Bengals top lowly Chiefs, end year with three straight wins

Football Betting Lines

12/28/2008 - Cincinnati, OH (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Cedric Benson rushed for 111 yards on 25 carries and scored a touchdown while Shayne Graham booted three field goals as Cincinnati beat Kansas City, 16-6, at Paul Brown Stadium.

Ryan Fitzpatrick completed 18-of-30 passes for 129 yards for the Bengals (4-11-1), who completed the regular season with three wins in succession and emerged victorious despite playing without their two top receivers, Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh, due to injury.

Andre Caldwell led the Cincinnati receiving corps, catching five balls for 34 yards.

Tyler Thigpen threw for 191 yards and a score on 19-of-36 completions for the Chiefs (2-14), who finished the year by losing their final four contests and posted their least amount of wins since going 2-12 in 1977.

Dwayne Bowe recorded a game-best 10 catches for 103 yards and Tony Gonzalez had a late TD reception for Kansas City, which has dropped 23 of 25 games dating back to last season.

Cincinnati picked up the only points in the first quarter on a Graham 38-yard field goal, then forged ahead 10-0 early in the second as Benson completed an 87-yard drive with a two-yard plunge.

Graham provided a 13-0 lead for the Bengals just after the two-minute warning with a 30-yard make.

The Chiefs continued to stagnate on offense in the second half and Graham added a 43-yarder with 6:21 remaining in the fourth quarter for a 16-0 contest.

Bowe narrowly missed a touchdown reception with four minutes to play after a replay determined he did not get a foot and the ball over the goal line before falling out of bounds.

Later in the series, after another score by Bowe was nullified by a penalty, Thigpen found Gonzalez for a five-yard TD but a conversion pass failed.

Benson picked up a pair of first downs, the last one on a 13-yard gain to the Chiefs 15-yard-line after the two-minute warning. Fitzpatrick took a knee on the final two plays to ice the game.

Game Notes

Chiefs running back Larry Johnson was limited to 18 yards on 10 carries...Cincinnati held Kansas City to 31 rushing yards and outgained it overall by a 329-220 margin.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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