Last
Week’s Record
Biggest
Game (Straight Up: 1-0; Vs. Spread: 0-1)
Overall
(Straight
Up: 1-0; Vs. Spread: 0-1; Moneyline Upsets: 0-0)
Season
Record
Biggest
10 Games (Straight Up: 103-53; Vs. Spread: 74-81-1)
Overall
(Straight
Up: 535-162; Vs. Spread: 362-330-4; Moneyline Upsets: 29-28)
Week
15 Review: For the second year in a row it was a very good
final game of the year, but for the second year in a row that was bad news for
me, as I picked the winner correctly but missed ATS. Thus, I will once again
head into the bowl season with a sour taste in my mouth.
Bowl
Season Preview: I did not finish the regular season
strong this year, but if I can avoid disaster in the bowls (which can be
tricky) I have a chance for a really good year overall. I’ve been chasing .500
ATS in the biggest games all year and I’ll need to do better than okay in the
bowls in order to get there.
What can I say about
the bowl matchups this year? They suck, as usual. But I think this year might actually
be the worst in a long time. Certainly this year’s BCS games are in the running
for the worst ever. And the non-BCS matchups continue to disappoint.
We only have one more
year of the current system remaining, but to be honest, that actually has me
worried. When it was announced that there would be a 4-team playoff and that
winning your conference would not be a requirement I basically was satisfied
that the new system would be okay. But over the past couple of months of grown
more and more concerned about not only the playoff, but even about how the rest
of the bowl games will be chosen.
As I always say, no
matter how shitty the bowl matchups are, it’s still college football, and that
beats pretty much anything else. Plus, this year’s National Championship Game
is one of the most eagerly anticipated in many years. There’s a lot riding on
that game; even more than usual. No matter what happens, it’s going to be
entertaining.
I feel okay about my
picks but I realize that anything can happen in these games. There are going to
be some outcomes that surprise everyone. But I don’t see the use in trying to
figure out which games will have the “illogical” results. I think if you start
doing that you’ll miss on as many as you hit.
I’ve picked the games
on “feel” or “gut” the way that I always do but I know that there’s little
chance of the bowl season being quite as one-sided as I’ve predicted. My picks
are heavy on the favorites this year and bowl season doesn’t normally play out
that way. There are blowouts to be sure; not every game is competitive. But
there almost seem to be as many blowouts by the underdog as there are blowouts
by the favorites. That’s a bit of an exaggeration but I suspect it must happen
more often than it does during the regular season.
In the end, I just didn’t
feel pulled by some kind of hunch to pick many upsets. When I wasn’t strong on
either team I usually sided with the favorite. I’ve picked only 1 underdog to
win straight up. There’s almost no chance of that happening with 11 spreads of
less than 5 points (not including the “pickem” games which have no underdog or
favorite). I also picked just 5 underdogs to beat the spread; that seems
equally unlikely. But I just don’t like to try and change my picks to better
fit an overall scenario that is more likely. Again, I think you miss as many as
you hit with that tactic, and when I pick a game wrong I don’t want it to be
because I went against my instincts.
Picking bowl games can
be a tricky business. It really does sometimes seem as if bowl season actually
is a separate season. There is the 12 or 13 game regular season, and then there
is this 1 game season which is separate. Here is just a short list of the
things that can make bowl games different from the rest of the season:
Time off between games;
extra time to prepare; players lost to injury; players rested and coming back
from injuries; varying degrees of motivation; players who have checked out;
coaching changes; neutral sites; various levels of fan support; unfamiliarity
with opponents; having no future games for which to save plays or conserve
energy/health; players trying to impress future coaches; players trying to
impress scouts; players trying to avoid injury in their last game; players
knowing they will never play another game; increased attention; teams and
players believing the hype; players having time and opportunity on their hands;
suspensions; and monologues delivered by CEO’s of corporations and businesses who
haven’t thought about the Thundering Herd or the Blue Raiders before in their
lives but who want to assure us that they are damn proud to be sponsoring this
great family event again this year.
So you have to consider
all of that when making your picks. Obviously, it can get a little
overwhelming. And how do you predict which of these possible factors will apply
to a particular team and which ones won’t? Let’s say the coach of a team has
left to take another job. It’s possible that it will hurt that team. Perhaps
they lose something strategically or in preparation that really makes a
difference. Maybe the players get deflated. Maybe they check out. All of this
is possible.
However, it might be
that the head coach doesn’t make that big a difference on game day. Maybe his assistants
and the players know the system as well as the coach. Maybe the assistant
coaches prepare even harder and are even more focused because it’s all on them
now and because they want to impress. Maybe the players get angry and want to
show that this wasn’t all about the coach. All of this is possible.
In recent years, we’ve
seen numerous examples of surprising outcomes which were seemingly the result
of a major difference in the level of motivation between the two teams. This
year I have actually noticed a number of articles which have stated that the
key to picking bowl games is figuring out the motivation factor, and some of
the articles have even attempted to explain who this can be done. But I don’t
believe you can tell. In my opinion, you just never know how teams will react.
Maybe an insider or even a guy who covers one team as a journalist will have
some clue as to how that particular team will react, but they wouldn’t have any
idea about the rest of the bowl teams.
In the past I’ve tried
to calculate all the different factors beforehand and then make my picks with
all of that in mind. I’ve also gone in the opposite direction and made a point
to ignore all of those factors and make picks as if it were week 7. This season
I attempted to find a happy medium between those two extremes. Which is to say,
I did what I always do: I thought about the games and picked what the outcome
that made the most sense.
I feel like this intro
is dragging on and I’m not saying anything that poignant, so I’m just gonna
wrap it up. I do need to mention that I once again did something different with
the titles of the bowls. If you’ve read my pre-bowl season posts before you
know that I have always resisted using the corporate sponsorship names of the
bowl games. Usually I have gone back to the original, plain title of each game
(such as Peach Bowl or Citrus Bowl) or for more recent bowls I’ve simply used
the city (such as the San Francisco Bowl). Last year I actually came up with my
own personal names for many of the bowl games, even ones that had never been
used (The Grateful Dead Bowl for example).
This year I’ve decided
to do a little of both. I’m not going to go crazy with the titles like I did
last year. The reason for this is that when I went back and looked at my post
from last year I sometimes didn’t even know which bowl was which, and for some
of them I couldn’t even remember the story behind the title I had come up with.
So I’m only going to do a few totally original names. For the rest, I’ll either
use the city/state, some aspect of the location which will make it obvious what
bowl it is, or the original title of the bowl game. I will also include the
location of each game to eliminate any uncertainty.
And now, on to my picks
for this year’s bowl season.
December
15th
The
New Mexico Bowl (Albuquerque)
Matchup:
Nevada (+9.5) vs. Arizona
Pick:
Arizona covers
The
Blue Turf Bowl (Boise)
Matchup:
Toledo (+10) vs. Utah State
Pick:
Utah State covers
December
20th
The
Jack Murphy Bowl (San Diego)
Matchup:
BYU (-2.5) vs. San Diego State
Pick:
BYU covers
December
21st
The
St. Petersburg Bowl (St. Petersburg)
Matchup:
Central Florida (-7) vs. Ball State
Pick:
Central Florida covers
December
22nd
The
New Orleans Bowl (New Orleans)
Matchup:
East Carolina (+6) vs. Louisiana-Lafayette
Pick:
Louisiana-Lafayette covers
The
Las Vegas Bowl (Las Vegas)
Matchup:
Washington (+5) vs. Boise State
Pick:
Washington beats the spread
December
24th
The
Hawaii Bowl (Honolulu)
Matchup:
Fresno State (-12) vs. SMU
Pick:
Fresno State covers
December
26th
The
Motor City Bowl (Detroit)
Matchup:
Western Kentucky (-5) vs. Central Michigan
Pick:
Western Kentucky covers
December
27th
The
General George Washington Bowl (Washington, D.C.)
Matchup:
San Jose State (-7) vs. Bowling Green
Pick:
San Jose State covers
The
Queen City Bowl (Charlotte)
Matchup:
Cincinnati (-7) vs. Duke
Pick:
Duke beats the spread
The
Holiday Bowl (San Diego)
Matchup:
Baylor (PK) vs. UCLA
Pick:
Baylor wins
December
28th
The
Independence Bowl (Shreveport)
Matchup:
Ohio (+7) vs. Louisiana-Monroe
Pick:
Louisiana-Monroe covers
The
Sunshine Bowl (Orlando)
Matchup:
Rutgers (+2.5) vs. Virginia Tech
Pick:
Virginia Tech covers
The
Texas Bowl (Houston)
Matchup:
Minnesota (+13) vs. Texas Tech
Pick:
Texas Tech covers
December
29th
The
Ft. Worth Bowl (Ft. Worth)
Matchup:
Rice (+1) vs. Air Force
Pick:
Air Force covers
The
Bronx Bowl (Bronx)
Matchup:
West Virginia (-4) vs. Syracuse
Pick:
West Virginia covers
The
San Francisco Bowl (San Francisco)
Matchup:
Navy (+13.5) vs. Arizona State
Pick:
Arizona State covers
The
Alamo Bowl (San Antonio)
Matchup:
Texas (+2) vs. Oregon State
Pick:
Oregon State covers
The
Copper Bowl (Tempe)
Matchup:
TCU (-2.5) vs. Michigan State
Pick:
TCU covers
December
31st
The
Music City Bowl (Nashville)
Matchup:
North Carolina State (+6.5) vs. Vanderbilt
Pick:
Vanderbilt covers
The
Sun Bowl (El Paso)
Matchup:
USC (+10) vs. Georgia Tech
Pick:
USC covers
The
Liberty Bowl (Memphis)
Matchup:
Iowa State (PK) vs. Tulsa
Pick:
Iowa State wins
The
Peach Bowl (Atlanta)
Matchup:
LSU (-3.5) vs. Clemson
Pick:
LSU covers
January
1st
The
Fair Park Bowl (Dallas)
Matchup:
Purdue (+16.5) vs. Oklahoma State
Pick:
Oklahoma State covers
The
Gator Bowl (Jacksonville)
Matchup:
Mississippi State (-2.5) vs. Northwestern
Pick:
Northwestern pulls off the upset
The
Cigar Bowl (Tampa)
Matchup:
South Carolina (-5) vs. Michigan
Pick:
South Carolina covers
The
Tangerine Bowl (Orlando)
Matchup:
Nebraska (+10) vs. Georgia
Pick:
Georgia covers
The
Keith Jackson Bowl (Pasadena)
Matchup:
Wisconsin (+6.5) vs. Stanford
Pick:
Stanford covers
The
Orange Bowl (Miami)
Matchup:
Northern Illinois (+12.5) vs. Florida State
Pick:
Florida State covers
January
2nd
The
Sugar Bowl (New Orleans)
Matchup:
Louisville (+13) vs. Florida
Pick:
Florida covers
January
3rd
The
Fiesta Bowl (Glendale)
Matchup:
Oregon (-9.5) vs. Kansas State
Pick:
Kansas State beats the spread
January
4th
The
Cotton Bowl (Arlington)
Matchup:
Texas A&M (-4.5) vs. Oklahoma
Pick:
Oklahoma beats the spread
January
5th
The
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Bowl (Birmingham)
Matchup:
Pittsburgh (+3.5) vs. Mississippi
Pick:
Mississippi covers
January
6th
The
Civil Rights Bowl (Mobile)
Matchup:
Kent State (+3.5) vs. Arkansas State
Pick:
Arkansas State covers
January
7th
The
Fraudulent National Championship Game
Matchup:
Alabama (-10) vs. Notre Dame
Pick:
Alabama covers
No comments:
Post a Comment