Apparently defense does still win championships.

San Francisco will host New York at 4:30 p.m. EST on Sunday for the NFC Championship Game. The winner advances to the Super Bowl (you may have heard of that) to face either Baltimore or New England.

The 49ers and Giants advanced to the NFC Title Game thanks to incredible defensive efforts last week, o ...  read more

Family and feelings are the enemy of good gambling and good writing about gambling. So I apologize for the soggy lead in this week, but I am trapped in Northern New York with my kin and only have a quick moment here in between dodging passive-aggressive barbs from my in-laws and skirting out to refill my cocktail from my depleting liquor supply to pass on this ...  read more

by Robert Ferringo - 11/10/2011

The weather is getting colder, the hits are getting harder, and the games are getting more critical as teams ride the elevator of expectations and expanded standings. In my opinion, November is the most crucial of months on the NFL schedule because it really sets the tone for the stretch run: some teams gain momentum and find the will for a strong finish, ...  read more

There were a handful of upsets in Week 9 that hopefully you avoided (and did if you took my top pick of the week) and kept you going in your survivor pool.

One game I warned you to stay away from was the winless Dolphins visiting a suddenly streaking Chiefs team. But if you looked closely at that matchup, Miami had come close to winning in back-to-back wee ...  read more

In my Week 6 player props story, there weren’t too many immediate results for us to look back on – in other words I tackled a few season-ending totals for NFL players, such as 50-yard field goals for Oakland’s Sebastian Janikowski (he was two-yards shy of adding one in Week 6), sacks for Minnesota’s Jared Allen (he added No. 9.5 against the Bears on Sunday) or t ...  read more

One of the most overrated angles in NFL betting is to bet on a team that is off a bye week. Most people assume that a week of rest and preparation is just what the doctor ordered for pro football players and that they will return extra focused and fresh the next week when they finally get back on the field.

The problem is that betting on NFL teams coming ...  read more

We are a quarter of the way through the NFL schedule, and we have four teams — Indianapolis, Minnesota, Miami, and St. Louis — that haven’t won a game yet. It’s always interesting to watch which team stays winless the longest. Tracking futility is especially significant this year, though, since the worst team in the league will have a chance to draft Stanford’s An ...  read more

Blake Wheeler of the Winnipeg Jets

If you have ever met a Winnipeger — and they are everywhere because it seems like everyone leaves the city when they are old enough to do so — you have heard about the Jets. A Winnipeg native is incapable of speaking for more than two minutes without mentioning the Jets. It’s a law.

The town was obsessed with their te ...  read more

Who needs the preseason?

Scoring is through the roof in the National Football League and through two weeks of the year seasoned quarterback play and horrendous defense have been front-and-center. With the lack of a traditional offseason and with a truncated training camp the thought was that teams would be a little sluggish out of the gate and that we may ...  read more

This NFL season may be headed into Week 3, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to search out value in the NFL futures betting market. There have been a few early surprises this season, such as the Buffalo Bills and Washington Redskins, and some early disappointments, like the Kansas City Chiefs. The trick now is to figure out if there's any long-term value in an ...  read more

Hello again readers here at Doc’s, it’s that time of year that we all love the most: football season. And of course that means I’m back to deliver my weekly Survivor Pool picks advice column for Week 1 of the NFL 2011-12 NFL season.

For those of you who may not know what a Survivor Pool is, it’s pretty simple: You pick one team per week that you are most su ...  read more

You know exactly what you’re going to get from the AFC North each year:

Blood and pain.

Pittsburgh will again be a Super Bowl threat. Baltimore will again be the able challenger led by a violent defense. Cleveland and Cincinnati? Yeah, they suck just as badly as they have for the past 20 years.

In a way it’s comforting, especially as an NFL ha ...  read more

We continue our look at some NFL player props with the biggest regular-season award of them all: the league’s Most Valuable Player. We will offer some predictions for the NFL MVP along with futures odds for 2011.

And in essence, the MVP has become the NFL’s version of the Heisman Trophy. By that I mean the MVP is only going to go to a quarterback or running ...  read more

Maybe now the Left Coast will get some love.

The Pac-10 is no more, choosing instead to swell its ranks to 12 teams, institute a new divisional system, and implement a championship game that should keep this conference in the news well into December. It is a pretty heady time in the Pac-12. And with new promise and potential comes new expectations.

...  read more

The Tour de France is underway over in Europe and you might be surprised how much betting interest in the race we’ve had from our players over at Bodog’s online sportsbook.

Cycling isn’t a particularly popular sport in North America. It’s had its surges in media exposure, particularly during the heyday of Lance Armstrong, who won ...  read more

It is not a stretch to say that no one in baseball likes doubleheaders.

The players dislike putting forth that much effort in one day. Managers cringe at the thought of having to burn their bullpens. Umpires loathe having to sit out there for a double-dip, especially the guys that have to work the plate in one game and the field in another. The vendors and ...  read more

Not many people expected Cleveland to be one of the best teams in baseball.

Nor did many think Arizona would be neck and neck with the World Series champs.

They didn’t believe Seattle had much of a chance either.

And they especially didn’t foresee Pittsburgh flirting with .500.

But all four of those teams have failed to live up (or down) ...  read more

The little guys in the saddle are important in every horse race, but they are especially significant in the Belmont Stakes. The race is much longer than the horses have ever run before, and the track is unique thanks to the very long stretch and the wide turns. If a jockey doesn’t have a good day then he can cost his horse the race.

The most obvious recent ex ...  read more

When is the last time you sat down and analyzed a Major League Baseball team’s defense? The answer is likely either a long time ago or never. The average sports bettor thinks a lot about defense when analyzing a football or basketball game, but I’m convinced that most people don’t think nearly enough about defense when it comes to baseball. It may not mean as much ...  read more

Since we may not see any NFL transactions for months, depending on a June 3 court hearing on the lockout, and with the draft still fresh in everyone’s memory, let’s take a look at one of the few NFL player props out so far this year: the 2011 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year (check back at Doc’s for a story on the Offensive Rookie of the Year as well).

Wage ...  read more