Bears playing "no respect" card.

Football Betting Lines

02/02/2007 -

MIAMI (AP) -Forget the perception that the Chicago Bears are mere patsies for Peyton Manning.

They have a decent chance at winning Sunday's Super Bowl against the Colts. Really.

Maybe these guys aren't quite the Monsters of the Midway - under today's rules, Brian Urlacher might get flagged just for breathing on Manning. But their defense can still be pretty scary.

``The Bears have a way of turning first and 10 into second and 15 into third and 20,'' Tony Dungy said this week.

Yes, the Colts are seven-point favorites despite the Bears' 13-3 regular-season record, second best in the NFL to San Diego's 14-2. There's a simple reason: It's not the Bears who are the underdogs, it's the NFC, which was as bad this season as the AFC was good. Its final four of Indy, New England, San Diego and Baltimore likely would be favored over any of the NFC semifinalists.

Still, Chicago can win this game if three things happen:

- Indianapolis reverts to at least a semblance of its shabby regular-season run defense, an NFL-worst 173 yards a game. That figure has been reduced by a full 100 yards in the playoffs to 73.3.

- Chicago quarterback Rex Grossman plays as he did in better efforts. ``I had 12 games where I played well, six where I played not so well,'' he said. ``Not so well'' is an understatement - in one of those games he had a zero passer rating, in another a 1.3.

- The Bears continue to get turnovers. They had 34 takeaways during the regular season and five more in the playoffs, although they were only plus-6 for the year because of Grossman's propensity for interceptions and fumbles.

If the Bears control the clock with Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson running the ball, it keeps Manning off the field and allows Grossman more opportunities. In other words, he gets more time to throw and Dwight Freeney and the rest of Indy's quick defenders get less time to pressure him into making mistakes.

Manning isn't immune to turnovers. He's thrown six interceptions in three playoff games, including one returned for a touchdown by New England's Asante Samuel in the AFC championship game. That's five more than Grossman, Mr. Turnover, who has one in the playoffs.

But Manning is too savvy to force anything; savvy enough to know that punting is a better alternative to throwing into coverage, especially with the way Urlacher can drop into the deep middle like the safety he was in college.

Most important, Manning finally demonstrated he can produce under pressure with his 80-yard drive in the final minutes against the playoff-tested New England defense.

Beyond that, these Colts are following a path similar to one taken by a team Manning wants to emulate: the 1997 Denver Broncos.

Those Broncos were eliminated in their first game in 1996 after clinching home field with a month to go. And like this year's Colts, who lost four of its last seven games, those Broncos struggled a bit, making the postseason as a wild-card team before sweeping through the playoffs and beating Green Bay 31-24 in the Super Bowl.

Last winter, Manning made a point of talking to the two leaders of that team: John Elway and coach Mike Shanahan. Last summer, he suggested that it might not be a bad thing if the Colts had a lower profile for the 2006 season than they had in 2005, when they won their first 13 games.

``You've got a team that's a little ticked off,'' Manning said, referring to last year's playoff failure. ``There are guys who will play that way. I think you need that to rebound from last season.''

There's one more thing the Colts need to do to emulate those Broncos.

No, Manning is unlikely to do a spinorama for a first down, as Elway did in the signature play of that game.

But his gestures and waves at the line of scrimmage, often a ruse, may not be this time - he'll point at the holes in the Chicago defense at safety and defensive tackle, vacated by the injured Mike Brown and Tommie Harris.

That's enough to make the final score:

COLTS, 31-23.

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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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.

To visit this sports book go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting needs.