A former St. Joe’s walk-on won $1 million picking NFL games while ‘changing diapers’

Chris Coyne had a chance to win $1 million earlier this month, but that wasn’t enough to get him out of reading his son a bedtime story.

His friends were coming over the next afternoon to watch the final slate of NFL games as Coyne neared the prize. So his wife said it was his night to make sure one of their two children was sleeping.

And there was Coyne — a cell phone on his lap so he could follow the Buccaneers-Panthers game on Jan. 3 — reading The Pout-Pout Fish to 2-year-old Charlie.

“I know it by heart now, so I’m just reading it from memory and watching the phone on mute while I’m telling the story,” said Coyne, who also has an infant son named Harrison. “But I have a million dollars on the line. The Bucs missed a field goal, and I’m like, ‘Ahh.’ I had to grit it.”

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It was the start of an emotional roller coaster of a weekend that ended with Coyne, a 34-year-old former walk-on for Phil Martelli at St. Joseph’s, winning the $1 million grand prize in a season-long NFL pick ’em contest run by a Las Vegas casino with 6,000 participants.

He lost a game in September when the Eagles returned a blocked field goal against the Rams, picked up a win in December when the Raiders kicked a meaningless field goal to lose by 7 points instead of 10, and then pouted through that bedtime story as the Buccaneers faded.

It was a season-long marathon. But it ended with Coyne, who lives in Brooklyn, flying to Las Vegas during the NFL’s wild-card weekend to claim his oversized check and custom blue jacket at the Circa Resort & Casino as the winner of the Circa Million VII.

“I wasn’t as dedicated to it as many others are,” said Coyne, who was at the playground with his kids when he checked his phone to see how Jordan Davis’ sprint spoiled that game against the Rams on Sept. 21.

“I joke that there were no models, no Excel spreadsheets. It’s just me changing diapers and making picks.”

Coyne was cut from the St. Joe’s basketball team as a freshman and sophomore but was certain that his junior year in 2011-12 would be different.

He could have played Division II hoops but came to Philly because his Manhattan high school followed the Jesuit educational model just like St. Joe’s. Coyne played JV ball as a freshman and sophomore for the Hawks and practiced with Martelli’s crew in the offseason.

He rode his bike home from the gym the night before tryouts and thought it was finally his chance to make the team. Then Coyne hit a curb and flew over his handlebars. His palms were gushing blood and his wrists were banged up.

“I had no skin on my hands,” Coyne said. “There it goes. There goes the dream.”

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Coyne arrived early to the tryout, hoping that the Hawks athletic trainer could do something. The trainer wrapped Coyne’s hands and sent him on the court.

“I pretty much looked like a boxer,” he said.

It worked as Coyne — shooting like coaches always stressed with his fingers and not his palms — seemed to knock down everything. Maybe he should always play like a prizefighter, he thought.

Martelli called to tell him that his third try was a success: Coyne was a walk-on.

“It was my dad’s birthday and I called him to tell him,” Coyne said. “He was the one who pushed me to see this through and not just play at the D-III level. He said, ‘This is your dream. Whether you get one minute in a game or 30 minutes, go see this through.’ I couldn’t thank him enough.”

He played two years for Martelli, who told the bench players on the “Pinnie Squad” to give it their all in practice against the starters. The reserves were a bunch of guys like Coyne, who could have played elsewhere but stayed on Hawk Hill with Martelli.

So the future $1 million NFL picker battled every day against Langston Galloway, the future NBA player. Martelli assigned his players to read articles about leadership and teamwork and preached the value of family. It was always more than basketball.

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“I never felt like I was just sitting on the sidelines getting guys water,” Coyne said. “You were in the mix every day, which was really cool.”

Coyne played just 12 minutes over eight games during those two seasons. But he did knock down a three-pointer at the Palestra, entering the game late against Penn on ESPN for his first NCAA basket.

“It’s funny looking back and thinking, ‘Why would you ever be nervous?’” Coyne said. “But you’re just sitting there, you’re cold, there’s 15,000 people in the stands, and he’s going to call your name but you don’t know when it’s coming or if it’s coming. You’re just thrown out there.

“My parents were there and it was a dream come true. It was years of seeing your dream not play out the way you wanted to and then have that opportunity.”

Coyne entered his first football contest in 2019 after his friend Brian Hopkins signed him up during a trip to Vegas. He split that entry with Hopkins, and they met each week at a Manhattan bar after work, scribbling down the five games they liked on napkins.

The pool has a $1,000 buy-in and requires each entrant to pick five games every week against the point spread. A proxy then places the bets for them in Vegas, as more than half the players live outside Nevada.

Coyne and Hopkins decided to each enter the next season, and they developed their own strategies. Coyne stays away from Thursday night games as he would have to pick all five games by then instead of waiting until Saturday afternoon. The lines for every game lock on Thursday morning, which sometimes means a line could move before Coyne sends in his picks.

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He didn’t watch a full NFL game until the middle of October because he was usually busy on Sundays with his kids. He read articles during the week and listened to podcasts. Picking games, Coyne learned, is less about breaking down game tape and more similar to the sales job he has on Wall Street.

“You’re aware of trends,” Coyne said. “When the public A.K.A. retail is buying a lot of stock, that’s never a good sign. Maybe in the short term it works out, but over the long term, you try to find those overreactions in the market where the public really likes a team. Especially if the public loves a team and the line is going against the public.

“That’s the biggest telltale sign right there. You have to have a process and you have to know what you’re doing, but so much of it is you have to get the breaks sometimes. The breaks went my ways sometimes.”

That bedtime story would have been a bit less stressful had the Bills converted their two-point try a week earlier against the Eagles, as Coyne would have entered the final weekend with a three-game lead.

Coyne was in Berwyn for that game visiting the family of his wife, Maddy, which was rooting for the Birds despite knowing Coyne was in the hunt for big money.

“I’m devastated and I’m like, ‘Can’t you for one week just be on my side?” he said “But Eagles trump all in that household.”

He instead had to sweat it out. He won Saturday night with the 49ers after the Buccaneers lost and then won Sunday with the Giants but lost with the Titans and Dolphins. Coyne said he tends to pick bad teams since he’s often going against the popular choices.

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The Steelers won on Sunday night, pushing the second-place entry even with Coyne. He thought they would then split the first and second prizes ($750,000 each) and went to bed disappointed.

“It was a long couple of weeks and I was football fatigued,” Coyne said. “I’m all [ticked] off. But I couldn’t complain. It was still $750,000 and it was a great season, but I didn’t know if I was getting the blue jacket. That’s what I really wanted. It’s like the Masters green.”

Coyne woke up at 5 a.m., checked his phone, and saw he finished in first place on a tiebreaker, because he had more winning weeks than the other entry. The $1 million prize was his. The blue jacket was, too.

Coyne flew to Vegas that weekend with his friends, received his prize, spent 30 hours at the resort, and didn’t take his blue jacket off until he got home.

It was perfect, like a walk-on hitting a three-pointer at the Palestra with his parents in the crowd.

“I spent all of November and December saying, ‘How am I going to screw this up?’” said Coyne, who finished 60-29-1 over 18 weeks. “But somehow I came out on top. It was the weekend of a lifetime.”