The 8/15 on Frampton with WH is an empty the clip job. The biggest risk is Fast Eddie not wanting the fight but given Quigg isn't a big ticket seller in his own right the $$$ this fight would make should see is happen in the summer. It was obvious last night the Frampton camp are desperate for the fight.

Agree totally.  When they were interviewing them in the ring after the fight my initial thoughts were 1/4 Frampton and I am not sure I would be that keen to lay that.

Today is the first time I have really read blonde for about six weeks and it appears the same old arguments and feuds are still going on.  Fwiw (which really isn't much) I don't think that people (including BE contributors of which I was one) stop posting for any other reason than habits and lives change.  I'd love to spend more time on blonde but its just not a luxury I have at the moment.  I still speak to 5-6 people from here on an almost daily basis and have another 5-6 I would contact occasionally but between working, punting, moving to a new country, taking about 12 flights in six weeks and trying to be a decent father and husband unfortunately blonde comes some way down the priority list and I am sure that is the case for others.  Things are settling down a bit now for me and hopefully I can resume a bit but life just is what it is and sometimes certain things have to give for a while.

Ed Miliband would not employ Ched Evans as Chancellor of the Exchequer it seems.  Seems reasonable.  I doubt Mr Evans would be anymore qualified for the role than other football intellectual collossi such as Wayne Rooney or John Terry?

I may be wrong, but wasn't John Terry on TV the other day celebrating his part in the deficit reduction program? 

Somebody please tell me this isn't true.  I may lose all faith in humanity if we, as a country, have plumbed these depths...

Losing our penalty taker at the end of the season.

FYP

I largely have a DDos attack to thank for my relationship with my wife.  13 years ago I was working for what was then a fairly big sportsbook in the Caribbean and my (now) wife had just started working there as a customer service manager when we got took down by a DDos on an NFL Sunday early in the season.  My wife then got an email in the generic CS email with a ransom demand to stop it.  I am sure no gaming firms do this now but at the time we decided it was probably easier for us to pay and my wife and I were tasked with taking a trip around the island and visiting various Western Unions to pay the ransom in small enough batches to evade the money laundering authorities.  We got on pretty well during that morning and by the end of it she was blown away by my wit and repartee and had agreed to have dinner with me (or something like that).

Winston's mob getting taken to school!

 Longy must be loving life, because this Oregon side is incred

Winston looks like Byron Leftwich and sadly played like him last night too (the Jax version that is). Mariota looked all class didnt he?

Byron Leftwichs senior Bowl game is one of the all time most heroic sporting performances I have ever seen.  Broke his shin and came back on and had to be carried between downs by his linesmen and nearly pulled off the comeback too.  Was gutted he never made it as a pro after that.

Sg off to the mls end of season

Any suggestions for captain if Stevie leaves at the end of the season

Hendo takea it now so that seems logical.

Shocked that Stevie is going though

If everyone else can see it, he no doubt already knows it.

Not ready to hang them up, and obviously fancies a couple years printing in warmer climates.

In unrelated matters, it would be nice if Sturridge could stay fit for the year, once he is back!

The rumour I hear is that he might never be the same player again.  Although they said that about RvP too.

does anyone that goes to a PDC Darts event actually watch the darts? (a cursory observation from looking on the tv)

I understand it must be a great social drinking night, songs, atmosphere etc...but what is it like in terms of watching the sport in detail?

Really cant remember watching a single dart and couldnt actually tell you who we saw..only 2 years ago.

Was pretty interesting to see how stalinist it was withbouncers getting involved to quiet any off brand chanting.

Good night but deffo just a giant piss up (sorry, no better phrase) for most

Rework the old football song from the 70s.

"We all agree.....
 That Ladbrokes is better than Hills is!"

Reminds me of years ago when I worked for Ladbrokes in the shops and they asked me to manage the booths at Stamford Bridge.  The first time someone stood in front of the booth and sang "William hill, William hill, William hill" it was quite funny....not so much after the 16th time.

Feels like a draft with a lot of risks to me.  Not sure I would want to take Winston and would love to find a way to be against him.  Also Gurley seems a fairly big risk given he tore his ACL this year and got a suspension too (albeit for violating NCAA rules rather than something ore serious). 

Was told the players get 5k appearance money per leg which, I would imagine, is huge for those outside of the top 4/5

Stu at what point do we start backing overs in this bowl game? 

I've missed the unders, should it just be a watching brief now or does there come a point when we can have a dash at overs. 

Sorry mate I missed this.   I did notice it had been bet down to 49 and would pretty much never still be betting unders at that point but generally speaking I would need a minimum 4.5 point move on a total before I could even conceive of betting overs and realistically for a decent sized bet like that it would need to be 6+ points so it is very rare I would be betting overs.

I honestly thought that was the penultimate episode of Homeland....I only realised it was the finale when I read somewthing about 4 days after i watched it....just a bit bizarre really.......

Why was that Pats-Bills line so low, wouldn't it normally be 7-10?

Pats were likely to rest a few, despite there being a bye week for them. Bills have a point to prove after last week's defeat against Oakland. Probably the GM's last game and there has been talk of the Head Coach being scouted by a college team (no idea how that works!!!). An element of the Bills players wanting it a bit more.

Ifyou mean why would an NFL coach be open to being scouted by a college team think for some coaches they just prefer the college game.  There is more job security and you dont have to deal with the huge ego's quite so much.  Not sure if Marrone fits that bill as he has only really coached Syracuse who arent a huge college team but a good college job is probably better than the Bills job tbh and the pay is probably similar.

Now the season is nearly over, it is time to ask serious questions. This is not meant as abuse, it is an honest query you need to  address I think.
I subscribed to Neils NFL service last year and betting £100 per point I lost the value of a small car. I decided not to subscribe this year and thank god I did not because it looks like I would have lost a rather nice motor betting at the same stakes.
My question is this. I know Neil is obviously a huge winner betting on NFL over the years. But -5% ROI over the last two year is damn woeful if you ask me. At what point do you stop blaming variance and bad luck and accept the market has moved on and edges you have previously enjoyed have been ironed out?

I'll bite.  Any bets that you make are made with your own money and at your own risk but what you can guarantee with Neil is that he will work very very hard to try and give you winning advice.  Full disclosure means that I must point out that Neil is a good friend of mine but that friendship means that I know he is up when others are coming home on a Sunday morning working on this stuff and he doesn't stop until the bets are up.  That is what you pay for but there is always a risk that you will lose especially over an NFL season  There is also a much bigger chance that variance is at play than most people realise.  If you are a punter that hits 55% of his bets over an NFL season (which would make you a 5% winner) there is a 26% chance you lose on any individual season just down to luck (assuming 200 bets in a season which might be too high actually).  That isn't to say that nothing has changed and I am sure that Neil will admit that maybe he didn't factor in the rules changes enough earlier in the season when betting a lot of unders etc but I would bet on him to make the adjustments neccesary and still be a long term winner.  Incidentally by my calculations Neil has win 906 points on his racing stuff, lost 143 points on his NFL and 163 points on his golf which makes him 600 points up in total.....what are you doing with the cars you bought with the racing profits?

We spent about 8k if I recall correctly and had a fairly small wedding (about 50 guests) from what I have seen and unless you really scrimp and save I think it would be fairly hard to come in under 5k these days for a wedding of that size.