Among bettors, college football is shoving the NFL aside

Jimmy Vaccaro has spent four decades as a bookmaker watching money move through an increasingly lucrative sports market. He is, by necessity, an astute observer of the human condition.

Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, recommends to investors that they kick the tires of a business they are interested in. As such, if you are interested in sports betting, and many people are, there is no better place to start than with Vaccaro and the 24-hour sports book at the South Point.

Vaccaro speaks in the rat-a-tat of a sports ticker, and if he traded his golf shirt for a suit and tie he would be a natural for CNBC.

When he says that he is bullish on his Nick Bogdanovich, chief oddsmaker, William Hill, speaking about the NFL

profession, you believe him. With more than $5 billion expected to be bet here this year, according to state gaming officials, Nevada sports books are likely to post their eighth consecutive year of record handle.

“It has not gone backward,” he said. “It ain’t never going that way.”

And when Vaccaro says he is becoming bearish on the betting health of professional football, you lean in and listen. Last month, for three consecutive weeks, for the first time that he can remember, betting on college football at South Point surpassed betting on the NFL, by as much as $400,000.

College and professional football remain the No. 1 betting attraction for gamblers in Nevada, accounting for nearly 37 percent of dollars wagered, said Michael Lawton, an analyst for the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

The board does not break out college and professional numbers in any sport. Anecdotally, he said, “it’s been a 60-40 split,” in favor of the pros. “But the colleges are gaining,” he added.

It is no accident that the ascendance of college football at the betting windows

“Their product isn’t very good these days.”