When Kenny White explains how he determines that Team A is five points better than Team B, he pulls out a well-worn, three-ring notebook to make his case.

Inside the notebook are dozens of pages filled with statistics, some with hand-written footnotes to explain in detail an individual player's value to his team.

White has a notebook for every sport he watches with notes on every player in every league. Some of his notes point out the nuances of playing in a particular venue and whether a player would have a harder or easier time excelling in that arena.

"It's all a matter of calculating a team's power rating," said White, who then watches the drama of sports unfold on television screens in a satellite signal-fed war room in the small office of Las Vegas Sports Consultants Inc.

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) recently went through an ownership change. Founded in 1982 by Michael "Roxy" Roxborough and sold to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Sportsline.com Inc., the company was acquired in November for an undisclosed price by White, a former baseball coach at Bishop Gorman High School. Investors who bought the company with White are Ellen Whittemore and her husband, Jeff Patterson, and David and Lesa Whittemore.

Ironically, the transaction was spurred by the NCAA, an avowed critic of gambling on collegiate sports.

Sportsline.com sold the gambling service as part of an agreement with Viacom Inc.'s CBS to create a Web site of college sports. The company, which is partially owned by CBS, announced its intent to sell the service in early 2003.

The NCAA had criticized CBS' affiliation with Sportsline.com because the company owned two gambling services. Viacom and CBS, broadcaster of the NCAA basketball tournament, have pledged to support the NCAA's campaign against sports betting.

Now that LVSC is in the hands of owners who aren't at odds, so to speak, with the NCAA, the company can focus on growth, and White says he already is working to provide more betting options for his 118 sports book clients to offer their betting customers.

For the upcoming football season, LVSC will provide weekly odds for teams to win or not to win the Super Bowl. For example, the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots currently are 5-1 favorites to win Super Bowl XXXIX next January. White's team of oddsmakers will give similar odds on New England not winning.

White also will have a new spin on a familiar bet -- running odds on season win totals. A bettor currently can wager on whether any given team will win more or fewer games than a posted number. Those are generally referred to as "futures" bets, and once the season has begun wagering ends.

But LVSC will continue to offer odds throughout the season on those win totals, adjusting prices with each passing week.

White said the wager would give race and sports book operators more options to offer bettors, one of the few ways sports books can increase volume.

"We haven't begun to tap into all the betting options that are available to us," said John Avello, the race and sports book director for Bally's and Paris Las Vegas. "It's good that there are creative minds in the sports and race book business to develop new options, especially on football. Football is king, everybody knows that."

Chris Andrews, the new vice president of race and sports book operations at the Golden Nugget, said he's willing to try new things -- but it's up to the bettor to catch on and play.

"Looking back, I had some pretty unusual bets on the board (at the Cal-Neva in Reno)," Andrews said. "I even had Australian-rules football. Up there, I was one of first guys who booked NASCAR races and I didn't know the first thing about it.

"One guy would book $5 and you're stuck with it. But NASCAR is getting there. The race in Las Vegas did a tremendous amount of business and the (race at) Daytona does a tremendous amount. Sometimes, you just have to try a lot of new things."

The sports book oddsmakers don't have to put up LVSC's odds, but because the company has research behind it and several oddsmakers that develop numbers using their own systems, the books feel confident in using their numbers, even if they don't have much experience in a particular sport or event.

"They don't have to use the numbers we provide," White said. "But on most of what we put out, the books are only a half point or a point different than us most of the time."

Richard N. Velotta covers gaming and tourism for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4061 or by e-mail at velotta@lasvegassun.com.