Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
Redeitz, I remember reading about a guy that owned and published a sports handicapping rag called The Gold Sheet. I think this has been a few decades ago but he was kind of an honest guy in competition with all the bullshit handicappers. He challenged those handicappers to a contest where he put up a $100,000 prize. Any of those touts that could hit 70% winners through 100 picks would get the $100,000. It started with a bunch of handicappers. The last handicapper left dropped out of the contest at about 25 picks. The handwriting was on the wall. No one was going to even come close to 70% winners.

PS: I personally consider consistently winning sports handicappers to be AP's. And I think the rarest of all AP's is a consistently winning horse handicapper.
A copy of the first interview I ever gave regarding sports handicapping was in the "package." The interviewer asked me if I did horses. I said something like, "Too hard. I'd sooner bet on three-legged giraffe races."

Mort Olshan was one of the industry founders with his Gold Sheet. Nobody real shoots for 70%. And straight-up handicapping doesn't tell the whole story these days, either. Numbers move so much and so fast in college football that half the skill is knowing which way they'll move and when they'll move.

The best combined college/NFL year I ever had was about five years ago. I hit 66% (66-34, obviously) over a hundred games, and that was including a 17-game winning streak that I wrote about during the streak. The record and streak were documented in a contest online for handicappers sponsored by a subsidiary of Marc Lawrence and Jim Feist. I did not win -- another dude was unconscious picking college totals in the Pac 12 and Mountain West. He actually beat me. And of course, second place got zero cash.

Anybody winning 55% is doing a stellar job. That's the bottom line.