How many times did people mention that the Patriots were 24-point favorites over the Eagles last week? Newspapers wrote about it. Radio hosts blabbed about it. Even ESPN.com mentioned it on their main page following the game last night. It seemed that all people were talking about was how much the Patriots were favored, which is understandable considering it was the biggest point spread in the history of the NFL.
However, why are we still taking about it? Point spreads don’t matter in football and it shouldn’t have mattered when the Patriots eventually squeaked out a 31-28 win. When the sports books determine how much a team is favored by, it doesn’t mean that they think one team is better than the other by a certain number of points. The sports books didn’t think the Patriots were 24 points better than the Eagles – the public did.
The sports books only care about one thing and that’s getting even action on both sides. The sports books want one person to look at the line and say to themselves, “I love the Patriots against the Donovan McNabb-less Eagles Sunday night and I don’t care what the point spread is!” And they want the next person to say, “Wow, the Eagles are getting 24 points? That’s a lot.” They could (not) care less about which team wins, because no matter what, they’re making money.
The media needs to take it easy on all the point-spread talk. Yes, it was crazy that a team was actually favored by more than 20 points in a professional football game. But point spreads don’t really have anything to do with what actually transpires on the field and the Eagles proved that last night.
