Jimmy was a household name in a way that would be unthinkable today. How he got to that point was a bit of a mystery, but suffice to say anytime anyone back in the day made a prediction about anything, you could respond "Who do you think you are, Jimmy the Greek?" and people would get the reference.
Recently, I found out that Jimmy was born in the gambling hotbed (yes, really) of Steubenville, Ohio, was a contemporary of Dean Martin, and made a large chunk of his fortune picking Truman over Dewey in the 1948 Presidential election.
In 1974, CBS introduced the first large-scale NFL pregame show, "The NFL Today." Jimmy joined Brett Musburger, Phyllis George and Irv Cross on the studio team. The show was a huge hit, and Jimmy as the in-house tout and betting expert. Never mind that any discussion of point spreads was forbidden, and Jimmy's straight-up picks were less than stellar, he was the face of NFL betting.
The NFL Today and Jimmy the Greek settled in as the leading pregame show and part of the NFL firmament. This continued on until the late 1980s, when a local TV crew interviewed Jimmy at a luncheon. Jimmy, looking to be a couple of cocktails in, provided some jaw-droppingly racist commentary. The interview quickly went was would currently be called viral, and that was the end of Jimmy the Greek on TV.
On to the picks - generated via the proprietary Spreadbuster algorithm:
Three-Star Picks:
Last week: 1-3
Two-Star Picks:
Last week: 3-1
One-Star Picks
These games are anyone's guess.
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