JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

It's cleaning time at the Warehouse. Among the scraps of paper we found were ads clipped out of college football yearbooks tossed out long ago. Most concerned "handicapping" services for die-hard sports gamblers. We figure Baystate knew their target audience. Much like Scoreline Man , the guy boring his lady friend in the tub with the latest spreads on the Bears-Packers game looks like a stereotypical example of a man who'd use a sports handicapping service. He's an average guy with a slight paunch, receding hairline and a taste for cheap wine and cigars. What average Joe wants to endure high-pressure tactics from phone bookies? If the advertised relaxed approach pays the promised high dividends, maybe you too can use those winnings to treat your wife/partner/girlfriend/hired companion to a weekend of relaxing in a hotel jacuzzi. Just don't bore her with two hours of conversations centred around point spreads, OK? Source: Street & Smith 1983 Colleg...

Look down there, buried in that pile of sports magazines! Slower than a snapping turtle! Less powerful than a broken-down Geo! Able to push copies of the Football News out of the way with extreme pain! It's a double chin! It's a cheap cap! It's Scoreline Man! *** As the 1970s rolled into the 1980s, the number of handicappers ("experts" who promised to analyze sporting events, mostly football, to help their clients place winning bets) who advertised in the major college and pro football yearbooks rose rapidly. Services varied from phone lines providing the latest scores and quick tips, such as today's pick, to handicappers proudly showing off their luxury automobiles in Las Vegas to boast how their prowness for prediction made them wealthy. The proprietors ranged from dudes who later fled to Central America to the founder of the Psychic Friends Network (remember the Dionne Warwick informercials?). These ads reached their peak in 1984, as han...