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It took me nearly 40 years of professional handicapping before I landed on a wagering method that compliments both my strategy for picking winners and quest to maximize profits. Not only that, but I didn’t uncover this gold mine during a football campaign, but rather during last year’s basketball season.

Long before I became a professional handicapper in 1981, and even before I worked in the front office of the Oakland Raiders beginning in 1973, I had developed charts to show that motivation is the most important factor in reliably identifying point spread winners. Talent is already reflected in the posted point spreads and public opinion, but the factors that tip the spread advantages to the favorite or underdog are tied to the motivation of the teams entering the contest.

This strategy most often lands me on selections that by most accounts would be on the inferior team in the contest based on talent alone, but get the edge that is driven by the motivational factors. For 38 years, I had taken the brunt of occasional tough losses with underdogs that jumped ahead, led at halftime, but didn’t have the horses to finish the game on top.

Few things are more disappointing than making a point spread selection that jumps ahead of a more talented opponent and leads the game into the fourth quarter only to have the real talent in the battle prevail in the end and cover the line on the game.

While the primary focus of Qoxhi Picks has always been the National Football League, we have offered season clients selections on the NCAA Basketball Tournament and NBA Playoffs. While the ball is a different shape than we handicap in the NFL, the motivation that dictates results is the same.

The most consistent factor is that the more motivated teams have the ability to jump ahead while the final result can sometimes land with the more talented team and occasionally that is enough to cover the point spread. With this in mind, in last year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, we recommended to our clients that they wager each game twice, once on the first half and again on the final score.

Years of watching talking heads declare their opinions as fact, I found it most refreshing recently when a professor that was introduced with a litany of educational accomplishments and high positions held gave a definite answer.

“I can positively state without any fear of repudiation that after studying all the evidence I can unequivocally state I have no idea.”

This week, Major League Baseball opened play for a 60 game season and playoff field with 16 teams, eight from both the American and National Leagues. In a typical season, teams would play 162 games and in the process whittle the playoff field to ten teams, five from each league.

On Friday, the National Basketball League will tip off a continuation of their 2019-2020 season, more than a month after they would have already decided the league championship in a typical campaign. My money would have been on the Milwaukee Bucks over the Los Angeles Lakers in five games. Maybe now we will see if what I thought was going to happen before the season was sidelined with the virus, will be confirmed in real time.

The National Football League has cancelled their preseason schedule in increments. First the Hall of Fame Game scheduled for early August, then the first two full weeks of preseason games, and now the entire preseason. Yet, while cancelling the preseason games, they are starting summer training camps on schedule.

Having been through a number of summer camps, I can tell you that the weekly games are a huge relief after a few weeks of banging on your teammates. With no preseason games scheduled, and training camps not paired back, are the teams going to have an opportunity to scrimmage against opponents? If not, how do they get “game ready” for a season?