A large portion of Indy Sportsbook’s content has been dedicated to extolling the virtues of responsible sports gambling. It is a great way to bring even more excitement to the sports you love and can make you deeply invested in ones you never even thought about. We have greatly enjoyed all the highs and lows of our picks during our second semester of writing this column. At the end of the day, however, gambling truly boils down to one thing: making money. While tax season may not begin for another month, the time has come for us to tally all of our gains and losses during the Fall 2023 season.
We undertook a similar venture in our final column of this past Spring. For those who forget (though we cannot see why anyone would not have every edition of Indy Sportsbook ingrained in their memory), our inaugural semester produced decidedly mixed results. There were weeks it seemed that we could not miss, and others where we spent over 800 words getting things wrong (please do not bring up the Sex Issue). Overall, we were happy with the promise we showed and felt confident we could bring more consistency to the column next semester.
Spoiler alert: we did not.
We began the year with a preview of the NFL season. We emphasized the dangers of betting on rookie quarterbacks, telling you to take the under on the Panthers (7.5), Texans (6.5), and Colts (6.5) win totals. Our very first pick ended up setting the down for what would be another bumpy road for the column: Bryce Young has been a disaster, C.J. Stroud is an MVP candidate, and Anthony Richardson’s season ended after an injury in Week 4. Elsewhere, we were spot-on about the 49ers being a juggernaut and our faith in the Falcons looks promising.
Our next column warned against following sportsbook-generated parlays, which have a high propensity for failure. Instead, we focused on less-promoted sports that give the user more of an edge. Our remarkable success with non-NFL sports leagues continued, as we correctly predicted the Toronto Argonauts to beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. In what was nearly our greatest success of the semester, we correctly predicted a WNBA Finals matchup between the New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces. Alas, dominant performances from A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum meant that Vegas defeated our pick to win it all. Frank Robinson’s “horseshoes and hand grenades” quote never feels truer than when you come oh-so-close to winning big.
This semester saw us publish two different columns focusing on the English Premier League. After a disappointing opening performance thanks to a shocking Luton Town win and unlucky goal over/unders, we were determined to do better the second time around. Thankfully, we did this and more. In what was perhaps our most successful column of the year, we correctly picked both the Manchester Derby and El Classico. Other highlights were a Darwin Nunez goalscorer prediction and a 3-1 Premier League match record.
Our mid semester recap bragged extensively about our success with a tone that borderlines on hubris in retrospect. The column’s picks exhibited an inconsistency that at this point has become Indy Sportsbook’s calling card. Two of our three award picks—Josh Allen for NFL MVP and Mikal Bridges for NBA MIP—were done and dusted mere weeks later. We correctly chose all four teams to make the MLB Championship Series, but swung and missed on the Phillies to win it all (our accuracy in picking which teams will come close to winning championships, but lack thereof in picking the winner itself, seems pretty emblematic of our overall performance). As should be expected for a column written by Boston sports fans, we are anxiously awaiting for our Bruins and Celtics championship bets to hit.
Our final attempt at being the school’s most rogue financial advisors brought us our most exciting opportunity yet—betting on Harvard sports. Though our predicted winner of The Game sadly fell just short, there was never any chance we would pick Yale anyway. We take some solace in the fact that two out of our three prop bets hit. Additionally, this column marked our debut as (pretend) oddsmakers ourselves due to the lack of FCS lines available. We are happy to report our lines were remarkably similar to the ones eventually posted.
As the semester comes to a close, we once again can look back on both wins we are proud of and losses we would like to forget. Perhaps that is the nature of gambling, particularly for amateur ones such as ourselves. While we may never achieve a semester that even approaches being an alternative to investing your money in the S&P 500, that will not stop us from trying.
Declan Buckley ’24 (declanbuckley@college.harvard.edu) will be stepping down as Sports Editor next semester and wishes his fellow Indy Sportsbook staff the best of luck in their future gambling endeavors.