Football Betting

RSL eyes top spot in league against Seattle

Soccer Betting Lines

09/08/2010 - Seattle, WA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Real Salt Lake entered this season as defending Major League Soccer champions, and according to midfielder Andy Williams, they also had a few goals in mind.

"At the beginning of the year, we had our goals where we had four trophies to play for," Williams told mlssoccer.com. "Unfortunately, we got knocked out of the Open Cup, and so we have three [goals] right now."

One of those goals is to retain the MLS Cup title the team won last season, while the club is also involved in the CONCACAF Champions League.

But the third goal is not as easy to recognize because it is for RSL to win the Supporters' Shield, which is something they hope to move closer to with a win over Seattle Sounders FC at Qwest Field on Thursday.

Real enters the match one point back of both the Columbus Crew and the Los Angeles Galaxy for the most points in MLS, and according to defender Nat Borchers, winning the Supporters' Shield would be a big accomplishment for his team.

"To win the Supporters' Shield would be a fantastic thing to put in our trophy case," he said. "It's one of the toughest things in sports to do: to say that you were the best team over the entire season."

RSL has put together a good run of form that has helped them pull to within a point of the Galaxy in the West, and they bring not only a seven-game unbeaten streak into the contest, but a streak of three successive clean sheets spanning 352 minutes.

Seattle is more concerned with just making the playoffs as opposed to finishing the regular season with the most points, and after losing 3-1 to the New England Revolution last time out, which snapped a seven-game unbeaten streak, the club is in need of three points.

The Sounders are currently in sixth place in the Western Conference table, but they sit only two points back of fourth-place Colorado with six games still remaining after Thursday's contest.


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FOOTBALL BETTING : Crabtree's base deal: six years, $32 million

Football Betting

In the wake of the news that the 49ers have signed receiver Michael Crabtree after an extended holdout, there has been not a hint of the dollars to be paid to Crabtree.

And since this means that his agent hasn't leaked the numbers, it means that his agent feels no specific motivation to do so.

Possibly because his agent isn't all that thrilled to have his name on the deal.

So the numbers will come from sources other than Crabtree's agent. And we've gotten our mitts into them.

Per a league source, Crabtree has signed a six-year, $32 million contract. (The total includes guaranteed money, base salaries, and the one-time incentive based on achieving minimum playing time.)

The deal also includes $17 million in guaranteed money.

As reported elsewhere, the deal can void to five years based on performance triggers, wiping out a final year base salary of $4 million. But they won't be easily reached.

The source tells us that, in his first four seasons (including 2009), Crabtree must either qualify for two Pro Bowls, or he must qualify for one Pro Bowl in one year and he must participate in 80 percent of the offensive snaps in a separate year in which the team makes the playoffs.

In other words, if in 2010 he qualifies for the Pro Bowl and the team makes the playoffs and he participates in 80 percent of the snaps, he'll still need to make it to the Pro Bowl or achieve the 80-percent/playoffs in another season.

Since the chances of Crabtree making the Pro Bowl or participating in 80 percent of the offensive snaps this year is roughly zero percent, he'll have three years to get it done.

And it won't be easy. Frankly, he'll be hard pressed to make it to one Pro Bowl in three years with the likes of Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson, Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, Hakeem Nicks, DeSean Jackson, Johnny Knox, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings, Roddy White, T.J. Houshmandzadeh in the same conference for sportsbook betting.

So, by all appearances, it's a six-year deal. And at $17 million in guaranteed money, the per-year guarantee is a tepid $2.83 million per year.

There's another problem with the deal -- it has no mid-tier incentive package. Instead, the additional $8 million that Crabtree can earn (pushing the max value to six years, $40 million) requires the kind of unrealistic, mega-star performances that no rookie is likely to ever achieve.

So while the contract paid to Packers defensive tackle B.J. Raji covers five years and pays $22.5 million, he has the ability (if he's a solid player) to make up the difference between his base deal and Crabtree's five-year, $28 million haul via the mid-tier incentive package in Raji's deal.

And unless Crabtree meets the performance thresholds necessary to void the sixth year, he'll be stuck under contract for another year at a base salary of only $4 million.

There's one other area of concern with the deal. Crabtree, per the source, received no option bonus. Instead, he has significant money tied to a fairly new device known as a "discretionary salary advance," which unlike an opition bonus is subject to forfeiture if Crabtree decides in a year or two that he wants to hold out for a better deal. (We're also told that the 49ers have included language that would make certain escalators subject to forfeiture, too.)

Meanwhile, the deal falls well short of the mark for which Crabtree and agent Eugene Parker were aiming -- the five-year, $38.25 million contract paid by the Raiders to receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, the seventh overall pick in the draft.

Even if Crabtree successfully voids the final year, he'll make more than $2 million per year less on average than Heyward-Bey.

Thus, as we explained earlier in the day, this is a deal that Crabtree could have done in July, which would have given him a much better chance of making a contribution to the 49ers during his rookie year.

So while the final outcome can be described as win-win, the broader view suggests that it's really a lose-lose situation.

NFL Betting Lines

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