Football Pools Invade Fertile BU Territory

Football lottery tickets which could be picked up at any one of a number of places in Harvard Square last fall have moved on the more fertile grounds, the Boston University News reported early this week.

These tickets, listing a number of college football games throughout the country with point handicaps are passed out by agents within a college; a subscriber picks from them any combination from four to eight games.

By putting down an amount from 25 cents to five dollars the students stands a chance to win up to $1,000 for picking ten winners. However according to the BU paper it's not quite that easy. "Most of the games given you to choose from rank as the most important of the week, but at least two or three games are thrown in as ringers. These involve teams which are not too well known."

More important than this is the shrewd handicapping system employed by the lottery racketeers. Spotters are hired in all parts of the country to keep a close line on the teams which they are considering for card use. The Harvard Holy Cross game is a case in point.

The card which came out on Tuesday of that week had Harvard favored by seven points. The subscriber could either pick Harvard to win by more than that or Holy Cross to loose by less. In case of a tie, the rackets collected. As it turned out the score was 22-14 and the gamblers missed by just one point. However other upsets such as the Teunessee-North Carolina game and the Purdue-Minnesota game enabled the card issuers to make a handsome profit.

The disappearance of those cards from the Harvard scene is difficult to explain, but University police confirmed an informal canvass of the houses Tuesday which implied that the football lotteries were not to be found in the Square.