Nationwide championship battle moves on to Phoenix

Autoracing Betting Lines

11/09/2011 - Avondale, AZ (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Series: NASCAR Nationwide. Date: Saturday, November 12. Race: Wypall 200. Site: Phoenix International Raceway. Track: one-mile oval. Start time: 3:30 p.m. (et). Laps: 200. Miles: 200. 2010 Winner: Carl Edwards. Television: ESPN 2. Radio: Motor Racing Network (MRN)/SIRIUS NASCAR Satellite.

With two races to go, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. holds a 17-point lead over Elliott Sadler. Stenhouse and Sadler are now the only drivers who remain in title contention in the Nationwide Series.

Stenhouse's sixth-place finish coupled with a ninth-place run for Sadler in last Saturday's race at Texas allowed Stenhouse to add two more points to his lead.

"That's good," Stenhouse said. "That's better than where we were when we came [to Texas], and that's really all we can ask for."

As is the case for the Sprint Cup Series, Nationwide teams face a lot of uncertainties this weekend at Phoenix, since the track has recently been repaved and reconfigured.

"It may be one of those races that changes the game in the championship standings, and our team is going to do everything we can to make the right adjustments throughout the weekend to have a solid finish before heading to Homestead," Sadler said.

While the fight for the driver's championship has turned out to be a good one, the battle for the owner's title is even better. Just two points separate Joe Gibbs Racing's No.18 team from Roush Fenway Racing's No.60 team.

Jack Roush, who is on the verge of winning his 300th NASCAR race, leads all team owners with nine Nationwide victories at Phoenix. Carl Edwards, driver of the No.60 Ford for Roush Fenway, has won the last three fall events here.

Edwards is one of four Sprint Cup regulars competing in this race. Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer are the others. Logano is driving the No.18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, which is normally occupied by Kyle Busch, who won at Phoenix in February.

NASCAR has lifted its parking directive against Busch, allowing him to participate in this weekend's races at Phoenix. He was not scheduled to compete in the Nationwide event here.

Last weekend, NASCAR suspended Busch from the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races at Texas after he intentionally wrecked Ron Hornaday Jr. in the Camping World Truck Series event there.

Forty-eight teams are on the preliminary entry list for the Wypall 200.

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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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