There are some weeks when you know you’re not going to win money. This feels like one of those weeks. If you are smart and disciplined, you sit the week out. If you love to gamble, you gamble anyway. I gamble anyway.
I feel like I know two things about this week:
- The Steelers will beat the Jaguars.
- The Chiefs will beat the Raiders.
That’s it. That’s all I know. Or at least all I think I know. So realistically, if I wanted to make money gambling this week, I should just parlay the Steelers-Chiefs moneyline and nothing else.
So why don’t I do that? Because life is not that simple. There must be some psychological reason why I’m not willing to just wager on the one thing I feel relatively certain about and leave the rest alone. It’s probably related to something that happened in my childhood. Marc Maron would know. If I was sitting in his garage, he’d get to the bottom of it. We’d talk about what it was like growing up Jewish in Chicago in the 1970’s. The struggle to find a decent corned beef sandwich. Not knowing if you should dip the latkes in sour cream or apple sauce. The fear of kissing older relatives with mustaches at holiday parties. The time we were riding dirt bikes in the alley and I tried to jump my Huffy over the fence and ended up catching my arm on the top twines and ripping a hole down the length of my bicep.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe my entire gambling life is just an attempt to finally get that white Huffy over the fence in my childhood’s backyard. I just needed more speed heading down the runway. If you don’t have enough speed heading into the ramp, there’s no way to clear it. As a kid, you know that intuitively. Some kids go balls out and peddle as fast as they can down the alley to make sure they clear the fence. Other kids peddle defensively, secretly wishing they were upstairs in their living room watching Battle of the Planets — with Mark, Tiny, Jason, Princess and Keyop — hoping that if they just close their eyes and try, God will help them make it over that fence.
This week’s NFL wagers are headed down the runway without enough speed to clear the fence.
Steelers and Chiefs (MP) -192
Seahawks + Steelers (MP) -112
Ravens + Bucs (MP)
Steelers + Chargers + Chiefs (MP) -104
Rams +3.5 -118
Browns +Panthers + Packers (MP +524)
MP= Moneyline Parlay
