'Twas Sunday, 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, a few hours after the lines for the NCAA tournament had opened, and all through the night, most wiseguys were not stirring. Outside Chicago, Sal Selvaggio from Madduxsports.com saw the spreads flickering across his screen, with numbers holding still and not scurrying this way or that. With four days until the games began and no gifts from the oddsmakers, he said this to himself: "I could rush to make some bets I may not love, or I can read my daughter a bedtime story." He chose the story.

Across the country, in a new-construction house in a fancy subdivision not even 20 minutes away from the glitz and glam of the Las Vegas Strip, Alan Boston was sitting tight, too. There were no numbers he loved. The selection committee had, in his mind, given the business to all the teams that didn't deserve it and made sure TV got ratings-ready potential matchups like UNC versus Kansas in the second round. (He wasn't the only one going Oliver Stone on the committee. One prominent UNC grad I know told me on Monday, "They always do that, need to find a way to get [UNC coach] Roy [Williams] to play Kansas on TV in the NCAA tournament.") So Boston decided to wait until Wednesday became Thursday, or Thursday became Friday, for the public to get involved and the prices for the underdogs to become cheaper, before he waded into the pool.