So here they come, ladies and gentlemen. On your left, the Patriots of New England, with an offense triggered by the fastest gun in the East, West, North or South. In the AFC Championship Game, they threatened to score enough points to overwhelm any other professional football team on the Continental Land Mass.

And on your right, the Seahawks of Seattle, Wash. Their defense is a study in trench warfare. Draw it up on a blackboard and you can forget the Xs and Os. Just put in 11 junkyard dogs. They call themselves "The Legion of Boom." No other team on that same Continental Land Mass was able to match them in ferocity.

In between them stands the Loyal Brotherhood of casino bookmakers of Las Vegas. It is the brothers' job to make the point spreads and the proposition bets wind up on the right side of the corporate ledger. The solution cannot be found in calculus or nuclear physics. Simple math is all it takes:

"Rake in more than you shell out."

How do they do this? Well, it begins with the opening spread. Get it right and correctly gauge how, when and how far you must move it or get in a hell of a lot of trouble. It is no small burden to gentleman who has this responsibility.

Last year, they did very well when the Seahawks shocked the world and the Denver Broncos — not in that order. Art Manteris, who makes the numbers for every casino in the Station Casino chain, made it a pick 'em. He knew full well that Payton Manning was the magnet that would draw big money to the Broncos, and he knew the Seahawks were underrated, and so in the end, there would be nothing for the books to fear.

"My group and I sat around in a meeting," he told me at the time. "I told them I wanted to open with that pick 'em line and they disagreed. Basically we all felt it ought to be Denver minus-1½, but I figured that would take care of itself once we got the money rolling in."

"Did you guys vote, or what?" I asked him.

After his laughter died down, he simply said, "This is not a democracy."

And that explains the unanimity among the bookmakers on this Sunday's game. After all, in their love of simple solutions through math, they do talk to each other.

So that's why most of the books have the Pats giving a point or a point and a half and a few have it as pick 'em. Jimmy Vaccaro, who sets the line at the South Point Hotel and Casino thinks it will wind up on game day where, if you want to bet the Pats, you will be giving between one and one-and-a-half points.

"This appears to be a wager where we should do all right because that one to two points has swung back and forth since we opened. First it was the Pats and then the Seahawks and now it's the Pats again."

There are two constituencies throwing money at any bet in this world. The first are those who bet with their hearts instead of their heads. Manteris contends that the low-rollers (as opposed to heavy hitters) often bet on the team they want to win rather than the team they have studied and believe will win.

"That's only natural," he says. "I have the same problem, but I have to get it out of my head when I go to work. A good oddsmaker must be confident but not have a big ego. There are a lot of broke and unemployed oddsmakers with big egos."

Then there is the other, more powerful group that Ron Kornegay at the Westgate Casino calls the sharp money. The sharp money bets early and late, hopes to catch a middle and also has the power to move a line. The books need to balance the two groups.

That's the way Vegas bookmakers struggle to make every bet come out for the house and it usually does.

Jimmy Vaccaro has been in the town since the 1970s and he still shudders when he recalls Super Bowl XIII or as the brothers call it "Black Sunday."

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