The 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup is up for grabs. With 11 races left to go before the Chase, Kyle Busch holds a slim 32-point lead over Jeff Burton at the top of the driver standings. Yet Busch is the 3-1 Cup favorite on the NASCAR futures market. Burton is way back in the rear-view mirror at 14-1.

Busch leads all Cup drivers with four wins thus far; Burton has just one, at the Food City 500 in Bristol. However, NASCAR’s scoring system heavily downplays the importance of winning. Burton is in second place because he finished in the Top 20 in every single points race. Busch was dead last earlier this month at the Pocono 500.

Defending two-time champion Jimmie Johnson is 13-2 on the odds list. He’s 254 points behind Busch in fifth place, but the Chase format makes it almost irrelevant how far behind Johnson is – as long as he qualifies for the Chase.

The top teams at Euro 2008 are having nightmares. Italy was crushed 3-0 by the Netherlands, France was held to a goalless draw by Romania, and now Germany has lost 2-1 to Croatia.

Holland was the hottest property on the tournament futures market heading into Friday’s tilt with Les Bleus. But Croatia is closing fast with six points in two games, already enough to advance to the quarterfinals. That’s also enough to move the Croats to 8-1 to win the championship; Holland and Germany were tied at 5-1 at press time.

Portugal was upgraded from 9-2 to 4-1 following two impressive victories over Poland and the Czech Republic. The Portuguese have the consensus best player in the world in Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored the winning goal against the Czechs. But they remain the second favorites behind Spain, the new top chalk at 7-2. Spain is a mortal lock, as long as David Villa keeps scoring hat tricks.

Bet on Euro 2008!

Betting on the women’s draw at the French Open used to be simple: Bet on Justine Henin. The sudden retirement of the world’s No. 1 women’s tennis player left the doors open for sweeping change at Roland Garros. Saturday’s final pits the new No. 1 Ana Ivanovic (as of Monday’s upcoming rankings) against Dinara Safina, the sister of former men’s No. 1 Marat Safin.

Ivanovic was even money at press time. She has the larger body of work, reaching the finals of last year’s French Open against Henin and doing the same at this year’s Australian Open, where she lost to Maria Sharapova – whom Ivanovic will overtake for the top spot in the WTA rankings on Monday. Safina is the No. 13 seed at Roland Garros and a 3-1 underdog on Saturday, but her one career victory in three tries against Ivanovic was on clay at the 2005 Berlin Open.

The 2007-08 Los Angeles Lakers are being touted as one of the best teams Kobe Bryant has every played on. That’s high praise, and that’s why the Lakers were 5-8 at press time to win the NBA championship.

Before the start of the Western Conference finals between Los Angeles and the San Antonio Spurs, Charles Barkley called the Lakers Kobe’s best-ever team. John Hollinger crunched the numbers for ESPN and came to much the same conclusion.

If the Lakers go on to win the title, it will be a moment of redemption for GM Mitch Kupchak. Fans weren’t pleased when Kupchak traded Shaquille O’Neal; the merits of that deal will be debated for some time, but there can be no doubt that the Pau Gasol trade has lifted the Lakers from very good to great. The question for handicappers is whether L.A. is great enough to win the title without home-court advantage.

The NBA Finals are finally here.

Annual awards are a fixture on the MLB futures market. Odds for the MVP and the Cy Young will be posted later on down the road, but it’s never too early to make an early prediction.

National League

MVP: Chipper Jones, Atlanta. Houston’s Lance Berkman is the most productive player in the majors at 44.7 VORP. But Jones (37.8 VORP) is hitting .410 and has a higher media profile.

Cy Young: Brandon Webb, Arizona. The collapse of the Padres makes it hard for Jake Peavy to collect enough wins, and now he’s on the DL with elbow problems. Webb is already 9-1 with the Snakes with a 2.69 ERA.

American League

MVP: Magglio Ordonez, Detroit. The three hottest hitters in the junior circuit are Josh Hamilton, Kevin Youkilis and Milton Bradley. Writers won’t vote for any of those three.

Cy Young: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston. Matsuzaka (8-0, 2.40 ERA) plays for the team with the best record in the majors at 30-19.

If you’ve watched the NHL on television for at least a couple of years, you’re surely aware by now of this oft-repeated factoid: Only two teams have ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a best-of-seven series in the playoffs. The Dallas Stars and Philadelphia Flyers are trying to make it four.

Dallas got the breaks in Wednesday’s Game 4, holding off elimination with a 3-1 win as a +150 home dog. The next day, it was Philly’s turn to shine in a 4-2 victory that had the flavor of the Broad Street Bullies of the mid-70s. The Flyers collected 23 hits to Pittsburgh’s 18 and cashed in at +155.

The Red Wings will be gigantic favorites at home for Saturday’s Game 6. Top scorer Johan Franzen (12 goals in 11 games) remains out with a concussion, while in the Eastern final, the Flyers hope to have defensemen Kimmo Timonen and Braydon Coburn ready for their Game 6 on Sunday.

With their backs against the wall, the Dallas Stars made a game out of it on Wednesday night at home and in doing so they finally won a game in their series against the Detroit Red Wings, scoring three goals to their one. It’s about time Mike Modano and Brenden Morrow showed up…

“It was a pretty intense, desperate game from everyone on our side,” said Dallas’ goaltender Marty Turco, who made 34 saves on the night. “We needed that to be successful. We’ll have to continue like that just to have a chance.”

In order to do that, however, they’ll have to pull one out of the hat in Detroit, where Turco hasn’t had the best of luck.

Currently, the Dallas Stars are 75/1 odds of winning the Stanley Cup; and the Detroit Red Wings are the 1/2 odds on favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

Over in the Western Conference you’ve got the Dallas Stars taking on the Detroit Red Wings; and over in the Eastern Conference it’s the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins. We’re finally down to four teams.

The Detroit Red Wings have won 10 Stanley Cup titles in its history, more than any other American franchise, but nothing since 2002. The Dallas Stars, on the other hand, have won only one Stanley Cup and that was back in 1998-99.

For the time being, let’s forget the obvious skills advantage the Red Wings have over the Stars and instead focus on how these two teams have played together in the past. The Red Wings have won three of the four regular-season meetings they’ve had with Dallas. And the last time they played each other in the playoffs was back in the 1998 conference finals, when the Red Wings beat Dallas in six games en route to their second straight Stanley Cup crown. My prediction? Detroit in five.

Over in the East, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers will be battling a rivalry all of their own.

“It’s going to be a spirited series, no question about that,” Flyers coach John Stevens told reporters.

“If you want a rivalry, there’s one right there,” Penguins star center Sidney Crosby told the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette. “I’m sure everyone’s well aware of it. As players, we know that the playoffs are always intense, but it throws some spice into it when it’s Pittsburgh-Philadelphia.”

My prediction? The Red Wings in seven.

The Dallas Stars are listed at 3/1 odds to win the Stanley Cup; the Detroit Red Wings are at 3/2 odds to win; the Flyers are 11/2 odds to win the Cup; and the Penguins are the 2/1 odds to win the Stanley Cup.

You can bet on the Stanley Cup playoffs here.

What is it about sports and superstitions and curses? Apparently last week at Yankee Stadium a construction worker tried to bury Red Sox David Ortiz’s jersey in the foundation of the stadium. Once co-workers found out what he was doing, they spent hours digging it out for fear that the stadium would be cursed if the jersey remained. Rational people know that these things don’t affect what happens on the fields of play, yet they still believe in the power of the supposedly supernatural.

There are many famous curses in sports; the curse of the coin flip, the Sports Illustrated curse and the most recently, the Madden curse. We’ve also heard of or may have experienced superstitions of things like not washing your socks or kissing your bat before the pitch. Do theses things really affect the out come and do theses curses really exist?

What if the sports world stopped paying attention to these curses and superstitions? Would the good or bad luck change because of it? Honestly, I’m not sure if we will ever find out. I doubt many people are going to take a chance on changing their ways…..just in case. Hey you never know.

The “race” to win the NBA Most Valuable Player award is over. It was really over a while ago, when the conventional sports media came to a general consensus (in print) that Kobe Bryant deserves to be this year’s MVP. The actual votes will be counted, and the Maurice Podoloff Award handed out in June during the Finals.

We’re used to seeing newspaper editorials published in support of one presidential candidate or another. But what if only the newspaper editors were allowed to vote? From a betting standpoint, you’d have a pretty good idea who the winner would be just from reading the papers. That’s what has happened to the NBA MVP race – the voters are telling you whom they are going to vote for, and why.

Betting on the MVP should remain one of the hotter commodities on the NBA futures market. It’ll just be a shorter betting season, cut off by the MVP bandwagon.