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Say what you want about disgraced fired former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno--gamblers loved him!
Especially when it came to bowl season.
JoePa and the Nittany Lions football team in a post-season game was the closest thing to money in the bank for many a sports bettor for many a year.
So successful in fact was Paterno in bowl games that there was a maxim in college football circles that went: "Give Joe Paterno two weeks to prepare and he can beat anyone."
"Two weeks to prepare" refers of course to the fact that most bowl games are, or at least were, played two weeks after the college football regular season ends.
So just how successful was Paterno when it came time to go bowling?
According to official NCAA statistics, Paterno's Penn State teams played in a total of 37 post-season bowl games over the years, and Joe's record in those games was 24-12-1, a sizzling .667 winning percentage.
That was straight up.
His record against the pointspread in those games was even better, because when his teams won a bowl game they usually won big and thus covered the spread, and when they lost it was usually close so they still covered.
And now Paterno is out--amidst the jokes about JoePa being JoePerv and the folks at Penn State ending up in the State Pen--but gamblers aren't laughing.
They've just lost one of the surest shots in sports gambling.
And that--unlike coaches--can't be replaced.
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
