Rob's NFL Yard: Early Sportsbook view of the 2012 Seattle Seahawks

How long until the football season begins? A little under three months or a little under four months? It’s almost impossible to answer as there are those who believe that all football is competitive*, beginning with the annual curtain raiser, the Hall of Fame Game, which this year happens to fall on August 5. Exactly one month later, with the appetite well and truly whetted, the small matter of the 2012 NFL regular season kicks off, when Dallas visits New York to take on the world champion Giants.

So, which way do you fall? Are you a preseason guy or does that pass you by simply because there’s no fantasy value to be had? The truth is, is that it’s difficult not to place a high enough emphasis on the preseason, if only for the fact that hundreds of players are fighting for a prized roster spot and thus the chance to compete for the Lombardi trophy. Yes, lofty expectations when a third stringer is hanging in there by the skin of his teeth, but it’s the mere thought of having the chance to touch that trophy that spurs such players on. That, and by the very nature of playing a role on a team, of being part of a special collective, something that nobody can take away; truly a dream fulfilled.

On a more personal level, other reasons present themselves, from the guy from your college team you desperately want to see make it or the undrafted free agent sleeper that you told just about everybody was the diamond in the rough who’d one day prove thirty one teams wrong.

Why the meandering to this point? To place myself firmly in the preseason camp...the football season is a little under three months away, which means it’s never too early for me to mull over what the Sportsbooks are looking like in Vegas and, thanks to Cantor Gaming, I have the opportunity to pore over every Seahawks spread, discounting Week 17, which, for reasons of competitive balance, haven’t been posted.

This is quite fascinating as these spreads are going to change, and in some cases very stupidly and very dramatically, so let’s see what the future holds right now in one corner of Vegas.

*The Pro Bowl most definitely isn’t competitive.

WEEK 1 at Arizona Cardinals