How far back to you go as far as buying services ?

[secondbase]

Date ourselves here and I am sure some of you will not have ever heard of some of these guys and or services and of course some are very familiar. Most of these I bought would have been in the 80's

I have bought from the following :

Mike Warren

Johnny Unitas ( affiliated with Mike Warren )

Cobra

Texas Sports Wire

Jim Feist .. killed us in hoops

Sports Unlimited

Scarne Sports ( not real sure what he was called... Scarnavechia was his last name. I actually went out to Vegas and met him as he wanted me to invest and go in with him ).

Big Duke .. good guy, actually made us some money. Once again not sure what he was called. Had good connections with some Texas Oil Money.

Of course we all waited for the BIG game of the Year.. SCORES LOCK OF THE YEAR, which sent bookies scrambling, taking it off the board, bumping it up 4 pts or more.

the memories

[secondbase]

we actually bought a service called Indiana Sportswire and it was a concensus type service... It gave all the touts picks in a certain order, was quite organized.

[chibob]

I watched the Tom Snyder late show on TV in the mid 70's and he had a young man, about 24 or so, named Danny Sheridan..Yep, same one who is line maker for U S A Today. The show was on a Thursday night and Sheridan gave 12 pickss, 10 college and 2 NFL....He also said he would send 8 additional plays to Snyder on Saturday morning and Tom could read the results on his Monday show. The 12 games went 10-1-1 (okla state missed an extra point to put the game on 8, a push..somethings one never forgets). His record for the weekend was 17-2-1, and I became a customer. He was the best I ever saw, hitting 13 straight Bowl games one year and going 27-3 run in the NFL, and he never laid over -1/ 1.5, and 99% were dogs. I got divorced in about 1983/84, moved to Chicago with my clothes and a radio and on the 13-0 Bowl run, made $22,000, bought some awesome furniture. Sheridan stayed hot for about 10 years, then the USA thing started and he lost focus

Only other service I paid for was Exec, back in the late 80's, early 90's, but have bought some consensus reports.

[secondbase]

wow
danny sheridan...Yes he was almost exclusive a Dog picker

[tw burke]

Originally Posted by secondbase

Date ourselves here and I am sure some of you will not have ever heard of some of these guys and or services and of course some are very familiar. Most of these I bought would have been in the 80's

I have bought from the following :

Mike Warren

Johnny Unitas ( affiliated with Mike Warren )

Cobra

Texas Sports Wire

Jim Feist .. killed us in hoops

Sports Unlimited

Scarne Sports ( not real sure what he was called... Scarnavechia was his last name. I actually went out to Vegas and met him as he wanted me to invest and go in with him ).

Big Duke .. good guy, actually made us some money. Once again not sure what he was called. Had good connections with some Texas Oil Money.

Of course we all waited for the BIG game of the Year.. SCORES LOCK OF THE YEAR, which sent bookies scrambling, taking it off the board, bumping it up 4 pts or more.

the memories

all shysters

[chibob]

I just googled Sheridan..his record on the Snyder show is in the article, and the 17-2-1 is correct. What I would give for a repaeat of those years


Danny Sheridan is a young man with a six-figure income. He has appeared on NBC's Tomorrow and ABC's Good Morning America. He has been featured in Esquire and Argosy and acclaimed by newspaper columnists, including such heavy hitters as Dave Anderson of The New York Times and Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times. He is the wonder of football fans across the country. Maybe not all fans, but certainly the 32 million or so who play the office pool, are aware of point spreads, or back their favorites with an occasional wager. Danny Sheridan is a football forecaster. Moreover, he is an inspired forecaster, a guy who gets "vibrations" from "a higher authority." Or so he maintains.

This magazine, too, was intrigued by him. When we visited Danny Sheridan he was 28 and unknown, a garrulous real estate agent in Mobile, Ala. who was dissatisfied with his job and convinced that he had an uncanny power to predict the winners of football games. He "dreamed of scores." He used to walk to nearby Ladd Stadium and toss a football around, waiting to get overwhelmed by a "feeling" of the outcomes of the next Saturday's games. Sheridan claimed that in 1974 he had picked 184 winners in 205 games. He said he hit 28 of his "specials" in a row. More remarkably, he was not simply picking winners, but picking winners against the spread.

Invented by Bookmakers in the 1920s, point spreads are a handicap imposed on the stronger team in any given game. It is a sum of points subtracted from the favored team's score that is meant to transform every game into a fifty-fifty gamble. Thus, when Texas meets Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 2, odds are that the Longhorns will win. But, if they are favored by, say, 7� points, they would have to win by eight points or more for a Texas backer to collect an even-money bet. Favorites cover, or exceed, the spread as often as they don't. So, mathematically, the odds against Sheridan's boast of 28 "specials" in a row, or against 28 consecutive hits on any other fifty-fifty gamble, such as a coin flip, exceed 200 million to 1. "Trust me," he said, "I know it isn't easy."

Sheridan's predicting prowess, if not his actual predictions, was first brought to public attention by Bill Sellers, an award-winning political reporter for the Mobile Press Register. Sellers said that Sheridan's selections were truly astonishing, although he could not substantiate his professed record. Still, Sheridan appeared to be an interesting phenomenon in the world of football, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED ran a story on him in the Sept. 22, 1975 issue.

Shortly afterward Sheridan appeared on the Tomorrow show and was asked to make a few point-spread predictions. He later advertised that he picked 17 of 19; in fact, he correctly picked five of seven. His "best bet," the New York Jets, were beaten 43-0 by Miami. Nonetheless, overnight Sheridan had become a celebrity in betting circles. According to the article in Esquire, he received more than 12,000 letters from football addicts throughout America after his TV appearance. Most were from people asking him to put out a tout sheet. After all, if 50 other tip sheets were being sold around the country during the football season, certainly Sheridan owed it to the public to join in.

Sheridan does not gamble himself because it's illegal, but he hoped to grow rich predicting football winners. At one point he tried to contact Bob Martin, the Las Vegas oddsmaker who was making point spreads before Sheridan was born, trying to find out how he could cash in on his "talent." Martin didn't return the call. Sheridan called Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder and recited his record. When Sheridan insisted he picked 85% winners, Snyder was incredulous. "He's pure applesauce," The Greek said. Sheridan then contacted Mort Olshan, publisher of The Gold Sheet, an information service that's been in business for 21 years. Olshan told Sheridan he didn't think Sheridan could pick the winners after the games had been played. Sheridan, who says he has a photographic memory, said he could. Olshan tested him with two games that had been played the previous season—Texas Christian vs. Rice and Oregon vs. Oregon State—asking Sheridan which team had won and whether it had covered the spread. Sheridan answered incorrectly on both counts in both cases. Olshan showed him the door.

After he came to public attention, Sheridan started a telephone tout service. For $100 he gave clients eight or nine selections a week. New clients kept calling, so Sheridan upped his fee to $300 a week. Still people called. He raised his rates to $500 and later to $900. It was about then that Mark Bernstein, a handicapper and bettor from Far Rockaway, N.Y., phoned Sheridan to ask for his selections. "How many are you?" Sheridan asked. "Eight," said Bernstein. "How much do you bet?" Sheridan asked. "Ten thousand a week," Bernstein responded "O.K.," Sheridan said, "send me $4,500 and we'll talk." Bernstein coughed up.

Sheridan's annual earnings jumped from $18,000 a year to an estimated $200,000. Rich is a condition Danny Sheridan might have enjoyed forever. But last year, urged by "thousands requesting me," as he says, Sheridan began his first full season of printing and distributing a weekly tip sheet. Right off he had 2,500 subscribers paying him an average of $500 a season. On one hand, it added roughly $1.2 million to his income. On the other, suddenly there were 2,500 people besides Danny Sheridan who could record and grade his selections. To subscribers, the results were disheartening. So far, in two seasons Sheridan has made 222 selections—documented them, as he says—and he has been wrong on 112, with two ties or what gamblers call "pushes." It adds up to 49.1% winners. As a football prognosticator, what Danny Sheridan is a loser.

In 1976, Sheridan's long-awaited tip sheet listed 14 selections of games to be played on Sept. 11-13. He hit seven winners and seven losers, 50%. But for bettors who followed his advice it still meant a loss. Bookies receive a 10% commission, called the "vigorish," on losing bets, which means that when you bet $100 (let's be realistic, if someone pays $500 for a tip service he isn't making $10 bets) you collect $100 if you win but pay $110 if you lose. To break even, 52.38% of your bets must be winners. So that first week, a Sheridan client who bet $100 on every pick would have lost $70. The next week Sheridan picked 10 games and had three winners and seven losers. This time the $100 bettor lost $470, not counting the cost of Sheridan's service.

"Thanks for your telegrams of encouragement," Sheridan wrote in his tip sheet the next week. "Clients who stand by us in good as well as bad times will be remembered and taken care of in seasons to come." By Nov. 22 Sheridan had made a comeback and his season record was 62-48, a respectable 56%, and anyone who had bet $100 on each selection would be $920 to the good.

[MCP313]

Used to kill the 900 #s with the burned cell phones back in the late 90s......loved calling Dan Pastorini the most.