It's no secret that I like to think of gambling as more than just luck and love. There is science and logic to it. Deep study, profound thinking and careful examination of numbers can lead to enlightenment -- or at least the discovery of trends that win 54 percent or more over a long period of time.
For example, Dan Fabrizio of the sports betting info site SportsInsights.com enlightened me the other day when I called him to talk about the Week 16 NFL line moves. His site, which I wrote about earlier this season and which got a nice write-up in the Wall Street Journal this week, is as rich as it gets when it comes to the academic study of gambling. In fact, there is a link at the top his homepage called "Articles." Click on that, and along the left-hand side of the page is another link called "Academic Research." Seriously, he is cataloging the papers that people write and research to get a better understanding of how to bet sports. That's commitment.
In the middle of the Academic Research page is a paper entitled "Price Predictability: Insights from the NFL Point Spread Market." It was written in 2003 by Richard Borghesi. The paper, according to the site, "looked at in-season bias by analyzing games from 1981-2000. The researcher found a late season bias in the NFL Weeks 15, 16, 17 and playoffs."
But, what was the bias for?
