South Shore Press News Director Stefan I. Mychajliw: I’m joined by South Shore Press Sports Director Tom Barton. Tom, how are you?
South Shore Press Sports Director Tom Barton: You have to ask me that? If you read the article about the plays that I had and the money that I made, I'm doing very well today.
Mychajliw: Tom is a humble guy, the nicest guy in the world. I love working with him, but I will throw all humility out the window when it comes to you, because you are legitimately one of the most respected sports bettors in America. And you hit the nail on the head on pretty much everything when it comes to betting the Super Bowl, did you not?
Barton: I wrote the article and I said, hey, be a party pooper, bet all of the player prop unders, bet them all. If you want to just root against both teams. And I basically bet them all. Outside of Jalen Hurts’ rushing yards, Jalen Hurts’ passing, even in a blowout, Jalen Hurts passing yards was under, AJ Brown receiving yards and catches was under, Devontae Smith yards and catches were under.
Travis Kelsey went under, Saquon Barkley went under, Kareem Hunt went under, Patrick Mahomes, everybody except for really Xavier Worthy and Hurts’s rushing, everybody went under their totals under under under in a game that went over which is really unique.
Mychajliw: But you called it, did you not? You basically said, folks, here's how you should bet. And it actually came to fruition, correct?
Barton: Absolutely. What we have to understand is that most of the public loves to now bet prop plays. It's their favorite thing. Bet on the players. I know them. I know them from fantasy.
And people that have never bet are going to throw something on prop plays. So what the casino does is they go, we're going to inflate, inflate, inflate. Because nobody wants to bet an under.
It's boring. But I'm that guy that's collecting at the window where everybody else is wondering what happened.
Mychajliw: But how do you reconcile that though? Because the game was 60 plus points. Was it more turnovers, the points on turnovers that caught up to that? How do you quantify that?
Barton: That's exactly what it is. Patrick Mahomes threw a pick six. That doesn't go on anybody's ledger, right? It's a pick six. That's seven points. He threw another interception inside the 15 yard line.
So they didn't have a lot of yards to go, right? So there you go. That's 14 points. It was another turnover in their field of play. And my biggest play that I gave out on my Fox Sports Radio show, I gave to SouthShorePress.com readers. I gave out everywhere.
And I told everybody my biggest play was Jake Elliott. Let's not forget, Jake Elliott hit four field goals last night. I had over one and a half, four field goals. So when the kicker gets involved and the defense gets involved, just the numbers, the prop plays are just not gonna be there.
Mychajliw: Maybe I should listen to you more often when it comes to betting on Super Bowls?
Barton: How about my fun Super Bowl prop that I talked about? Over two people to attempt a pass. At the end of the game, Kenny Pickett comes in, throws the worst pass, maybe in Super Bowl history, but I don't care if it connects or not, and I got that.
That I did not expect. I thought maybe a kicker, a punter, maybe Worthy or Kelsey throws one. No, at the end of the game in a blowout, which nobody saw coming. Thank you, Kenny Pickett, for throwing a terrible pass.
Mychajliw: What advice would you give to folks who bet on big games like that? Because it seems as though professionals for the most part don't. So everybody tries to make a buck on the Super Bowl or big games, World Series, whatever it is. So as a betting expert then, what advice would you give to people if they're going to bet, let's say the World Series or the Super Bowl?
Barton: Go into it with a fun mentality. You don't have to be like me. I go into it as a business. I'm trying to make money. I'm trying to feed my family. It's what I'm trying to do.
Go into it with a fun mentality. But if you really do want to make money in this, you have to believe that Vegas knows what they're doing. The linesmakers, oddsmakers know what they're doing.
So they're not going to give away free money. If you're looking at the numbers, think about what the public's betting. Travis Kelce over, Patrick Mahomes over, Jalen Hurts over, A.J. Brown over, and go under. Right? You play unders. The public loves favorites and the public loves overs. So, generally speaking, go under and under and underdogs.
Mychajliw: Because clearly the Chiefs were the favorites. So whoever bet the Eagles won big money. The Eagles won big, they covered the spread,the Chiefs were the favorites. So at the end of the day, Tom, does Vegas make money no matter what, regardless of who wins the game?
Barton: Absolutely. More people were betting on the Eagles than anybody else, right? They really shifted the line. The line came down from one and a half to one. The Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City hate really drove the money.
But I spoke to a sports book director and he told me, we want the Eagles to win because so many people bet the Chiefs before the season on futures plays that it wound up evening itself out.
Do you know where the sportsbooks got most hurt yesterday? The coin toss. Everybody was on tails, and more people bet the coin toss than any other prop bet on the board, and they hit tails. They actually got hurt before the game began.
Mychajliw: I just happened to be in Vegas over the summer, and I think I put $20 down on the Buffalo Bills winning the Super Bowl. And guys like me, I bet with my heart, I'm a Buffalo Bills fan. So at the same respect, everybody probably did that for the Chiefs at the beginning of the season, and lo and behold, they lost their money, just like I did.
Barton: And that's one of those long bets that the casinos are concerned about. We're going to get crushed on the futures plays. So even though million dollar bets were coming in on the Eagles, there was so much more money laying out there for futures plays.
Mychajliw: Let's talk about the game now. The Philadelphia Eagles just steamrolled, steamrolled the Chiefs. And as a Die Hard Buffalo Bills fan, I kept thinking, all right, if the Bills beat the Chiefs, of course, I play that in my head. If it were the Bills, how would they have done? The Bills' defense is horrible. And I mean, horrible. So that would have been just a 60 to 50 point, gun slinging shootout. But weren't the Chiefs exposed for not being as the hype put them out to be?
Barton: They were exposed all year. If you paid attention, and I did talk about this leading into the game. They had set the record for 17 straight games winning one possession games.
Look, you could say that that's fortitude and good coaching. A lot of that's luck.
We watched this year a two point win against the Raiders where there's a weird call, refs, a guy fumbles the ball, the snap.
All kinds of weird things were happening.
They were, and I will say this with 100% certainty, they were an 11-6 team that wound up just losing just one game.
And I think they were exposed. And the other thing, this is the hard truth, Stefan, that a lot of people need to kind of accept.
Patrick Mahomes has been exposed, not just this year, for the last two years. He's no longer the 50 touchdown, 5,000 yard guy. The last two years, 26, 27 touchdowns, right about 4,000 yards. He looked like a good quarterback.
He's now at three bad Super Bowls, bad against Tampa, didn't look good against the Eagles last time, didn't look good last night.
Despite the numbers, he looked atrocious last night. And when you look at Mahomes, you go, we have to start evaluating what he is, not what we thought he might be.
Patrick Mahomes' numbers last year, this year, regular season, were almost identical to Aaron Rodgers. That is reality.
Let's start looking at Patrick Mahomes and say maybe they figured something out with Mahomes because the Eagles certainly look like they have. Not just this time, but the last time they played them in the Super Bowl as well.
Mychajliw: So Tom, from a betting perspective, did the betting start the Monday after the Super Bowl by saying who's going to win the Super Bowl next year already?
Barton: I made a bet last night. I have a tradition. I always take a long shot futures play.
You know, not a thousand to one.
Two years ago they weren't sure if Lamar Jackson was gonna come back from Baltimore. man, I got 25 to one odds. By the time he signed, they were down to 12 to one odds.
So I try to find something that I can have good odds on. But the sports books agree with you. The Chiefs and Philly are six to one.
The Lions, the Bills, and the Ravens are all 7-1. I mean, they're right there.
So everybody's jumbled up. You don't want to take a futures play now on one of those because what can possibly happen? There could be an injury and they could fall off. They're going to go from 7-1 to like 5-1. You don't lose that much value. What you want to do if you take an early play before the draft, before free agency, is you want to take a 20-1 or more.
You're hoping that the team that you take makes a big move and now they're 10 to 1 as opposed to your 25 to 1.
Mychajliw: But at the end of the day, and we'll close by this point, whether it's sports betting, a casino, a stock market pick, you don't want to bet what you can't afford to lose, correct?
Barton: No, no, no, no. People ask me all the time, why aren't you sitting in a million dollar mansion? And I said, well, because for me, it's not gambling for fun. This is a source of income. You have to be very, very strategic in it. The best sports bettors in the world are hitting 55 percent. They are grinding out a living. Money management is just as important or I would even argue more important than actually winning and losing.
You can win nine games in a row, but on that tenth game, if you take all of your winnings and you lose it all, you can walk around and say, hey, I'm nine and one.
Yeah, but you have zero dollars in your account, right? So you've got to be very, very careful. Have fun with it. Don't get into this as a professional unless you want to devote 18 hours a day, seven days a week, 365, which is exactly what I do.