Edwards, Keselowski feud showing no signs of letting up

Autoracing Betting Lines

07/19/2010 - Madison, IL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - "Boom boom boom, now. Boom boom boom, now. Boom boom pow."

I generally don't like using song lyrics to describe a frantic episode in a NASCAR race or any other motorsports event, but after last Saturday's night's final-lap clash between on-going rivals Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski in the 250-mile Nationwide Series race at Gateway International Raceway, I couldn't help but think of the Black Eyed Peas' 2009 hit single, "Boom Boom Pow."

While they were beating each other up during the last lap around the 1.25- mile oval, you just had to wonder if the latest battle between Edwards and Keselowski would end up in a "checkers or wreckers."

Indeed, it did. Like it has in the past.

Keselowski bumped Edwards for the lead in turn one, but Edwards got payback coming out of turn four, where he nudged Keselowski from behind and sent him hard into the wall along the frontstretch, triggering a multi-car crash.

"He was holding me tight and getting me a little loose, which was cool," Keselowski said. "I was rubbing on him a little bit...I figured out a way to beat him. He wasn't happy with me, so he wrecked me. Wrecking down the straightaway is never cool, whether it's at 200 m.p.h. or 120. I'm sorry that's the way it had to end."

As Edwards took the checkered flag for a record third time in a Nationwide race at Gateway, which is located roughly 125 miles east of his hometown of Columbia, MO, Keselowski's battered car slid across the finish line in 14th- place before Shelby Howard plowed into him, causing him to spin around again. Keselowski climbed out of his car a bit woozy, but was not injured.

"Brad and I have a history, but that history had nothing to do with what happened [Saturday]," Edwards said. "I feel like we respect one another a lot. On that last lap, I would have won the race if he hadn't bumped me in turn one. He would have finished second. The way it went, he bumped me, and he finished wherever he finished, and I still won the race.

"That was the only way I could see the race turning out fair, and that was my job to win that race and to make sure I don't get walked on or get something taken away from me that's mine."

Was Edwards' win legitimate? That likely will be a subject of debate for quite some time.

Edwards claimed his incident with Keselowski was not intentional, but let's face it, with the history between these two drivers, it looked like a deliberate move on Edwards' part.

"I didn't mean any harm to him at all," Edwards said. "The deal is eventually he'll learn you can't run into my car over and over and put me in bad situations. In every situation, there is an aggressor, and there is someone who reacts. I was not the aggressor in this situation."

The drivers have had previous on-track altercations, most notably in March when Edwards intentionally bumped Keselowski from behind and sent him flying upside down into the frontstretch wall during the closing laps of the Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta. Edwards was more than 150 laps behind at the time of the crash, due to a previous encounter with Keselowski in that race.

NASCAR immediately parked Edwards for aggressive driving, and days later, placed him on probation for three races.

The feud between the two began in April 2009 when Keselowski hit Edwards from behind on the final lap at Talladega. While Keselowski drove on to his first Sprint Cup victory, Edwards' car spun and then sailed into the safety fence along the frontstretch.

The rivalry between Edwards and Keselowski hit a new boiling point at Gateway, but how far will it go before someone gets seriously hurt, or worse, fatally injured?

Prior to the start of the season, NASCAR told its drivers, "boys, have at it," but Edwards and Keselowski have been at it too long, and it's beginning to upset some people in the sport, particularly Keselowski's father, Bob, who is a former NASCAR driver and current team owner.

"[Edwards] ain't going to kill my boy," Bob Keselowski said during a post-race interview on ESPN. " He just overreacted so bad. If he wanted to bump Brad, that's one thing, but don't drive him through the inside guard rail. Don't put him through the grandstands at Atlanta. That's asinine."

During an interview on SPEED's Wind Tunnel television show on Sunday, Sprint Cup points leader and part-time Nationwide competitor Kevin Harvick told host Dave Despain that he would have responded differently than Keselowski if he had he been the one who was involved in the incident with Edwards.

"I probably wouldn't have reacted as kindly as Brad did; I probably would have walked down there and punched him in the mouth," Harvick said.

Harvick, who won the Camping World Truck Series race at Gateway earlier in the day, finished 16th in the Nationwide event. Harvick blew a right-front tire and made contact with the wall in the late-stages.

With Keselowski currently holding a 168-point lead over Edwards in the Nationwide standings, don't be surprised if we see some more "Boom Boom Pow" between these two during the remainder of the season to come.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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