Sports betting in Vegas sometimes small potatoes

Back when he was known for drawing cartoon rabbits, Matt Groening had a funny one depicting an elaborate Main Street-style parade, complete with a marching band and all the trimmings.

In the corner of the panel, our hero — it must have been little Bongo the rabbit — is shown, ignoring the parade and oblivious to all the fanfare, intently watching a line of tiny ants marching along the sidewalk.

That’s the image my mind will conjure this week or next, whenever someone tries to make a big deal of the fact that Nevada’s Super Bowl handle could exceed $100 million for the first time.

Good advice to follow -- but not all the time -- on college basketball betting

Alan Boston does use a computer, but not to crunch numbers. Instead, he scours the sports sections of newspapers linked to the Web site of the American Journalism Review, hoping to unearth a nugget of information he can put to work betting on college basketball.

Boston eschews databases in favor of trying to get in tune with the “rhythms” of a couple of hundred college basketball teams on the betting board.

“I know that sounds weird to some people,” Boston says.

Blackjack's 'Four Horsemen' ride again as they're inducted into Blackjack Hall of Fame

I'm certain this event was very meaningful to all of the "Horsemen" in their twilight years, and I was privileged to have been there on a special evening. Sadly, Wil Cantey died at age 77 less than five months later. His legacy lives on.

The four newest members of the Blackjack Hall of Fame never counted cards.

They never gambled for high stakes or won much money in casinos.

In fact, after making their indelible mark on the game, they stopped following developments in blackjack in the early 1960s, around the time Ed Thorp published his influential book, “Beat the Dealer.”