Gridiron Politics

College football Saturday suddenly has new meaning for me. Not only is it the most sacred day of the week, or simply the day when Oregon thrashes a lesser foe on the gridiron, but now it is the day that wins and losses are tallied up in my sports ledger.

That’s right: Starting this week, I am now making an attempt to handicap college football and guess who will win the games BEFORE they happen. (Afterward is SO much easier, but I guess we can’t all pull a Back to the Future II and steal a sports almanac from 30 years later.)

So, starting today and continuing every Thursday through bowl season, I’ll give you, oh eager reader, a dozen plus predictions for the weekend’s games. This, of course, is for entertainment only, and I do NOT endorse gambling unless you are in Las Vegas or outside of the U.S. or on a riverboat and then I encourage you to gamble a lot and give all your proceeds to charity.

Key:

• The + signs or - signs refer to the handicapping of that game. If I say, for instance, that Oregon is -7 to play Stanford, that means Oregon will probably win, and in fact, casinos are so sure Oregon will win that they’ll reward the Stanford faithful by giving them 7 free points. In other words, if you bet on Oregon at -7, that means Oregon must win by MORE than 7 points for you to win the bet. If you take Stanford, then, it would be at +7, which means as long as Stanford loses by FEWER than 7 points, you win your bet. If Oregon wins at exactly 7 points, it’s a push, which means neither side wins or loses anything. This is why many spreads are at a half point, because you can’t score a half point in football and therefore you can’t tie on a half point spread.

• The game is always played at the SECOND team’s stadium. In other words, Oregon/Stanford means the game is played at Stanford.

• Money line is the opposite of spread. Instead of saying a team must win by 7 points, you simply say you’ll reward the underdog in a game with more money if they manage to do the impossible and win the game. As I write this, for instance, the money line for the Oregon/Stanford game is somewhere around 1 to 9. That is, for every 9 dollars you wager, you win $1 if Oregon wins but you lose the whole amount if Stanford wins. The casino obviously has to make a profit on this somewhere, so if you bet on Stanford right now the odds would be something like 6.5 to 1. That is, for every $1 you bet on Stanford you win $6.50 in the unlikely even they win. I’ll attempt to call several money line games each week, but this is a little less important than point spread because not every casino has a money line but every one that bets sports has a point spread.

• Sports books are a place in a casino where sports bets are placed. Known as “books” for short.

• Over/Under: Simply a bet on how many points are scored in a game. If the over is 67.5, for example, both teams combined have to score more than 68 points in the game for you to win this bet.

Now, to the games: