The more money there is in college football, the worse the pressure gets. Ole’ Miss has had two coaches in their history deliver career winning records in SEC play. The stadium is named after one of them. The other one was fired this week less than a year after culminating a 10-win season with a Cotton Bowl victory.

There was a lot of buzz this week when Mark Cuban announced on his blog that he was interested in creating a hedge fund that would wager on sporting events. If you read his comments at www.blogmaverick.com you can see that he’s making that statement as a way to criticize the financial markets for the paucity of data and unbiased information available on publicly traded companies compared to the easy access we all have to sports information. To the great relief of David Stern, I’m sure, he’s not serious about the plan to start a betting hedge fund.

Even if Cuban was serious, his hedge fund idea would never work. You have to realize that over 90% of hedge funds have over $5 million in assets under management. A bankroll in that range simply wouldn’t work in sports betting. Based on the volume you’d have to have a team of people bet into rapidly moving numbers, often getting the worst of it. If you won at all you’d get limited, barred, banned, etc. Winning sports bettors with $5,000 bankrolls are not welcomed at many sports books and sports books are not in business to service profitable bettors with $5 million bankrolls.

Diamond Ferri’s stunning performance for Syracuse in Orangemen’s annihilation of Boston College was simply the best two-way performance we’ve seen in this era of football. Talk all you want about Charles Woodson and Deion Sanders running a few routes as wide receivers, Ferri was running the ball between the tackles and taking big hits. The ironman ran for 141 yards and 2 TD’s on 28 carries. He also had six tackles, returned an interception 44 yards for a TD, and returned a couple of punts. Ferri was on the field for over 125 plays, including 80 of the SU’s 86 offensive plays and 15 special teams plays. Ferri was both the offensive and defensive player of the week in Big East and the Walter Camp Foundation’s national player of the week both on offense and defense. Simply remarkable.

Want some proof that there is entirely too much emphasis put on the NFL draft? Georgia has put a lot of top-notch talent into the NFL in recent years. Jonathan Sullivan is not one of them. The overall #6 pick in the NFL draft a couple of years back was in street clothes on Sunday for the Saints loss to the Falcons. He wasn’t injured, he was just inactive, the Saints coaches deciding that he just wasn’t in a position to buttress their horrendous defense.

My Strategic Sports Publishing handicapping service is now a documented 62-31 (66.7%) against the pointspread in college and NFL football combined this season. The Sports Monitor documents our selections, but she doesn’t document teasers, so our 3-0 NFL Teaser mark is undocumented, but has garnered additional profits. If you want to get on board with our late phone service call me at 770-649-1078 to get signed up. Or call our 24-hour hotline for game analysis and selections at 770-618-8700. My colleague Dave Fobare has a similar service at 770-618-8707.

Major League Baseball’s special Sluttiest Wife Lifetime Achievement Award was claimed by New York Mets’ pitcher Kurt Benson’s wife Anna. Mrs. Benson, an actress/model/whatever told a radio interviewer “I told Kris because that's the biggest thing in athletics, they cheat all the time. I told him, cheat on me all you want. If you get caught, I'm going to f$&* everybody on your entire team, coaches, trainers, players. Everybody would get a turn. If my husband cheated on me and embarrassed me like that, I will embarrass him more than he could ever imagine.” No word on whether the Mets are using this as a selling point in the free agent wars.

Auburn and Tennessee meet in the SEC Championship game at 6PM EST in Atlanta on Saturday. It will be the first game for either team on artificial turf this season. Last summer Georgia Dome’s fast and hard artificial surface was replaced with the more forgiving field turf. But it is still something of an adjustment for both teams.

It is worth mentioning that a backup linebacker for Tennessee is being investigated for his role in a brawl at a nightclub in Knoxville at 2AM on Wednesday morning. Witnesses reported approximately 20 football players in attendance and said that other football players were “stomping” people. The line on this game came off the board for a short time in some places. Although Tennessee doesn’t have a reputation as Discipline U and it is likely that hoops would be jumped through to keep certain players eligible, the situation bears watching.

11-0 Auburn is clearly the more accomplished team of the two. Auburn has the statistical edge in just about every category you could imagine. Head to head the Tigers mashed the Vols in Knoxville on October 2 with edges in yardage (400-293) and turnovers (6-2) leading to the 34-10 Auburn win. Auburn dominated that game and the score could have been much worse had the Tigers played less conservatively in the second half. The two teams have four common opponents (Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama). Both clubs beat all four opponents, with Auburn having a bigger margin of victory against each. Auburn beat the quartet of common foes by a combined 79 points to a 20-point combined margin of victory for Tennessee.

9-2 Tennessee is down to their third string quarterback and Auburn has a big edge at that position. Tiger QB Jason Campbell has had four offensive coordinators at Auburn during his tenure but he is thriving under Al Borges, going for nearly 10 yards per pass attempt. Tennessee QB Rick Clausen has had horrible INT’s thrown under pressure returned for TD’s against Notre Dame and Kentucky. He’s completed 62% of his passes in 10 quarters of action since Ainge got hurt, with 4 TD’s and 5 INT’s. Freshman QB Brett Schaefer may be healthy enough to play some, but he would be more of a change of pace.

Not shown in these on-field performance numbers are a couple of situational advantages for Tennessee. Same season college football revenge in conference championships and bowl games is a pretty positive factor. The Vols have also come up big in games where they appear to have little chance. The Vols have been a double-digit dog three times in recent years. In 2001 at Florida, last season at Miami, and this year at Georgia. In all three games Tennessee didn’t just cover, they won outright. That’s something to consider despite the advantages that Auburn has all over the field.

The only team to score more than 14 points against Auburn this season was Arkansas. But Auburn had a 30-0 lead over the Hogs midway through the second quarter, and those points were of the garbage time variety. With national championship consideration on the line there will be no letup in intensity on the part of the Tigers today. It is possible, though unlikely, that a hugely impressive win could catapult them over Oklahoma if enough voters reverse the two in the rankings if the Sooners struggle. While we respect Fulmer’s underdog tendencies, it is tough to see Auburn giving up a lot of points here. The under may be the way to look in this game as Auburn’s stellar defense plays with ferocity to the final gun.

In the NFL, where ESPN’s Michael Irvin gives the hardest hitting interviews with the most challenging questions, let’s stick with a common theme and look at the total in the Dolphins/Bills game. This opened 35 and was bet up slightly. Ordinarily you should look for a team that has played a string of overs to revert to a low-scoring norm. But when was the last time that an NFL team that hadn’t played an under in over two months had a total open up so low in a game not played in windy Northern climes? Good question, and it speaks to the difficulty that the public has in accepting the fact that Miami is playing better offense while their defense isn’t as good as given credit for. Buffalo’s offense has been kick started by the emergence of Willis McGahee, who certainly wants to have a huge game in this homecoming. Look to the over here.

Thanks for reading us this week. Good luck and be careful. If you’d like to get this newsletter directly via email you can do so by signing up at http://www.consumerbet.com/email.html. Remember to call our free hotline at 770-618-8700, a free 24-hour service with analysis and selections every game day.