Ok this may be a stupid question, but what is the actual definition of a line? The reason I ask is because I've seen people give one of two definitions and it seems like the 2 definitions are different.
Definition 1: A line = the odds on a given game.
Definition 2: A line = the number of points/goals/whatever that are added to the underdog and taken away from the favourite.
It seems to me that definition 2 is the correct one because there is rarely ever just one "line" if the first definition is true since the odds that are offered to you are different for each team playing in a game (unless you get equal odds on both teams winning). Therefore the word "lines" would be the word that gets used if this were the case I would think.
Also, is the "spread" different from the line or are they the same? Wikipedia seems to say they're the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_...#Types_of_bets (see their definition of "straight bets").
Again, sorry if this is a stupid question. I'm just getting conflicting information and I want to clarify.