Here’s a significant, yet easy-to-keep New Year’s Resolution. Visit the Las Vegas Hilton’s Football Central during the NFL playoffs.

This is the future of football sports-book viewing. Games transmit to a comfortable 1,700-seat theater, a radical departure from the cramped spaces of most books. Gigantic screens, some 15-by-20 feet, others 7-by-9, provide an IMAX component. This is a big-screen movie experience, with wagering attached.

“It’s a football fan’s dream,” says Jay Kornegay, executive race and sports book director for Las Vegas Hilton. “This is like re-creating the sports book in a theater atmosphere.

“This is the first time we’re extending Football Central into the playoff rounds. It has provided fans a great venue for watching the games. Try to watch football in Las Vegas on a Sunday and if you are not there by 7 or 8 in the morning, you could be out of luck trying to find a seat. Because we have so many seats, we can accommodate people comfortably.

“I love standing right by the doorway, listening to people come in and saying to their friends, ‘This is sick; oh my gosh this is unbelievable.’”

Kornegay instituted a similar idea years ago at the Imperial Palace. The concept grows in stature with bigger screens at the Hilton. It’s the executive way to watch football.

Hilton’s football theater will be available for most, if not all, playoff weekends. January poses the question of how the books will handle their most uncomfortable variable, the Patriots. As New England crushed regular-season opponents, odds makers debated where to establish the betting line.

“They drove us nuts,” Kornegay says.

New England crushed teams so badly that odds makers made them outrageous favorites in order to coax underdog money. The Pats finally laid over 20 points (ON THE ROAD) against the Baltimore Ravens, and underdog money gave the books unwelcome one-way action. The Ravens easily covered.

“It seems that everybody either loved the Patriots or wanted to bet against them, but every week was like a mini Super Bowl with them,” Kornegay says. “What happened in the Ravens game is something odds makers will take into account during the playoffs, and that is the wind. When wind conditions kick up (New England in January poses that chance), it will be taken quite seriously in the line. Nothing affects the totals as much as the high winds. You can see freezing conditions, but without wind it’s not too bad for the players because they are moving around quite a bit. With the wind, however, you have a different story.”

Handicappers can project swirling winds into their calculations. Conditions usually shorten the game by coaxing teams to run and kill the clock during the two quarters they march into it. Bettors can capitalize if bad conditions are factored into the line and the game comes up less windy.

Meteorologists carry as much weight as the teams themselves.

Conventional wisdom leans toward the underdog in the wild-card round and home favorites the following week. But the Indianapolis Colts shattered both theories last season. They defeated Kansas City as a home wild-card favorite, and then triumphed in Baltimore as an underdog.

Playoff football offers some wrinkles compared to the regular season. With their season on the line, teams play more keep away. They are more bound to seek fourth-and-short conversions inside their opponents’ territory rather than give up a possession. Winds dramatically affect field goals too. They take anywhere from 10-20 yards off a kicker’s comfort range. What would be a long field goal in the regular season often becomes a pooch punt or an attempted conversion in the playoffs.

Watch the over-under lines closely.

By Dave Bontempo

Casino Connection Sports Editor Dave Bontempo is an award-winning sports writer and broadcaster who calls boxing matches all over the world. He has covered the Philadelphia Flyers in the playoffs, as well as numerous PGA, LPGA and Seniors Golf Tour events, and co-hosted the Casino Connection television program with Publisher Roger Gros.

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