning (and its proof by them changing their line 6 points that early imo)

[slimpickins]

sounds like Vegas opened at a different number than offshore based on what I just read above.
Once the books in Vegas saw what lines offshore books were posting they adjusted accordingly.

To me that sounds differently than a number opening at +3 and getting bet down to -3
The money seems to be on Oregon the public seems to be on Auburn.

[tcmoody99]

i love my ducks. all in on oregon

[firehoyt]

Too much hype with the Auburn QB?! You're a moron! He's the heisman trophy winner.

oregon will be the play? too much hype with auburns QB

[mcbaseball10]

Interesting post Yisser. Thanks for sharing.

[notsosharp]

Every wise guy in world on Oregon

This is an easy one

No every sharp in the world got Oregon +3 and +130