The Action Network's Paul Lo Duca and Geoff Schwartz had Barstool Big Cat on their "Embrace the Sweat" podcast this week, and it brought up some painful memories.
Big Cat relived some of his worst gambling beats, including the infamous 2012 Belk Bowl. He also dished on his biggest betting score and what he bets when he's on tilt.
Big Cat: There’s a long list. I was part of the Belk Bowl, which is famous. And I know people will probably say the Belk Bowl is one of those things in lore. It’s one of those games where if you talk to someone — the 1980 USA-Russia game there was probably 15,000 people there but if you ask, there’s 300,000 people who say they were there. But I was part of the Belk Bowl. I’ve maintained that for a very long time.
Editor's note: Duke (+9) was tied 34-34 with Cincinnati and on the Bearcats' 5-yard line with less than two minutes to play. Duke fumbled and Cincy threw an 83-yard touchdown pass to go up seven several plays later, then returned a pick-six with 14 seconds left to cover the 9-point line in a 48-34 win.
I also had, I don’t know if you remember that Northwestern-Ohio State game [in 2013] when Northwestern had GameDay and it was supposed to be the biggest game in their program history. They had that fumble [returned for a touchdown] at the end for Ohio State’s cover. That one was really bad.
Geoff Schwartz: What’s the event you’re most ashamed about betting? I, for example, bet the spelling bee one night. I was laying in bed with my wife, we were watching the spelling bee, and I said, 'hey, you want to bet on this? I bet I can find some odds.' I found some odds, we won the bet, but I did that once. What’s the most ashamed you’ve been to gamble on an event?
BC: When I go on full tilt, I fire away at the overnight soccer — the Korean soccer, the Australian soccer, or like tennis tournaments where you basically put in the bet and then you wake up the next morning to see if you won or not. Those are usually pretty shameful because you’re betting on something you have no idea about, the games are going on at three in the morning, and you just wake up praying you have something in your account. So those are pretty bad.
Paul Lo Duca: Are you a peek-a-boo looker or do you just see the result — boom right in your face?
BC: Well if I do one of those, somewhere in my deep subconscious, I’ll wake up at four in the morning and check my phone in a half-sleep. That’s always the worst — when you’re gambling when you’re kind of sleeping. That’s happened many times.
GS: I wake up to pee every night and that’s the worst. Like a West Coast baseball game in my head, I’ve already determined if I’m gonna win or lose that game. Then I check my phone and I’m like that’s not right. I lost four or five of those games. And it ruins my night of sleep. It really does. I should stop doing that.
BC: Yeah, you go back to sleep angry. And that’s like the old thing. Never go to sleep angry.
PLD: OK, Big Cat, last question. Biggest score or most satisfying score?
BC: Hmmm, oh by the way I have one other bad beat. In college we had no TV and my roommates pooled all our money together and we took the Seahawks against the Steelers in that Super Bowl. I can’t remember what the call was but it was a terrible call.
GS: It was a holding.
BC: It was a holding call. And we were gonna get a new TV and we lost. In college you don’t have money. We all put in a hundred bucks so we had a $500 bet on the game to buy a new TV.
My biggest score? Well, just recently I had a 15-1 ticket on the Capitals winning the Stanley Cup and I bought it as a joke. So I guess that would have to be it. We bought it because PFT is a diehard Caps fan. We bought it so we could be like 'yeah it’s the Caps' year'. Look, we even bought a ticket. We bought it in March and it was 15-1. So I guess that would have to be it because I bought it half-joking and it somehow won.
