Archive for August, 2008
Week 1 Picks [2008]
Welcome to the 2008 season for college football! I can’t wait to watch games this year, and, as usual, I’ll make a series of wildly inaccurate guesses of how I might bet these games if I lived in Nevada, where sportsbetting is legal. A reminder of terms: the line is + or -. If I pick a team that’s + 5, for instance, that means that if I actually drove down to Las Vegas and put 10 bucks on that team, I would win that bet if the team won, or if the team lost by fewer than 5 points. If I pick a team that’s -5, that means that I win my bet if the team wins the game by more than 5 points, otherwise I lose the bet. If my favored team wins by exactly 5 points, or my underdog loses by exactly 5 points, it’s a tie and the bet is canceled. Sometimes I’ll speculate about a moneyline bet. This is a bet that simply picks one team to win, no matter how good or bad they are compared to their opponent. A moneyline of +400 means that if I bet $10 on that team, if they win I am paid $40 on my bet. A moneyline of -400 means that I must risk $40 to win $10. Next to the bets, I will list how confident I am by rating the number of units I would wager on the game, if I were able to place such a wager. Make sense? Now to the games.
| Nebraska -14, 2u |
Western Michigan @ Nebraska. Western Michigan sucks and Nebraska has a new coach and legendary athletic director. Will their season be rocky? It might be, but if I’m Nebraska I want to prove the program has already taken a change for the better. That means Western Michigan gets thrashed. |
| Troy -6.5, 2u |
Troy @ Middle Tennessee. I love Troy. Middle Tennessee is a perennial underachiever. Did I mention I love Troy? |
| Oregon State -3, 2u |
OSU @ Stanford. Stanford’s coach is improving the team, and sure, they beat USC last year, but that was a fluke and something of a rivalry (if you’re Stanford) and something of a collossal oversight (if you’re USC). No such problems here. OSU has been a solid team the past several years, they have a bunch of thugs and Stanford is full of pencilnecks. I go with the thugs. |
| Cal -4.5, 2u |
Michigan State @ Cal. My conference biases are starting to show, but whatever. Big 10 sucks, Pac 10 is pretty solid unless your school is Washington State, Stanford or Arizona. Cal performs well early in the year before self destructing and Michigan State is a bad program that does OK in conference but has little to show besides it. |
| Western Kentucky +20, 1u |
Western Kentucky @ Indiana. This is a really iffy pick. Western had its first division 1a year in 2007 with its transition into the big leages. It lost most of its matches against 1a teams but destroyed the double a teams. They really are improving, though, and Indiana is in the Big 10. Did I mention the Big 10 sucks? Indiana fizzled late last year, although they opened strong by killing a double a team. I’m betting this more out of fondness than intelligence, I guess. |
| Idaho +27, 1u |
Idaho @ Arizona. OK so I am aware that Idaho is terrible and Arizona had an excellent end to an otherwise crappy season last year. However, consider several things. First, Arizona always starts slow. They don’t start pulling upsets until mid to late season. And they’ve gotten a lot of ink in the last month about their potential for a dark horse run to the Pac 10 championship, etc. Think this might go to their heads? I wouldn’t bet the moneyline on this but the spread seems big enough to favor the underdog. |
| Alabama ML +170, 1u |
Alabama @ Clemson. OK, so Clemson is number 9 in the country. OK, Alabama didn’t have a stellar season last year. But Saban is a good coach, while Bowden likes to underperform when his team is favored in the spread. (They were up by 4.5 to 5, last time I checked.) When favored, Clemson is 8 and 5 the last two years. With that in mind, I like the moneyline. |
| Kansas -36, 1u |
Florida International @ Kansas. FIU is quite possibly the worst Division 1a team, and probably worse than half the 1aa teams. The school had a fantastic losing streak last year and they routinely get pummeled. Kansas has come off a great year and has something to prove to all those pundits who expect them to slide back to the bottom of the Big 12. |
Please note: Games I would hold off this week: Washington @ Oregon and Oklahoma State @ Washington State. The spread on Oregon is around 13, and I think that’s too many points for a team whose quarterback was just injured. Plus it’s a rivalry game and you never know how those will turn out. I’d stay away from the Cowboys because they’re playing in Pullman, which is a really unfriendly place for visiting teams. And Wazzu might be bad, but they can be unpredictable. Obviously if I had to bet it I’d take OSU but I think it’s smarter simply to stay away.
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