Tortillas, Turnovers, And Tears: A Gambler’s Guide To A Weird Sports Week

Ratings boomed for a World Series that delivered nearly everything—pinch-hit heroics, extra-inning drama, and a gut-punch walk-off—while our betting ledger took its lumps and the Bengals’ defense veered into the history books for all the wrong reasons. We connect the dots between spectacle and strategy, translating the Dodgers’ repeat and the NFL’s chaos into practical edges you can actually bet.

We kick off with the cold reality of last week’s card and why clinging to overs burned value, then pivot to a sharper approach built on matchups and coaching memory. Purdue anchors our quick college basketball preview with veteran guards and a bruising non-conference slate that sets up real March edges, plus early reads on Alabama, UNC, and Arkansas. From there, we lay out the college football board: Oregon’s must-win trip, BYU catching a generous number, and how venue rules and tradition can shape momentum and field position.

The middle third gets spicy: Zach Taylor’s seat turns frosty as Cincinnati becomes a case study in how not to manage staff when the numbers scream change. We flag market traps from last week’s NFL scores, outline why home dogs deserve a second look, and revisit the Shanahan–McVay ledger to frame San Francisco’s value. Then we widen the lens: the ESPN–YouTube standoff throttles how fans watch, the ESPN Bet exit highlights product trust issues, and regulators flag abnormal wagering in UFC fights—proof that integrity risk should affect your stake sizing and market selection.

To cap it off, we share the group’s picks and a lock built on ATS data, form, and matchup logic rather than hype. If you want fewer headaches and more closing-line value, this is your roadmap: ignore the noise, price the coaching, respect the travel, and lean into dogs with real structural advantages. If that’s your kind of card, follow the show, share it with a friend who bets Saturdays and Sundays, and leave a quick review so more sharp listeners can find us.

Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Start And Weekly Record Slide
• 0:22 MLB World Series Recap And Ratings
• 4:18 Quick College Basketball Preview And Early Picks
• 8:39 Stay Frosty: Bengals And The Worst-Case Defense
• 12:23 College Football Shakeups And First CFP Rankings
• 15:19 NFL Week 9 Recap And Market Overreactions
• 18:15 Dancing On ESPN: Carriage Fight And App Fallout
• 22:17 UFC Betting Red Flags And Integrity Worries
• 24:44 College Lines Of The Week And Tortilla Gate
• 27:31 NFL Week 10 Lines, Europe Game, And Home Dogs
• 31:02 Group Picks And The Lock Of The Week

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Hey everybody. Today is Friday, November 7th, and this is another edition of the Sportsbook Sharps. As always, I am your host, Andy, in the studio today. We have a pretty packed show, so we're gonna jump right into it. Gambling group update for the week. Three and four with a one push last week. We just cannot get over three wins a week. I don't know what's going on. I miss my lock again. Cowboys look terrible on Monday night football, just terrible, just embarrassing. Uh luckily I didn't need CeeDee Lamb and uh Williams to do much for my fantasy team, but uh I barely escaped with my fantasy life, and I did not escape with my gambling life. I loaded up on that game. I thought that was a slam dunk over. I Arizona did their part. The Cowboys did not. They just terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Just an awful game. Uh I'm in shambles right now. I've lost two in a row. I don't know. I had to do some deep reflecting on this one and uh reach into my bag of tricks for this week's lock because I cannot lose another one. John, Uncle John, and Uncle Mike are one game behind me now. I had a commanding two-game lead and that has evaporated. Uh, so I gotta get back into it here with my lock this week. Just a quick uh MLB update before we get into the normal things. We don't talk a lot of baseball here, uh, but this was an awesome World Series. If you missed out, the ratings were through the roof. Um, I think I saw that it was like double the ratings for the NBA finals game seven. Uh game game seven of the World Series was double the finals for the NBA. Um, the Dodgers are back-to-back World Series champs. Boo boo. When I have talked about this before, I've mentioned I am not a Dodgers person. I hate the Dodgers with a passion. They have one of the biggest payrolls in baseball. They disgust me. I will never, ever, ever root for the Dodgers. Uh, Darby and I watched most of this series, including the 18-inning game. Just fantastic series. Just a great way to end the series, uh, to end the baseball season. There have been 121 World Series, and this is the first one to feature all these different things. A pinch hit grand slam, two extra inning games, two extra inning home runs, a walk-off homer, a 7-4 double play to end the game in game six. Uh, Toronto got double played to end the game with a catch in the outfield that was thrown in to second. Just a uh just a heartbreaking as somebody that was rooting for Toronto to win. Uh, that was heartbreaking to watch that happen uh and super unusual. Um, I still don't know why that guy was running on contact with only one out, but I I guess he thought that was a for sure hit and it was not. Uh back-to-back home runs to lead off a game. This was the first 12 strikeout zero walk game. Uh, first time a player has reached base nine times in a game. That was Otani and that long game, I think it was game four that win a million innings. A game-tying ninth inning home run that flipped the World Series. So that last game, uh, the Dodgers hit a game-tying home run in the top of the ninth that pushed it to extras. So just an incredible World Series. Hats off to baseball. What a great season. Uh numbers were up through the season on viewing and everything. So uh looking forward to the Cubs and what they can do next year. And the offseason uh hot stove should start here pretty soon in uh November. I think you can start signing free agents for baseball. So hopefully Cubs make some moves and uh get a little better pitching and go. Uh we're gonna do a brief, this is a brief college basketball preview. That's right, college hoops tipped off this week. We'll start to sprinkle in big games when we can. Once football wraps up, this turns into pretty much a college basketball podcast. Uh, because we don't talk much NBA here at all. Um, and we're we don't talk NHL as well. Um, my preview is of this is how brief my preview is. If you want advice on who to win at all, I am a big homer and I'm gonna tell you Lay Purdue 900 plus 900. They're an absolute unit who got better in the front court and the backcourt. Matt Painter went across the globe to get people. He got some guy from Israel, mayor. He went up uh to the frigid South uh Dakotas to get a guy. Like they went everywhere. I love it. Uh very much improved from last year, which was a pretty good team last year. Um they have two senior guards. Senior guards are so important in March Madness, uh, Smith and Lawyer. They are outstanding. The final four is in Indy. I think it's Purdue's destiny to finally win uh March Madness. I I'm laying Purdue plus 900. And they have some tests. Next week they play Alabama, number 15 Alabama. That'll be a very good early season indicator of where the season's gonna go for Purdue. So uh got some games this week. Friday night, number 19, Kansas, and number 25 UNC. I think you'd take UNC here. Uh there it's at home. It's uh it's at Chapel Hill. I like UNC. Uh minus two and a half on that one. Then Saturday night we got at the Garden, number 15 Bama against number five St. John's, the Johnny's six and a half point favorites. I think you take Bama in the points. I don't know if they'll win, but uh Nate Oates, I think he can push them to cover. Alabama has an absolutely brutal schedule, so Oates will need them to play hard and fight and try to win this one because it doesn't get any easier. Their next game, I mentioned it. They play Purdue Thursday, so that's their next game. So they've got number five. This is their next four games. Number five, St. John's, number one, Purdue, number 17, Illinois, number 21, Gonzaga. Insane non-conference schedule. Uh, and then next month they play number 13 Arizona, so they're still not done playing top teams. That's just unbelievable. Uh Painter did this for Purdue the last few years. He's gone on the road. He went up to Marquette last year. They lost that game in Marquette. I loved it. I have loved it. I've said since Purdue started doing more of this, that it has helped them so much. I think Alabama, you know, I if they win only one of these, maybe I yeah, I don't I don't know if they'll win. I I don't know. I don't have in front of me where these all are. I think the Illinois ones at home. And I think the Gonzaga one, maybe? I don't know. I didn't look that up. I did not put that in my notes. But that's crazy to play four straight top 20-ish ranked teams. Gonzaga, I guess, is 21, but like just wow, what a non-conference schedule. Uh, I think they'll be totally prepared to run through the SEC this year. I uh yeah. Um this is way better than beating up some cupcake by 45. So uh tip of the cap to NATO's and what they've done there at Alabama. And then last for college basketball, we got number 14, Arkansas, at Michigan State minus one and a half. I I think you take Arkansas moneyline. Michigan State uh struggled mightily against Colgate. They only won that first game by 11 points against Colgate. Uh I like Arkansas and Coach Cow here. Alright. Now we have to get Frosty. There's a bit of a nip in the air. It's getting cold here in Ohio. And uh it is definitely time for the Bengals head coach Zach Taylor to stay frosty. Now he's been on here before. I think Greg put him up last year, uh, probably after they started like 0-4 in the season. I am super disappointed that either the defensive coordinator or just Zach Taylor in general was not fired this week. This is the Bengals by week. I don't understand what the Bengals are doing. He needs to go. Um that defense, that team is in shambles. There's reportedly infighting within the locker room. The offense hates the defense and has been making comments about them. Defense is just laughing it off. They're losing the locker room. This defense is historically bad. There needs to be change. Zach Taylor's been on a downward trajectory since that Super Bowl season, and I don't think these last few years has been like a deep slide. I don't think he can bounce them back at the Bengals. It's gonna have to be he's a young coach. I think he could be a coach somewhere else. He'll go and be a coordinator for a little bit, and then he could be a coach again, but I think he's lost the locker room. Uh they they almost came back last year uh after starting off so poorly in the season. They won nine games, missed the playoff by one game. People thought maybe they could flip it around. Burrow gets hurt again this year, but now they're bringing in Flacco. Flacco's scoring a million points for him, and they still cannot win. They are three and six, and they just lost two embarrassing games that they should have won. They should be sitting here at 5-4 and looking like they're you know heading to take on Pittsburgh to contend for the for the uh AFC North. But uh no, they are just embarrassing. Uh they were the first team since the 1960s to score 38 plus points in back-to-back games and lose both since the 1960s. Flaco had 470 yards, four touchdowns, and a 66% completion percentage, and they still lost that game last week against the Bears. Uh the Bengals have one of the worst defenses of all time using uh a metric called DVOA. They are second all time in the entire history of the NFL, only to the 1979 49ers. And for Zach to not realize that and fire his defensive coordinator this week, I mean you just have to shake it up. How many weeks in a row can you score that many points and lose? They're on a bye this weekend. The first thing Monday, I should have been reading news about how their defensive coordinator was fired, but it just shows that Zach Taylor does not have a realization of that, and that he's in over his head, and for that, he needs to stay frosty. And just a quick frosty update. Uh, Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze joins the group. That is a quarter of the SEC jobs open, uh, including some big ones. Uh, Florida, uh LSU, and now Auburn, uh, and then uh Arkansas is the other one open. Uh a quarter of the SEC jobs are open already. Uh but yeah, that's uh we have quite a long list going of the people on Save Frost or the people that have been fired this year. All right, quick college football recap here. Huge upset. SMU beats number 10 Miami in overtime. This effectively ends Miami season. They're sitting seventh in the ACC. The ACC's only sending one to the college football playoff. Only way is to finish in the top two and win the champion ACC championship to get in. It looks like they're gonna send one team only. Uh yeah, what a disappointing season for Miami. Oklahoma upset Tennessee, but I called that last week. Texas did outlast Vanderbilt winning by three. I don't know what to make of Texas. I I didn't call that last week. I thought Texas would lose that game. And then UC got whooped, losing 14 to 45 at Utah. Uh, that was a surprise. UC's looked really good this year. I I I thought UC had a chance there, but that was not at all. And then the first college football playoff ranking release, not really any big surprises there. Four SCC, three Big Ten, two Big 12, one ACC, a Notre Dame and Memphis from the group of five. Nothing surprising there. Um, we'll see as the season continues on here. We'll see how everything shakes out. And the NFL. Recap from last week. All teams have two or more losses heading into week 10. The first time that has ever happened since 2010. Uh the Bears escaped the Bengals. I talked about that already. Some of the Bengals tackle attempts were comical in that game, uh, but I already talked about it, so I'm gonna move on from that one. Carolina 16, Green Bay 13. That's right. Carolina beat and upset Green Bay. 13.5 point underdogs. It was at Green Bay. Listen, I told you last week I loved Carolina. I almost made that my lock of the week. I really wish I would have. I would have hit, but no. 13.5 point dogs. I said bet all over Carolina. I did tell you not to take the money line, so I was wrong on that. I did I thought Carolina could cover, but I did not think they would win. Unbelievable. Uh Minnesota 27, Detroit 24. I was way wrong on that one. I don't know where that JJ McCarthy game came from, but that is not the player that we saw that started the season. He looked phenomenal. I if he's gonna keep playing like that, Minnesota could could bounce back here. I think they're only four and four, so they still have time to make a run here. Um but I kind of wrote him off because I thought the early season JJ would be back, but this that is not who came to play last week, so impressive. Indy 20, Pittsburgh 27. Now look, do not read into this as Pittsburgh being back. Indy, the Yenzers, calm down. Calm down, Yenzers. Indy had six turnovers in that game, and they still almost won the game with six turnovers. Indianapolis will be fine. They will be fine. They will shake this game off. They've made some trade acquisitions, and I think Indianapolis will be just fine. They will not have another six turnover game, and Pitt needed every one of those to win that game. They are not as good as you think they are. Uh so don't overadjust what you saw last weekend into your bets this weekend, is what I'm telling you. And then Kansas City 21, Buffalo 28. One of the better games of the week. Buffalo beats Kansas City, and they are now within a game of the top of the AFC. So hats off. Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills. Uh, I don't really have an old man yells at cloud, but I'm calling this one Let's Dance on Hem. And for this week, I am nominating ESPN. That's right, the mothership. Let's Dance On Hem! I'm doing a little jig on them here. Uh the ESPN dispute with YouTube rages into week two. Unbelievable. I cannot believe they haven't come to an agreement. I don't know what's going to last longer. The government shutdown or this dispute between ESPN and YouTube, but they need to end it. I need my ESPN back. Now that college basketball is back, look, so I'm a Purdue fan. College football to me ended weeks and weeks ago. Like, I still want to watch some of the games. Obviously, I'm a sports fan, but like as far as my team, my team was toast once the conference play started. Purdue hasn't won a game. They didn't win a conference game last year. They haven't won a conference game this year. They likely will not win a conference. They have Ohio's the Ohio State this weekend that are gonna march all over them. I think they're 30-point favorites, the Ohio State. Uh yeah, Purdue's not winning a conference game. So from my perspective, that's over with. But I do like college football, other games. I do like Monday night football. I do like college basketball. And ESPN shows a lot of college basketball. So this needs to end. It needs to end now. People have been dancing all over them all week. How awful their app is, how hard it is to use, how the ads are terrible on it, a million different reasons. How the interface is clunky, how it's slow, how it's hard to find and search for things. I just it's been one video after another on social media just lampooning ESPN. So dance on them. I love it. In the same week that this dispute is entering into the second week, the ESPN bet app is no more. Well, it's it is more, it's one more week, one more month, I'm sorry, one more month, but it is shutting its doors on sometime in December. I don't have the date in front of me. But as we uh, if you remember from last season's podcast, uh, I am not, nor have I ever been a huge fan of that app. It's garbage. I got locked out of it for months and months and months. They held my money. I had a pretty public dispute with them on this podcast, public being the number one sports gambling podcast in Liberty Township. Um, and I told everybody to pull their money, close their accounts, whatever. Like they held my money forever. They were investigating what I had done. I did nothing wrong. At the end of the day, they ended up giving me the money back. They said that I had an old account with an old pen account with Barstool Sports. Well, okay. I'm sorry, the name of your app is ESPN Bet, not Barstool Bet. Yeah, I had a Barstool Bet account. Then I couldn't log in with that when I went to ESPN Bet, so I assumed I had to create another one. And now Penn is saying they're gonna launch the score or something like that for their third app. Uh, I don't think Penn knows how to run a gambling app. The Barstool one was horrible. They paid billions of dollars to buy the interface, and then they also paid billions of dollars to uh do this 10-year contract with ESPN, and after two years, they're ejecting from the ESPN contract. The earnings, the reason this all happened is that quarterly earnings have come out. They are hemorrhaging money. They uh Penn Gambling is losing money hand over fist. Uh ESPN in the same swoop announced that they already signed a new partnership with DraftKings. I don't think that's gonna go well. Um, I think whatever, it's gonna get some advertisement, but we clearly saw they created their own ESPN app that was very heavy on their ESPN personalities, Stephen A. Smith's lock of the week, all these people's locks and whatever and junk at the top of the screen and and their little bets and all these things. They were there, but they could not get people to sign up for the app. And so doing the same with DraftKings is not going to help at all either. So uh, and then a little more on this. I I'm I'm loosely tying this in. Uh, I don't think there's a direct tie, but other than ESPN is a huge broadcast partner of this company, the UFC. So I worry that this won't get covered by the mothership that well. Uh, UFC has a huge gambling problem right now. They are in the federal and regulators have flagged over 100 UFC fights for abnormal betting patterns, including two fights from last weekend. Now, we don't talk UFC at all on this podcast, but as we get more information about this, we will definitely be talking about this on a sports gambling podcast because I know a lot of people like to gamble on that kind of stuff. It's a very late night thing. A lot of those Vegas fights are starting at like midnight Eastern, and it is a wildly popular thing on ESPN. Uh yeah, so they e the FBI uh the two fights from last weekend, the FBI told the UFC about abnormal action on one of those matches hours ahead of time and gave them the opportunity to pull that fight from the card, but UFC did nothing and left it on the card. I don't know how that's all going to play out. It'll be very interesting to see. Um, but this comes on the back of the Chauncey Bill ups and some other NBA people getting tied up in gambling scandals, so it's a wild time for gambling right now. So just be on the lookout for updates for that. Uh big games for this week. We got a couple for college, not too many. Uh number seven, BYU. Number eight, Texas Tech. Texas Tech, a 10.5 favorite. I love BYU here. I say take them plus ten and a half, and I'll tell you exactly why I love them. Tortilla Gate. Now wait, you're sitting there, what, what? Did he say did he say tortilla? I did. Tortilla Gate. Texas Tech has had an over 30-year, almost 40-year tradition of tossing tortillas during the games. Home and away. Didn't matter if they were home or away, fans would sneak in tortillas and toss them onto the field. But this season, the SEC decided that they wanted no more of people tossing things onto the field. Uh, it's a and when I say field, I'm talking like the edge. They're not throwing it out onto the 50-yard line, onto the field of play. They're throwing it like, you know, the area behind the goal where the band stands and stuff like that. Like, they're not throwing it out into the end zone and stuff and making people slip on Tortillas. You would see it. It would be a highlight on SportsCenter if that was the case. That is not the case. They just have some fun. The fans toss them. Uh, it's been a tradition. Colleges have a lot of weird traditions like this, but the Big 12 passed a ruling this year if after two of these times that anything is tossed on the field, the home team has assessed a 15-yard penalty, which actually happened this year against Kansas. Also, this game, the BYU, a Texas Tech game, this is being played in Jerry World, and the school announced that anything tossed on the field in Jerry World would be an immediate ejection and a prevention of getting future ticket, uh prevention of ticket privileges for the remainder of the season for the fan that commits the act. I say let the tortillas fly. College football's gone increasingly corporate and stale over the past decade. We have to keep fun traditions like these alive, and that's why I like BYU plus 10.5 here. The other big college game, number nine Oregon, at number 20, Iowa. Iowa is a six and a half point dog. If Oregon wants to make the college football playoff, it has to win this game. It has to. Iowa sits at number 20. I don't know if they upset Oregon, if that would be enough to boost them up. I don't think it would be. That's a lot of spots. They'd have to jump. They probably need a lot of help with other upsets and stuff. So if Oregon wants to stay in the college football playoff, they absolutely have to win this game. And I think they do. I think they do in cover. Um, I like Oregon, minus six and a half here. All right, NFL this week. We got four on by Bengals Chiefs, Cowboys, Titans. So some of the worst teams, and one good team. Um, we are back in Europe, Berlin this time. Atlanta at Indianapolis. Indy, minus six and a half favorite. Listen, the trade deadline came and went this week. Indy was a player. They got Sauce Gardner from the Jets. I think that's a tremendous pickup. I think Indy bounces back from the loss against Pittsburgh. Like I said earlier in the podcast, six turnovers. They're not going to have six turnovers every week. I like Indy in this one. Baltimore, Minnesota, Vikings. Vikings, three and a half point home dogs. This one got a lot more interesting after JJ played well and they upset the Lions last week. Uh, both teams desperately need this win. These are both teams that can't take a bunch more losses to make the playoffs. I think I like uh home dogs run faster. I like Minnesota here. I like them to win. Uh, if JJ plays like he played last week, I think they win. The Baltimore defense isn't very good. I think you sprinkle a little money line on there. I definitely think you hit the three and a half. Uh, but maybe sprinkle a little money line on that Minnesota. New England at Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay two and a half point favorites. I cannot believe I'm sitting here saying these are two of the best teams in the NFL. That's why I picked this one to talk about. Both teams only have two losses, both teams are leading their division. I it just stunning to me that we're in this situation. I I like the home team. I like Baker at home to cover. I think they win by three. I think it is close. New England's played really well, but it's on the road. A good road test for this New England team, and I but I think I think Tampa Bay covers it. And then last game I want to talk about before we get into our locks, the Rams, LA Rams at San Francisco. San Francisco four and a half point underdog. Again, another home dog here. I like San Francisco here. Kyle Shanahan has done great against Sean McVeigh. He is 10 and 6 against McVeigh. He has his number, and I think he covers it here. Uh, already beat him once uh at week five in LA. I think San Francisco is another home dog runs faster situation. Maybe do a little home dog parlay, uh, a little Minnesota, a little San Fran, sprinkle those in. Um, yeah, I I like Sam Fran here. All right, let's go through the gambling group here. What we got so far. We got Greg, Indiana University, minus 14 at Penn State. Uh, yep. Greg has not been great this year, but Penn State has been even worse than Greg. Uh Indiana covers that one. Indiana's been blowing teams out of the water. Uh Ethan gave us Jags, Texans over 37 and a half. Yeah, I think that sounds about right. I like that. Um, Uncle Mike continuing with his overs. He's given us like four or five overs in a row here. Uh Steelers, Chargers over 45. I like that one. I think the Steelers, uh, their defense is not great. Um, yeah, I like that quite a bit. Uh, and he's been hot with the over-unders. He hit uh, I forget what he is on the year. I think he's four and one on overs, something like that. It's pretty high. Um, and then we got one more. Matt gave us Oregon minus six at Iowa. This one's interesting. Uh, this is a loot, well, Iowa's already kind of out of town. Not a not a loser leaves town, but this is a if Oregon loses here their cooked game. Uh, we've got uh roast duck on the menu here because Oregon cannot lose. They are the third Big Ten team in. Both Indiana and Ohio State are undefeated. I don't know. If Iowa wins, I don't think they jump up and take a spot. So I I think that costs the Big Ten a spot here. Uh Oregon has to win this game to continue on. I think they will, I think they upset Iowa. I like that pick, Matt. And then last, my lock of the week. I am done with the over-under things for now. That's a Mike thing. Uncle Mike, have at your over-unders. This week I am taking the Carolina Panthers minus five is my lock of the week. They are one of the best teams against the spread this year. Six and three, the Panthers are. I know you wouldn't think looking at them. Uh the Saints are two and seven against the spread. Just terrible against the spread. They're a terrible team. If you've watched any of their games, they're terrible. Uh the Panthers. What is the year for that? We think that's a classic. That's a gambling for your find us, follow us everywhere podcasts are. The topics are coming on TikTok again. Lady hit her lock last week. Stanley Poochie, not so much. Uh, but we'll see how they do this weekend. Thanks, and good luck gambling, everybody.