Inside The Huskies

With Odunze From Vegas, Bookies Should Be Looking at UW More Favorably

Yet the hometown son remains a 9.5-point underdog for the Pac-12 championship game.
Dan Raley|
With Odunze From Vegas, Bookies Should Be Looking at UW More Favorably
With Odunze From Vegas, Bookies Should Be Looking at UW More Favorably

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Washington Huskies

Rome Odunze cuts such a charming and influential figure as a University of Washington football player, that when he's done with the game, maybe he'll return home to Las Vegas someday and own his own casino.

The Casino at the Odunze Bellagio? The Flamingo Rome?

For now, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound junior wide receiver from Sin City finds himself and his teammates at the mercy of these establishments and their sports books, which have made the unbeaten Huskies 9.5-point underdogs entering Friday's Pac-12 championship game against one-loss Oregon at Allegiant Stadium.

Still, you would think these odds-makers would look more kindly on one of their own, a native son, a budding NFL player, maybe soon to become a household name. 

"They're from my hometown, but Vegas is its own entity," Odunze said with a chortle. "Those book-makers, I don't know where they're from, but they've got vendettas against people and different motives."

So, no, this Husky stalwart simply can't make a call or two home and gets the odds reversed or at the very least more favorable for his team.

Odunze said there's really only one solution to being underestimated by the casino sports books and that's to make them look silly.

"They don't believe in us, they haven't believed in us all season," he said. "It's nothing different, it's nothing new for us. We're just going to go out there and compete, compete our [backsides] off, and leave it where it rests."

Odunze still will probably have his own Vegas establishment some day, working that football name to his benefit, and making sure the bookies treat the Huskies better in the future. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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