In this month’s Stock Watch, I take a look at the slumping Florida Marlins, who have lost 15 of 16 games and now find themselves in last place in the National League East.

Through May, the Marlins had won more units than any other NL team. So far in June, they are down 15.22 units.

Stock Watch will also take a look at which teams are rising and falling.

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Last year’s MAC championship game was like so many others before it.

That proved to be a bad thing for Northern Illinois, which lost to Miami (Ohio) as 19.5-point favorites. Now, with a new coach and a new direction, the Huskies will try to get back to the MAC title game.

Read on to find the Huskies’ forecast for 2011.

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If the NFL lockout continues and the season is shortened to eight games, the value on betting long shots to win Super Bowl futures increases.

Read on to find out why the prices being offered to long shots are inflated if the league does in fact play a shortened season.

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Tulsa has everything I could possibly ask for in a team that plays in the Conference USA. They have an explosive offense led by senior quarterback G.J. Kinne, the conference’s offensive player of the year last season. They have 18 returning starters, including a handful of returners at skill positions. And they have an easy conference schedule, with two of the league’s best teams — Houston and Southern Methodist — having to make a trip to H.A. Chapman Stadium in October and November.

So why am I so down on this team for 2011?

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The PGA Tour’s U.S. Open begins play Thursday at Congressional Country club in Bethesda, Md., a site that last hosted The Open in 1997. The field will consist of 156 players, and historically, this has been an event that produces some unlikely winners.

Graeme McDowell came out of nowhere to win last year’s event, firing an even-par 284 to hold off runner-up Gregory Havret. The year before that, it was previously unknown Lucas Glover who captured the trophy.

With three-time champion Tiger Woods taking a break to get healthy, the rest of the field will look to capitalize in his absence.

Here is a look at three golfers who could contend for this year’s championship.

All odds courtesy of BetOnline.com.

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If you follow the gambling industry at all, you probably have heard about Atlantic City-based Tropicana Casino and Resort getting taken to the cleaners by a pair of blackjack players over the last few months.

The Trop claims that two blackjack players won $5.8 million and $5.3 million, respectively.

Instead of hiding in shame, though, the casino is using the opportunity to promote its brand and issue a challenge to blackjack high rollers everywhere: “If someone wants to take a shot, we’ll take the action.”

But the reporting of this story seems incomplete at best and fictional at worst.

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When trying to put together power ratings for college football teams, you’ve got to start somewhere. One thing that I like to do is pool together the top 25 rankings from the four major college football preview magazines — Phil Steele, Athlon Sports, Lindy’s and The Sporting News — and then come up with a consensus ranking.

It obviously won’t serve as my power ratings when college football season kicks off on Sept. 1, but it does give me a starting point. The next 78 days will be spent finalizing projections and seeing which teams belong where.

What follows is a consensus ranking of the top 20 teams in college football. I’ve awarded one point to each team based on their rank in the various magazines. A team receives 1 point if it’s ranked No. 1, 10 points if it’s ranked No. 10, 15 points if it’s ranked No. 15, and so on. Unranked teams receive 26 points.

Continue reading to see which teams made the top 20.

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Not surprisingly, Andrew Luck is the favorite to win the 2011 Heisman Trophy, according to Bodog.eu odds released Tuesday afternoon.

Luck, of Stanford, is listed at 9/2, while Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones is 13/2 and South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore is 7/1.

Other sportsbooks released their Heisman odds earlier this month, including TheGreek.com, which has Luck as a favorite but far from the overwhelming favorite. TheGreek lists luck at 3/1, with Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson and Lattimore at 5/1.

You can view all of Bodog’s odds by clicking here.

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I don’t pay any attention to UFC, but stories like this make me want to start.

According to a story on MMAFighting.com, a man who has yet to be publicly identified correctly picked all 12 UFC 131 fights. And, as luck would have it, he threw all the fights into a $200, 12-fight parlay, earning him a payout of $51,547.

I know very little about UFC, but I do know that there is plenty of randomness in the sport given all the different ways a fighter can win a match. That’s what makes this parlay an even more unlikely winner. The man apparently picked both favorites and underdogs, including some medium-sized underdogs.

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About 15 minutes after the Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat 105-95 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Sunday, I saw a tweet from Pregame.com’s R.J. Bell appear on my timeline.

I expected the tweet to be sports gambling related, as most of his tweets are. But this tweet was a link to an article, an article that appeared on the Newark Star-Ledger’s website. The newspaper was reporting that Clarence Clemons, longtime member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, had suffered a stroke — a stroke so serious that he required two brain surgeries.

The updates began to trickle in early Monday morning, and Clemons was believed to be in stable condition and responsive. By the afternoon, he was paralyzed on the left side of his body.

Those of us who are huge Springsteen fans — it’s a list that includes Heat president Pat Riley, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and Cardinals manager Tony La Russa (pictured above) — were indeed Countin’ on a Miracle.

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