DMN: Saints, Colts midseason favorites

There's a fascinating book by James Surowiecki called The Wisdom of Crowds, the main point of which is that the judgments of lots and lots of people, acting independently, and aggregated through something like a market are, collectively, usually more accurate than a few so-called experts. Biases get cancelled out, and lots of different kinds of information is allowed to enter the market as reflected in bids,. For example, the Iowa Political Futures market has allowed people, essentially, to bet on presidential candidates -- you buy a share for x candidate and for each share you have of the winning candidate, you get a dollar, but you get nothing for shares of the losing candidate. This way, the price of each share winds up being the market's approximation of the candidate's likelihood of winning, and in every single Presidential race going back to the 80s, the Iowa Political Futures Market has predicted the winner better and more accurately than any national poll. There's also a section on Vegas betting which is pretty interesting.

My point here is that by tracking how people will bet and not who Vegas experts think will win, Vegas odds are basically trying to anticipate the wisdom of (football) crowds. Or at least the ones who care enough and, presumably, know enough to bet. It'll be interesting to see how those odds change over the course of the year.

Thanks Jack, that makes sense. I've certainly noticed that the lines for New York favorites seem a little high from time to time - I guess there's a lot of money out there that's going to flow toward the Giants and Jets if they're playing well no matter what the line is, so Vegas needs to entice the other side.

Watch that "Peyton on the IR" talk - I think you just caused cardiac arrest across the greater Indy area.

Thanks Jack, that makes sense. I've certainly noticed that the lines for New York favorites seem a little high from time to time - I guess there's a lot of money out there that's going to flow toward the Giants and Jets if they're playing well no matter what the line is, so Vegas needs to entice the other side.

Watch that "Peyton on the IR" talk - I think you just caused cardiac arrest across the greater Indy area.

I think the Vikings are a very interesting playoff team for the simple fact that Favre is now in a dome. We know he can play in cold weather and wind obviously, so traveling to a Philadelphia or a New York wouldn't be an issue, but now he's also got to potentially host a New Orleans, or travel there.

I imagine Favre would prefer to get Brees outside and get some elemental facts, but that's no longer an option. I'm somewhat underwhelmed with the season thus far, but the playoff picture is very intriguing, in my opinion.

Mike - why have the Birds not at least TRIED to utilize Vick more? Who knows how valuable he might have been in the thick of these divisional games.

Sorry, didn't mean to hex Peyton. As a Pats fan, I have a lot of respect for the elder Manning brother, and certainly wish him no harm.

However, there has to be a starting line to get the action going, right? For example, they wouldn't want to start out with the Colts as 100-1 because there'd be too much early action on the Colts, and moving the line down over time might not balance out the money.