Agreed--not a good bet if you're wanting to take OHIO. -110 and you have to win two games, when you probably could just bet the Championship Game and only have to pick one game right to get your money, especially considering if it's Akron it will probably be a very small line one way or the other.
BTW, if it's OHIO vs. Akron in the Championship, any thoughts on what that line would be? I was thinking something like Akron -1.5, but these odds must mean we would be the favorites.
I was gonna say something similar that you'd be better off just betting Ohio game-by-game.
As for your question, Vegas got burned big on the Akron -8 over Kent line last week that never moved even after the suspension was announced. Me thinks they'll realize what losing Abreu means now and over correct. It'll depend on how each team looks in the semis, but I'd guess the line would look more like OHIO -2.
Money moves lines on games not injury reports or discipline. Now granted on a big game, injuries and suspensions move money on big games, but lines are set based on money.
You're crazy. The exact reason that there's an injury report in professional football is so the gamblers have accurate lines. Yes, money moves lines, but the availability of players is usually what sets them. The Abreu suspension was announced after Akron v Kent opened, and there was no adjustment. Maybe not enough big money players caught on to make money off of it, but that line staying where it was, was certainly a miss.
No, the injury report does not move lines, it's the money played and only the money played. Vegas sole goal is to make the action profitable, not pick who will actually win the contest.
The Akron v. Kent game is not a miss, it was simply an example of what I am talking about, only money moves the line, and a MAC game rarely has enough Vegas play to move lines. If that would have been a Big 10 or Big East 1st place team with that suspension the line would have been moved, not because Vegas is not paying attention to the injury report, but because the gamblers would be loading up on the injury news, and this in turn would adjust the line.
From an HBO show on the topic two years ago:
"Do the odds in Vegas come out of actual predictions about who will win, or are they more of a prediction of how people will bet? If someone is a 4-1 favorite, is that because Vegas actually thinks they're a 4-1 favorite, or they just think that will result in the most even betting? Is it different for different sports?"
"The betting lines start as a guess and get validated by the masses. The house is incentivized to minimize payouts. They do that by offsetting each side of the bet against the other while making money off the rake in the middle. The closer they get to even odds (as determined by the masses) the higher their rake will be with respect to any discrepancy to one side or the other of the line.
The market forces this. Without it, there would be arbitrage opportunities, right?"