What worked then doesn’t work now.

That is a rule that can be applied across the board in life events. Yet, it is no more dramatic than in the world of wagering. Today, there is an explosion of wagering on everything from what color hat the queen is going to wear to when Donald Trump will next attack Iran. What we have learned from this ability to wager on anything is how valuable inside information is.

In stocks, insider trading is outlawed. People with information gained from knowledge of a company not yet available to the public are supposed not to use that information to their advantage. Yet, in recent months, from the very top of our government, we have seen common people who were privy to information they could wager on cash huge amounts of winnings. When exposed, they are losing their positions that got them the info they illegally leveraged and criminal courts are dealing with how to adjudicate their cases.

In my world, wagering on the National Football League, is insider trading allowed?

I was somewhat naive when I was working in the front office of the Raiders. I knew what players were nursing what injuries and what star athlete was going to miss a championship game because he had syphilis. There were times when I would be talking out of school, never, by the way, did I expose the player who suffered the STD. Still, I unknowingly shared injury situations that some may have found useful on where to lay their money against the current point spreads.

Today, I use sources to track elements of the game, including injuries, that offer information not available to the general public. I get no heat for this. Perhaps the legal world, which in recent years has seen the NFL get in bed with the betting world, knows that the guys setting the point spreads will always have information not available to the general public. And, those wise guys are using that information to their advantage.

Books will adjust their mode of operation in response to the wagering public. When the public lands on a pattern that consistently churns out profits, the books have the ability to adjust the point spreads to shift the advantage back to the house.

Case in point. For years home team underdogs were a solid wager over the course of an NFL season. They beat the point spread nearly 60% of the time in the 1960s, 56% of the time in the 1970s, and 54% of the time in the 1980s.

Consistent losses with a single factor for the books is akin to a hole in the boat for a sailor. By the time the public is on board the books plug the hole with an adjustment in the line. I saw during the 1990s home team dogs were getting 2½ points on the line that in prior years would have been getting four or more points.

The shift in the book's point spreads on home underdogs erased the inherent advantage. For the last 30 years home team dogs have lost against the spread as often as they have won. This, even while 2% of those games see the home dogs win the game straight-up more often, but against the line … no advantage. And the books, they collect their vig for taking the wagers.

Last season, the NFL had a very strange occurrence. Favorites won against the point spread nearly as often as underdogs. The public back favorites consistently, and underdogs always had a more robust winning edge than it was in 2025, 137-132-3. What was even more of a concern to the books was that the bad teams, squads that rank below 70 on our exclusive Point Spread Price chart, had a losing record against the spread of 86-100. The wagering world by a wide margin consistently wagers against the worst teams, and the books lost to the public on those bets in 2025.

What does that mean?

When the books find a leak in their profits they plug that gap. In other words, the books are going to assign more points to the worst teams in 2026 in an effort to get back their common profit margin on these teams and propositions.

How do we take advantage of this expected correction?

Buy bad teams with bloated point spreads.

Sound like fun?

No.

But the profits will make up for the imposition of wagering on teams and games your friends disagree with and those same games that the books will be collecting on from everyone but you.