Place your bets

Thursday, Aug. 15 was a historic day in the Midwest gambling world. At noon on Thursday, the waters opened to bet on sports in the state of Iowa.

Iowa was just the 11th state in the Union to legalize sportsbetting. Governor Kim Reynolds signed SF 617 into law on May 13, and that paved the way for casinos around the state to open sportsbooks. Aug. 15 was the start date set, and a handful of casinos around the state are already taking bets.

The Hawkeye state is a rare breed as a Midwest state with legal sportsbetting. It is still illegal to bet on sports in all six states that border Iowa. You can make bets in casinos in Delaware, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia, as well as in the District of Columbia. In Tennessee, you can bet only online.

A couple of local casinos will be points of interest for bettors this fall sports season. Betting has already opened at Riverside Casino and Golf Resort, and Catfish Bend Casino will take their first bets today (Monday).

Senior Vice President of Iowa Operations for Great River Entertaiment Rob Higgins, a Fairfield resident, said he wanted the Sportsbook in Burlington to have some time to prepare for the incoming wave of bettors.

'We got our license the other day, but we decided to wait,” said Higgins. 'We're checking out all the software and making sure everything is good. We'll take our first bet Monday at noon.”

And what a time for the industry to open. Football is the second-most bet on sport on earth and it's No. 1 in America.

Spreads, over/unders and straight bets will all be options to bet on, as will proposition bets, although Higgins says gamblers will have to pump the brakes on prop bets involving local athletes.

'You'll be able to bet on Iowa, Iowa State and the local universities within Iowa, but you will not be able to bet any in-game betting or proposition betting on certain players,” Higgins says. 'That's just the state of Iowa, everybody else you can do that with.”

Iowa Wesleyan fans probably won't have much luck with betting on the Tigers. Local casinos will offer betting on all the major sports, but Higgins says Division 3 games and NAIA contests are too small to bet on.

Despite hosting the most bet on college football and basketball games, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) is opposed to all forms of gambling.

'The NCAA opposes all forms of legal and illegal sports wagering, which has the potential to undermine the integrity of sports contests, and jeopardizes the welfare of studen-athletes and the intercollegiate athletics community,” says a statement on the association's website.

The NCAA's naysaying won't stop college football fans from throwing down money on the local Division 1 schools, however. In fact, the first bet placed in the state of Iowa was that the Hawkeye football team would win more than seven and a half games this season. That bet was placed by Bettendorf Mayor Bob Gallagher on Thursday.

Gamblers will be able to bet on professional sports, college sports and certain fantasy sports, although it will be up to the sportsbooks themselves to decide what is available.

'We're going to stay pretty much with the main stuff,” says Higgins. 'Baseball, football, hockey, that kind of stuff, and then see where things go from there.”

Both Riverside and Catfish Bend will also allow people to bet on sports using apps on their mobile phones, as will some other sportsbooks in Iowa, but those apps are not yet up and running.

Sports-betting rooms for both casinos will be equipped with big screen TVs, a bar area and comfy seats to watch the games in. Other means of gambling (a la slot machines) can also be found in the rooms.

The fall sports wave is coming, with the first NCAA Division 1 football games kicking off this weekend, meaning plent of opportunity to win - or lose, a few bucks in the upcoming months.