Columnist Dean Juipe: NFL goes overboard with upsets

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2002 | 9:51 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

The National Football League's greatest asset -- its unpredictability -- is, in the eyes of many of its followers, becoming a liability.

Too many years of too many upsets have not only drained the league's fans and tapped out a number of its bettors, it has led to a situation where there seems to be a complete randomness in the games' results. It's parity all right, but it's parity taken a step too far.

It begs the question: Does the NFL want each of its 32 teams to be so equal in strength that one is indiscernible from another?

Well, with an exception or two at the lower end of the scale, that's almost the reality today. "On any given Sunday ..." once signified that anything can happen in an NFL game and that a team didn't dare step on the field unprepared, but these days there's a more applicable phrase: "On every single Sunday ..."

A league that once had varying and noticeable trends now has only one: Anything goes.

Ordinarily that's an attractive trait and it's one the NFL exploited for years if not decades on end. But what we're seeing now goes beyond the usual abundance of upsets and has made the NFL, particularly from a bettor's point of view, a league that has a complete lack of definition and form.

Hence, a sense of discouragement has infiltrated sports books in Las Vegas, at least as far as the patrons are concerned.

This past week was no different from any other in recent memory and it brought to mind the notion of "buyer's remorse," where a customer becomes dissatisfied with a purchase after getting the item home. The variation of it in Las Vegas is "bettor's remorse," with even the wise guys figuratively tossing out tickets long before the final gun.

For the record, of the 14 games played this past weekend only four ended with the favorite (Tampa Bay, St. Louis, the NY Giants and Green Bay) winning and covering. In three others, the favorite (Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit) won but didn't cover. One favorite (Pittsburgh) was involved in a push. That leaves six outright underdogs (New England, Cincinnati, Tennessee, the NY Jets, San Francisco and Washington) that flat-out won.

Given the effort and study that goes into NFL betting lines, the lack of predictability is startling and has season-long ramifications. For instance, none of the last three Super Bowl winners -- New England, Baltimore and St. Louis -- had so much as a winning season the year before they won it all.

Is it too preposterous to believe that favorites can now be drawn from a hat?

One thing about it, it's not like this in any other sport. Sports books routinely lose money to hardcore baseball bettors, who grind their way through a season, and the books are content to break even or make a few bucks on basketball, hockey, racing and college sports.

But they clean up on pro football, where what happened last week has no bearing on what might occur the next. Experts and schmoes alike have difficulty picking one game correctly, let alone successfully completing a parlay card.

A change would be welcome. A couple of dynasties, a few dominant teams, a sense of direction.

I'd settle for a single week in which the word "upset" was purged from the roundup.