The prevalent, popular, prominent picks for the Super Bowl this season are Four Ps _ Patriots, Packers, Panthers and Pittsburgh.
Forget forlorn Filadelphia.
The other principal P _ Peyton _ is retired.
According to the latest odds from Las Vegas, the Pats are 6-1, the Pack 8-1, Pitt 10-1 and the Panthers are 12-1 to win the NFL championship.
"We've gotten so much offseason interest in Green Bay and New England," Jay Rood, the most influential man in Vegas sports gambling, told me as we spent a recent Saturday afternoon at The Mirage sharing stories about Colorado and NFL betting. "People love Aaron Rodgers at quarterback. They may not love Tom Brady after what happened, but they believe in him even being gone four games."
The 47-year-old Albuquerque, N.M., native, who used to work summers as a ranch hand in Colorado, owns a home in Basalt, Colo. After graduation from New Mexico State with a degree in hotel and tourism management, he moved to Reno, Nev., and saw a job posting at Caesars Tahoe for "sports writer." He was fair at English and thought anybody could be a sportswriter.
(He certainly was right.)
Rood was hired to "write" betting slips at a window in the casino's sports book.
He now is approaching a decade as the vice president of race and sports operations for MGM Resorts International, the largest hotel/casino conglomerate in Nevada.
Rood sets the betting line for 12 Las Vegas sports books, and everybody else on The Strip follows his lead.
"Many years ago a guy who looked and smelled like he was homeless came in carrying a bag from Walmart and asked me if he could put his money on the Colts and Peyton Manning. I told him I'd take everything he wanted to bet. He had $500,000 in the bag.
"He won and came in the next day, collected his million bucks and put it in a new bag."
Rood and another Vegas Big Timer also named Jay don't think so highly of the chances of the defending Super Bowl champion. Jay Kornegay, who lived in Denver and Colorado Springs and graduated from Colorado State, is VP of race and sports at the Westgate. Although he loves all things Colorado sports, Kornegay has put the over-under on victories for the Broncos at 9; their odds of winning the Super Bowl were at 25-1 on Tuesday, and they are three-point underdogs to the Carolina Panthers on Thursday night.
In Denver?!
Since the opening of the new Mile High in 2000, the Broncos have won their first game at home 15 of 16 seasons.
They have owned the AFC West every season after The End of an Error with Josh McDaniels as coach.
But the majority of "sports writers" around the country are not choosing the Broncos to defend even with their defense. I am among them. That may be the reason we are not in Las Vegas gambling on games. (The only gambling I do is when I order delivery of Chinese food.)
Broncos' loyalists conveniently forget that their team was fortunate to win seven of their 12 regular-season victories last season, and this team is not as good, and there's another team in the AFC West that won its final 10 regular-season games (including a blowout in Denver) and shut out Houston in the playoffs before barely losing in New England.
The Kansas City Chiefs won't get Jamaal Charles back to speed for a couple of weeks and Justin Houston for the first half of the season, but they've got everyone else, and they will win six of their last seven for an 11-5 record.
The Colossal Game is Christmas Day in K.C., and the Broncos lose and finish 10-6 _ with other defeats to Carolina (30-20), Cincinnati, San Diego, Oakland and New England. Oakland ends up 8-8 and San Diego 6-10.
_NFC South: Panthers; NFC North: Packers; AFC East: Patriots; AFC North: Steelers.
_NFC West: Cardinals; NFC East: Giants; AFC South: Colts; AFC West: Chiefs.
_AFC wild cards: Broncos, Bengals.
_NFC wild cards: Seahawks, Vikings.
