LAS VEGAS – Six weeks of the NFL season are already in the books, so we’re more than one-third of the way through the 17-week schedule.
It’s a good time to recap how individual teams and the league as a whole have been doing so far against the betting lines here in Vegas. We could wait for the half-way mark, but the next two weeks I’m going to be leading off this column with Breeders’ Cup-related news (seminars, contests, promotions, future-book updates, etc.), so here we go.
As the Breeders’ Cup nears, the winnowing continues, with retirements and regrets coming left and right. Camelot, Kettle Corn, Include Me Out, Dullahan, and Liaison recently were sent off to the breeding barn. Honor Code and Cluster of Stars will remain in New York, while Bajan and Distinctiv Passion will find better things to do out West.
Never mind the fact that California racing will have one less racetrack and a whole new calendar beginning in 2014. There also will be two brand new courses over which a healthy amount of racing and training will take place. One of them is at Los Alamitos, where the five-furlong Quarter Horse track is being expanded to a mile for year-round training and Thoroughbred meets in the early summer and late fall. The other is at Del Mar, where the 53-year-old turf layout has been removed and replaced with a course 30 feet wider.
They took away the grass sprint that Ben’s Cat has won three straight years on Maryland Million Day. Ben’s Cat, however, will still be there Saturday at Laurel Park, trying to become the first horse to win four Maryland Million races.
LAS VEGAS – Parity or disparity?
We always hear about parity in the NFL and the old mantra that “on any given Sunday” any team can beat any other team. That’s still true for the most part, and on Monday Night Football the Jets beat the Falcons 30-28 as a 10-point underdog, the second time this season that a double-digit dog pulled off an outright upset (the previous one was the Colts’ 27-7 rout of the 49ers in Week 3 as a 10.5-point dog).
The topic of takeout took a beating this past week at the International Simulcast Conference in Lexington, Ky., with several frustrated industry officials belittling its importance and telling customers not to hold their breath for any reductions in the foreseeable future.
“The blogs say this is a simple fix,” said Chris Scherf, executive vice president of the Thoroughbred Racing Associations. “They can’t understand why we’re so stupid. They think we can lower takeout and watch hordes of people come to our facilities.”
Of the 136 television series filling the commercial airwaves and cables this fall, exactly none of them is a Western, unless you count “Sons of Anarchy,” which sometimes does a pretty good impression of John Ford meets Sam Peckinpah by way of Hunter Thompson. Then again, they ride Hogs.
The only time a horse appears as a regular in one of those 136 shows is in “Sleepy Hollow,” a real laugh romp. The horse is white and has red eyes. His rider has no head. Thank you, Washington Irving.
After spending my weekend in search of that elusive Breeders’ Cup pick six single and trying to determine if Eric Guillot’s “voluntary statement’’ to New York officials about the Travers qualifies to be entered in the Eclipse Award writing contest, I began the new week more confused than ever.
I do know Moreno will not be my single or on any of my tickets, pick six or otherwise. Even though I am certain trainer Guillot deserves special consideration for some sort of award, I can’t let my admiration for his unique talents affect my handicapping judgment.
There is a rule, inscribed somewhere on a cave wall, that any horse can lose any race any time. This would seem to be one of those operating principles – reliable unpredictability – that makes a high-risk gambling enterprise like Thoroughbred racing such an evergreen attraction.
There are times, however, when the unpredictable becomes the ridiculous, and horseplayers begin looking around for the guy sticking pins in the voodoo doll, or praying to a dead chicken. Such things have occurred the past two weekends at the top of the American game.
There are any number of ways to irritate a Parisian you might encounter sipping an espresso and smoking a Gauloise in a boulevard café. Use the wrong fork. Order in English. Say anything in English. Misquote Sartre. Mock Jerry Lewis.
But if you really want to watch their Gallic blood boil (in Celsius, no less), try suggesting that the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, first run in 1920, is just another prep race for the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
