Betting Picks

History can be made on Saturday if reigning welterweight champion Rory MacDonald defeats the current middleweight title holder Gegard Mousasi. A victory would make MacDonald only the second multi-division champion in Bellator's long history. We preview the fight, along with two other matchups on the stacked card, and offering our betting picks. This is mandatory reading if you're betting on Saturday!

Preseason college basketball tends to get overlooked in the betting lexicon, but there is a path to making money on these exhibition contests. It's just a matter of remembering that you're wagering on the same teams you always have been while also incorporating a few extra tweaks to your approach.

As usual, trainer Bob Baffert is expected to have a loaded hand in the Breeders' Cup Classic, and two of his top charges will go head-to-head on Saturday at Santa Anita Race Track. Accelerate and West Coast will square off in the (G1) Awesome Again Stakes where a field of six will run 1 1/8 miles chasing a $300,000 purse on the Santa Anita dirt.

The Joe Hirsch Turf Classic on Saturday afternoon from Belmont Park in New York is expected to live up to its name, with a field of multiple graded-stakes winners going 1 1/2 miles chasing a purse of $500,000. You could make a case for several of the eight starters to get the win, making the Joe Hirsch a real handicapping challenge.

A host of familiar names will be going to the gate on Saturday at Belmont Park for the (G1) Jockey Club Gold Cup, where the race winner will get an automatic berth into the 2018 Breeders' Cup Classic on November 3. Eight are expected to take to the Belmont track to race the classic distance of 1 1/4 miles on the dirt and a $750,000 total purse.

Time for another round of gridiron action at the highest level. If we've been paying attention to the NFL football (and I have) the first three weeks, we should be looking for teams in Week 4 (and I am) that pass the eyeball test. Here are the teams I'll be playing simply because they look good and/or Vegas and the betting public are overlooking them..

The Los Angeles Lakers were viewed as a team in the middle of a growing process last season. That all changed with the addition of one of the greatest NBA players of all time — and so did the league's betting future odds. L.A. inked LeBron James to a four-year, $154-million contract in July. It altered the Lakers and the balance of power in the Western Conference with one signature.

NHL preseason games are a completely different animal than their regular-season cousins. It's more about auditioning talent than it is about the wins and losses, so wagering on preseason hockey isn't an exact science. But these are still trained professional athletes who've been conditoned to seek out victory their entire careers, so if you pay attention to who's in the lineup, there's money to be made.

Talk about a puzzling betting line on the Ryder Cup. The United States have not won on foreign soil in more than 20 years, and yet they are the overwhelming favorites to defend their title in this year’s event. Tiger Woods and his 11 teammates tee off early Friday in the crown jewel of golf’s team format. The 42nd clash between the Europeans and the Americans is a three-day event held on Sept. 28-30 at Le Golf National, located southwest of Paris, France.