Eric Jensen and Matt Kucera are not professional gamblers, but their love of sports always found them taking part in games of chance.
Still, there's a big difference between playing in a friendly fantasy football league or an office pick 'em challenge and entering a high-stakes NFL betting competition in Las Vegas along with 3,328 others, most of whom consider gambling to be their occupation.
"I'd guess that three-quarters of them do this for a living," said Jensen, 38, a Grand Island well digger.
They were the proverbial guppies swimming in a pool of sharks — "we were never big gamblers," Kucera insists — when they anted-up the $1,500 to take part in the Westgate Resorts SuperContest.
Score one for the guppies, who somehow finished on top at the end of the 17-week competition to win the $1.47 million grand prize.
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"It's a substantial amount of money, but we can't quit our day jobs," said Kucera, 36, an Omaha insurance salesman who plans to invest the lion's share of his cut.
The rules were simple, at least in theory. Just pick five games against the spread each week. And as simple as that might sound, the difference between winning and losing in professional football is razor-thin — usually just a play or two determines the outcome — which often makes betting the NFL a fool's errand.
The best professional bettors consider it a victory to win 55% of the time — barely better than the flip of the coin — in the NFL.
Jensen and Kucera finished 58-25-2 (69.9%) against the spread. The duo went 5-0 in Week 15 and 4-0-1 in Week 16 to take the contest lead by 1½ points (one point for a win, half-point for a push) going into Sunday's final day of the season.
"We definitely got lucky," Kucera said.Â
Luck, they say, is the residue of design. Maybe it was luck one week when a Cincinnati touchdown in the final seconds was overturned by a replay review that allowed them to cover the spread, but they lost an early-season game on a last-second touchdown — the lowly Bengals again being the culprit — that provided what those in the know call a "back-door cover."
In other words, luck evens out. Those who put in the time studying the tendencies, the trends and the weather and injury reports have an edge.
"It takes some time," Jensen said. "By the time you do all your research, you feel like you have an idea. You're betting against a number, not a team."
Going into Sunday's games, they were fortunate the bettor trailing them chose four of the same games, which eliminated him from beating them.
Jensen and Kucera clinched the top prize when Drew Brees had a big game — fitting, because they named their team "It Ain't Breezy — to lead the New Orleans Saints, giving 13 points, to a 42-10 victory against the Carolina Panthers.
Meanwhile, the Miami Dolphins' upset of New England ended any possibility of anyone coming from behind to win the contest.
"Eric knew the Saints were going to win," Kucera said. "He is much better at this than me. He is good at knowing what's going to happen."
Jensen and Kucera met in junior high when they played summer baseball together in Ravenna. They stayed friends and ended up together at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
They make an annual trip to Vegas and two years ago entered the Westgate contest for the first time, finishing well out of contention with about as many wins as losses.
"We learned a lot last year," Kucera said. "We don't do this as a career. This is more of a hobby."
They returned to Vegas in 2019 during March Madness and again entered the NFL contest, vowing to be better, but never dreaming they could win it.
Their optimism quickly turned when they won just two of five games in the opening week.
"I said, 'You have to be kidding,'" Jensen said.
They quickly righted the ship, winning far more often than they lost to climb to the top of the standings, spending hours on the phone during the week determining their five games.
"We’d argue a game here and there, but it was more fun than anything,†Jensen said. "We constantly challenged each other. There were always valid points on both sides. We would both say, 'Trust me, that's the play.'"
Kucera is single. Jensen is married with two daughters, which, he admitted, made this whole endeavor a bit harder to justify.
"I really don't think she ever thought there was a chance in hell of us winning this," Jensen said of his wife. "And you know how wives are when it comes to spending $1,500 on anything."
Maybe — $1.47 million later — that sentiment has changed.