The 2011-12 NFL betting season, starting with the preseason, will have the largest gap ever between sharp and square player. The NFL lockout provides once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for the pro bettor.

In our videos, podcasts, articles, and most importantly premium sports picks analysis, we’ve quoted several Golden Rules of gambling.  If the day ever comes to ranking them, probably at the top of the list is that oddsmakers and square players despise uncertainty.

Pro bettors and handicappers monetize capriciousness. Simply put, whatever is bad for the oddsmaker is good for the erudite investor.

The equivocation that will be caused by as the media has said, “five months of offseason condensed into a few weeks” is tormenting the oddsmaker.

In the interval between when sportsbooks first post odds and the time wagers must be placed, the intel will be more fluid than ever. This will be infinitely truer in the preseason, but will certainly continue well into the regular season.

For the most part the same angles whales search for in a normal preseason will still apply: quarterback and key player rotations, motivational variances such as which coaches will work on more creative schemes and which will be more vanilla—just to name the most common key indicators.

But the lockout means 2011 will be those intangibles on steroids.  Rosters will fluctuate more than in any other preseason. Some teams will play their frontline players much longer than traditional exhibition games past.

There will certainly be squads that have play calling in regular season mode, while others will stick to the mundane schemes.

For sure, there will be a lot more “box of chocolate” type performances: teams looking spectacular one week, then horrific the next and visa versa.

It would be very surprising if teams off preseason lackluster performances don’t have a larger sense of urgency in their next game than in a “normal” season.

Though it’s an educated belief the teams with the largest turnover in key personnel and coaching staffs are most likely to be pressing into the regular season mode, such instincts must be substantiated by factual evidence in our scouring of teams own press notes, hometown newspaper citations, or other esteemed sources.

There are few urban legends as outlandish as the dunderheads who spew the folklore that preseason football is a guessing game. The NFL lockout dynamics create ancillary prospects.

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  USA TODAY
  
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  TSN