Jeff Gordon is leading the Chase for NASCAR’s Nextel Cup with just four races left to go. He’s the overwhelming favorite at 1-4 to win the Cup for the fifth time in his career. A foregone conclusion, right?

Of course not. Teammate Jimmie Johnson (3-2) is just 53 points behind, and he took the checkered flag at last week’s Subway 500 – Gordon finished third. The win gives Johnson seven on the season, compared to six for Gordon. He could make it eight this Sunday at the Pep Boys Auto 500; the race takes place at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where Johnson won in March to record his fifth Top-3 result in eight appearances.

Fifteen points separate first and second in NASCAR, so if Johnson wins four straight, he wins the Cup. More likely, one poor showing by Gordon would make things even; he has four results outside the Top 10 in his last 10 races. It definitely could happen.

This is one hell of a field. The nine horses who will participate in the Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at New Jersey’s Monmouth Park have been announced, and Lawyer Ron is the slight favorite coming out of the 1-hole at 5-2.

If you believe the man who set the morning line at Monmouth, Lawyer Ron has the least value of the top contenders. “It was very difficult to separate the first three horses,” Brad Thomas told the Associated Press. The other two horses in question are Street Sense and Curlin, each at 3-1.

All of a sudden, Any Given Saturday has some value at 4-1. He was the cheval du jour after taking August’s Haskell Invitational at Monmouth, one of three straight wins heading into the Classic. But fifth favorite Hard Spun might be even more compelling at 8-1 after beating Street Sense at the Kentucky Cup Classic last month. There will be no easy choices among this quintet.

So it’s the Colorado Rockies versus the Boston Red Sox. Piece of cake for handicappers, right? Actually, it could be.

Normally, I’d flippantly tell you to go ahead and bet the underdog. But then the Red Sox reeled off three wins in a row to run the favorites to 14-10 for a very mild profit of 0.54 of a unit. Boston was favored all three times on the moneyline – very slightly in Games 5 and 6, as it turned out.

Boston has carried the chalk in every single game of the playoffs, home and away, and figures to do so again in the World Series. And the Sox seem to have done it with just one consistent starter: Josh Beckett, supported by a killer batting order. Forgive me for busting out an old-school stat, but David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis are each hitting .400 or better. The Rocks have their work cut out for them.

Even before Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s MLB career home-run record, people were looking forward to the day when someone less controversial would take the crown. Far and away the most likely candidate among active players is Alex Rodriguez.

Rodriguez went into Tuesday’s action with 503 home runs. This is his 14th season in the majors, and he’s playing just as well in 2007 as he did in his breakthrough 1996 campaign. A-Rod has stayed healthy, and shows no signs of slowing down at age 32.

Bonds is still hitting home runs, but if you plug A-Rod’s numbers into the Bill James “Career Assessments” tool, you’ll come up with a 30 percent chance for Rodriguez to reach the 800-homer plateau. At least, that’s what I came up with – the tool’s instructions are a bit fuzzy. But more important than some record, it projects six more years of A-Rod goodness. Enjoy.

The Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians are all knotted up at one game apiece in their American League Championship Series. Which makes Boston the huge favorite to win it all.

Huh? Check out the World Series odds. At press time, Boston was the big chalk at 27-20, followed by the Colorado Rockies at 8-5. Cleveland was next at 11-5, with the Arizona Diamondbacks bringing up the rear at 17-1. This was before Game 3 of the NLCS – the Rockies won the first two games in Arizona.

The perceived problem with Cleveland is their Nos. 3 and 4 starting pitchers, Jake Westbrook (4.40 xFIP) and Paul Byrd (4.96 xFIP). But look at Boston. Daisuke Matsuzaka appears spent, pitching just two quality starts in his last nine appearances, while projected Game 4 starter Tim Wakefield has a 5.16 xFIP and missed the ALDS and had a cortisone shot in his shoulder. Nothing will be easy for either team.

Television, the drug of the nation, is all over the futures market now that the fall season is upon us: Kid Nation, Survivor 16, Survivor 17, Dancing with the Stars 5, and The Biggest Loser 4 are all on the betting menu.

Some of these bets have a greater degree of difficulty than others. For example, the Kid Nation offering asks if the show will be cancelled before it airs its final episode. “No” was the favorite at –600. To get an edge on these kind of bets, you can dig into the gossip rags to see what kind of ratings are being generated and what the TV bigwigs are saying.

Bets asking who will actually win the show are tougher to crack. These are all subjective contests; even The Biggest Loser is up to the voting preferences of the contestants more than the scale. Maybe Bill James can come up with a statistic for that.

There’s no denying the popularity of parlays. Sports lotteries across the world use them, including countries where gambling is supposedly illegal. Just don’t expect fair odds from the government.

Instead, check out our parlays. You can pick anywhere between two and 12 outcomes, with odds ranging from 2.6-1 on two-team combos to 600-1 for the full 12-pack. You can even take a cross-sport parlay – perhaps you’re a New York fan who cashed in Sunday on both the Giants and Yankees.

Sharp handicappers tend to limit their parlaying to two outcomes, often playing the pointspread and the total on the same matchup. There are strategic situations where it may make sense to parlay rather than make two separate bets; for example, taking a heavy favorite and the “over.” For the favorite to cover at all, there will have to be some points on the board. Your parlay is already well on its way to cashing in.

Unless you’re a born and bred Canadian, chances are you haven’t even put on a pair of skates in your life. But that doesn’t mean you’re unqualified to bet on hockey.

It’s a really simple sport: put the puck in the net. Some teams are better at it than others. Also, some teams are much better at keeping the puck out of the net. If you do the math on the two goaltenders in a matchup, you’re already ahead of the game.

The betting side of things isn’t rocket science, either. It’s a lot like baseball betting; there’s the moneyline, and there’s the spread, which looks and cooks the same as the MLB runline. If you’re not a big fan of either, try the totals. These are very popular, since you don’t have to do too much math on the chalk; it’s usually hovering around the familiar –110. And you get to keep your teeth.

We’re in the thick of NASCAR’s Chase for the Nextel Cup. Are you getting in on the betting action? Why not?

NASCAR ranks up there with the other summer betting sports – tennis and golf among them – in how simple it is to handicap. It’s a lot like the futures market for the Super Bowl, except instead of 32 teams, you have 43 drivers trying to cross the finish line first.

There are dozens of different tracks on the Nextel Cup circuit, each with its own quirks. Certain drivers perform better on certain tracks; their lifetime records are widely available on the Web for analysis. Also, certain manufacturers tend to dominate from season to season; this year, it’s Chevrolet by a country mile.

Still not easy enough? Consider the fact that you don’t really need to spend any time watching the races to make a sharp bet. There’s nothing esoteric about turning left.