5. Win your fantasy football league
If everyone else in your league is actually watching the games you have no chance of picking up the next big thing the day after they put together an amazing performance on Sunday. If you want to have a chance at winning your fantasy league this season, and in the future, watch the games.

4. Your team has a chance
No matter how bad your team might be out of the gate it still has a chance in today’s NFL. Just ask the Giants, who went 0-2 (and an awful 0-2 by the way) last year and still went on to win the Super Bowl.

3. Manning commercials?
Who’s going to have the most commercials, Eli or Peyton? The total number of watchable commercials is a whole other story.

2. Big games
There’s at least one big matchup on the schedule each week this season, including Philadelphia at Dallas in Week 2, Jacksonville at Indianapolis in Week 3, and Minnesota at Tennessee in Week 4.

1. All the kids are doing it
Isn’t that reason enough?

Sixteen teams will get a rude awakening this week. Figuring out which ones is more difficult at this time of year, simply because the data isn’t there to evaluate. Last year’s numbers only give us a hazy picture of what might happen in 2008. Change comes in the form of new coaches, draft picks, preseason injuries, and players whose careers are on an upward or downward slope.

If you judge these factors well, you’ll be ahead of the betting public. This is the heart of “value” betting. Look at the Kansas City-New England opener. Kansas City has quietly improved, especially through the draft, while the Patriots have the burden of expectations after playing amazingly well in 2007. The Chiefs have value, provided the betting line heavily favors the Pats.

Tom Brady, Stetson Man.

Tom Brady is one of the few elite players in the NFL who gets to be loved and hated at the same time. The love comes from his actual performance; the hate is more about his pouty GQ covers and his taste in supermodel girlfriends.

Now Brady is being accused of dogging it in the preseason. He hasn’t played a single down, claiming an injured foot – although Brady says it’s not the same injury that briefly put him in a walking boot just before the Super Bowl. In the glimpses reporters have caught of Brady in practice this month, he appears to be moving just fine.

The Patriots are notorious for withholding injury information. They won’t even confirm which foot is bothering Brady (early reports said it was the right foot). And Belichick has a history of, shall we say, circumventing the rules. If there’s something fishy going on, I doubt it has anything to do with Brady wimping out.

That obsession goes double for 2008. Here are 10 pivots who need our special attention, starting with the three men involved in the season’s biggest storyline.

1. Brett Favre, New York Jets
2. Chad Pennington, Miami Dolphins
3. Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers
4. Tarvaris Jackson, Minnesota Vikings
5. Rex Grossman, Chicago Bears
6. J.T. O’Sullivan, San Francisco 49ers
7. Trent Edwards, Buffalo Bills
8. Troy Smith, Baltimore Ravens
9. Chris Redman, Atlanta Falcons
10. JaMarcus Russell, Oakland Raiders

Many of these quarterbacks are in heated battles for a starting job. If they don’t deliver, those handicappers who have studied up and down the depth charts will have a major advantage.

That question has to be answered eventually. It could even be this year. Manning had an inflamed bursa sac removed on July 14; the Colts say that he should be fine for the season opener against the visiting Chicago Bears, but Manning hasn’t even thrown a pass yet in practice.

We don’t know all that much about how well Jim Sorgi can play, either. However, Sorgi does have a 90.4 passer rating in mop-up duty, completing 77 of 126 passes over the past four years. Playing behind one of the best offensive lines in the league always helps.

The quarterback remains the most important position, but football is still a team sport. The Colts won’t panic if Sorgi faces the Bears. Anything longer than that, on the other hand…

Now that the non-waiver trade deadline is behind us, we have even more interest in watching the Boston Red Sox – even if they start the week playing the 52-60 Kansas City Royals. Jason Bay is 4-for-11 with his new team, scoring two runs in each of his three appearances.

Over in Los Angeles, Manny Ramirez has been more impressive to Dodgers fans: 8-for-13 with two home runs. Sadly, Juan Pierre is still in the starting outfield, but L.A. has still climbed over Arizona on the National League odds list. Next up for the Dodgers: the St. Louis Cardinals, struggling to stay in the NL Central race.

Things pick up again later in the week with matchups featuring teams that are in direct competition. St. Louis is going to Wrigley Field to face the Chicago Cubs, and the Florida Marlins are in the Big Apple to take on the New York Mets.

Chez Reavie isn’t my favorite French restaurant, nor is it where the Los Angeles Dodgers play. Nope, Chez Reavie is the 2008 Canadian Open champion after carding a 1-under 70 on what turned out to be a beautiful Sunday at Glen Abbey. It’s the maiden PGA Tour win for the rookie, who was ranked No. 137 on the money list heading into the Open. Reavie more than doubled his earnings by taking a $900,000 check home for his efforts; he becomes the eighth player in 2008 to win his first-ever Tour event.

The Wichita native started the day one stroke ahead of Anthony Kim, the second favorite going into the tournament at 10-1. Kim shot a 64 on Saturday and was pegged at 8-13 before the final round, but he crumpled down the stretch with a 75. Billy Mayfair ended up finishing second, three strokes behind Reavie at 3-1 odds for Sunday.

Then Harrington injured his wrist hitting an impact bag, and his British Open odds started tumbling, from 14-1 to 16-1 to 33-1. But sure enough, Harrington shot a 74-68-72-69 to finish at +3, four strokes better than Ian Poulter and six ahead of Greg Norman, who held the lead after three rounds.

Sergio Garcia, who was the favorite going into the Open at 8-1, got progressively worse as the weekend wore on. He shot a 78 on Sunday and ended up tied for 51st place with a +17. Ernie Els rebounded from his opening round 80 to finish at +12, and Phil Mickelson came in at +14, tied with the immortal Jean Van de Velde.

The most successful corporations know how to spread the wealth around the community. Major League Baseball is very successful indeed. They’re turning the All-Star Game into a big-time display of philanthropy, giving away over $7 million to the New York City area and spending countless hours on charity work.

My personal favorite on the week’s list of events was the stickball tournament they played on Sunday in Harlem. Willie Mays (above photo) was on hand to cheer on the kids; the game ended in a 9-9 tie, but this was one All-Star event where a tie was entirely satisfactory.

Mays was a stickball legend in Harlem. When Mays was a member of the New York Giants, he would sometimes play with the neighborhood kids before a home game. “That’s how I learned to hit a breaking ball,” Mays told Salon back in 1999. Mays could hit it three sewers, i.e. three manhole covers away. Now that would make a great All-Star competition.

Online gambling can be done in the blink of an eye. Baseball moves along at a snail’s pace. Combine the two, and you open up a world of possibilities for live betting on MLB games.

A sharp bettor can really clean up in these situations. Consider Sunday night’s matchup between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. The game was tied going into the bottom of the ninth inning; you can picture all the Yankees fans watching the game, itching to bet on New York to win the game before it went into extra innings. It didn’t. Nor did the Red Sox win in the top of the 10th.

Beating the betting public is still the name of the game; live betting puts pressure on bettors to make choices, widening the gap between sharps and squares. Live betting also offers that many more chances to build a bankroll. The more, the merrier.