Arkansas Football Fans Can Fold Their No-Respect Cards (Opinion)

Arkansas football fans have a long history of playing the no-respect card.

Whether it’s whining about their beloved Razorbacks not being voted high enough in polls or complaining about being too low on the TV-game ladder, Arkansas fans at times have turned playing the no-respect card into an art form. Troll a message board for five minutes during football season, in fact, and you’re likely to come across at least one passionate thread explaining why this or that talking head is anti-Arkansas.

Alas, I have good news for Hog fans when it comes to the 2011 season. Arkansas is getting respect, and plenty of it.

Yes, I know the major preseason polls have yet to be released. I also realize we’re months away from knowing how many prime-time TV games Arkansas will play.

But the kind of respect I’m talking about doesn’t involve polls or TV games. I’m talking about the kind of respect that emanates from Las Vegas.

And as my good friend Rod From Fayetteville likes to say, “Vegas don’t lie.”

It would be fair to wonder at this point what any of this has to do with sports business. Well, as many of you know, football is big business in Las Vegas.

According to a recent post by Pro Football Weekly’s Mike Wilkening, the Nevada Gaming Control Board reported the 181 sportsbooks that took football wagers (single bets, not parlays) in 2010 cleared more than $56 million in profit. And though the board doesn’t distinguish between wagers on the NFL and other leagues, three oddsmakers interviewed by PFW said the annual money wagered on NFL and NCAA games is similar.

Now to the good part for Arkansas. According to Sportsbook.com, the Razorbacks are a 30-to-1 shot to win the 2012 BCS National Championship.

Another way to explain this is that Arkansas is listed at +3000. That means if you were to bet $100 on Arkansas to win the national title, and it happened, you’d collect $3,000.

Now, before anyone starts screaming that +3000 isn’t a sign of respect, consider that only 15 teams in all of America have better odds. Oklahoma (+400) and Alabama (+500) lead the pack, and any reasonable college football fan would have a hard time arguing with that.

The remaining 13 are a mix of traditional powers like LSU (+1000), Florida (+2500) and Penn State (+2500) mixed with teams that figure to have easier paths to a title than Arkansas. That group includes Oregon (+1000) and Boise State (+1800).

There are some head-scratchers, too, like Florida State (+900) and Notre Dame (+2000), but even those should bring some comfort to Arkansas fans. That’s because gambling lines and odds are all about perception, which can be translated to some extent to mean respect.

When Team A is favored by 20 points over Team B, for example, that doesn’t necessarily mean Las Vegas believes Team A will win by 20 points. It means that’s the number Las Vegas believes will generate even betting on both sides.

When even betting occurs, Las Vegas can’t lose. It simply collects “juice,” usually 10 percent, from the losers and calls that profit.

In Arkansas’ case, Las Vegas seems to believe the Razorbacks are among the 15 to 20 teams most likely to win the national championship. Teams like Ole Miss, for those keeping score, aren’t even on the board.

So, where will Arkansas end up in the preseason polls? And how many prime-time games will the Hogs play?

Who cares? For now, the people that rake in tens of millions of dollars on football betting every year are showing Arkansas some love. And that kind of bottom-line respect means far more than anything Mark May has to say.