High school hoops coach wins 1st SuperContest College football contest

Doug Fleming is a quick study when it comes to sports betting.

The longtime Michigan high school basketball coach entered his first football handicapping contest in Las Vegas six years ago when he was in town for a travel team tournament.

“Coming out there for summer basketball was what really started it,” he said.

Fleming, 64, recently won the inaugural SuperContest College football contest, finishing a sizzling 65-31-2 against the spread to top a field of 1,080 entries and turn his $500 entry fee into $216,000 in prize money.

“The money’s great. But I was more interested in winning the contest. You get that far, you just want to win,” he said. “I know how hard it is to handicap. I’ve been in different contests over the years.

“You’re running at that level (of a 67.7 percent winning percentage), that’s pretty good. So I was very, very happy with that.”

He took his first lead in the 14-week contest in Week 13, by a point, and clinched the title by going 5-1-1 ATS in Week 14, helped by UNLV’s 42-17 blowout win over UNR as a 7½-point favorite. An entry named Black and Purple went 62-34-2 to settle for second place and a $108,000 prize.

Fleming went 24-10-1 ATS over the final five weeks of the contest in which contestants make seven weekly picks ATS (no totals). He’s proud of the fact that he is a recreational bettor who has a full-time job in real estate development, primarily in affordable housing, and competed in the contest for fun.

“I’m a competitor at heart,” he said. “The fact I knew I was in there with big groups that have a lot of money and sophisticated guys behind them with computers and everything, I’m a one-man show. It’s just me doing the handicapping.

“I had some friends and we would sit together at happy hour on Thursdays and they would throw me some ideas as we drank beers. But that was about it. It’s just me and my own process.”

Trust the process

Fleming guided East Lansing High School to the Final Four of the Michigan state tournament in 2008, when they lost to a Saginaw High squad led by future NBA champion Draymond Green.

He said his 30 years of coaching experience was a key part of his weekly process for making picks, which were submitted by Winners Circle Proxy Service.

“I listen to VSiN a lot and (host) Gill Alexander said a few years ago there’s two kinds of handicappers. There’s statistical handicappers and they gamble off their own numbers. And there’s informational gamblers that take information on games and bet off of that. I like to think I’m a combination of the two,” he said. “I have Kenny White’s newsletter. He would come out with his statistical numbers early in the week and I would circle 10 or 12 games where his numbers said there was a statistical advantage. I also subscribe to Brad Powers’ weekly newsletter, where he puts a paragraph on every game, so that was my informational part of it.

“After I do the statistical and informational, I’d sprinkle in a little coaching experience and those are the three things in my mental process. … I’d like to think what I did is put on my coach’s hat and I’d go, ‘OK, if I’m coaching that team, where are they at right now? What’s the locker room like?’ So, I would use my experience as a coach to kind of factor that into my handicap.”

Back to school

Fleming finished in the top 20 in the Golden Nugget’s Ultimate Football Challenge a few years ago that combined college and NFL picks. He won the SuperContest College with his own single entry, while finishing out of the money on another entry he shared with a friend.

He also entered the Circa Survivor (where he was eliminated) and Million contests this season. But he prefers the college contest.

“The NFL’s so hard,” he said. “I like the college because you’ve got so many more games to choose from.”

He chose wisely.

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on X.