NCAAF WEEK #7:
YTD (0-0-0)
Units: (0.0)
Thanksgiving was great don’t get me wrong. The friends & family, turkey, stuffing, and of course lets not forget the pumpkin pie! However, last Saturday I found out that the gambling world and I have dissimilar views on the holiday. Historically, Thanksgiving in Canada is a time to give thanks for a successful harvest; in America to remember the Pilgrims and the settling in the new world; to myself a time to celebrate friends and family over a nice turkey dinner. However, to my Book Thanksgiving is the time where they say ‘Thanks your bet has been placed’ and then I end up giving all my money to their accounts.
To recapture the scene, it was around 7pm, Saturday night, just getting off the Links, and on the day I had a winning percentage that would do Mario Mendoza proud. The eleven I had shot on the par 4 9th was looking to be the highlight of my day. I think we’ve all been there: all the breaks are going the wrong way, you get backdoor covered, you cant get the backdoor cover, your ‘lock of the day’ gets dismantled by the first quarter, and on and on. Logically the best thing to do is to pack in it ‘live another day’ as they say. I however had just conquered two courses of turkey, combined with a half bottle of wine, and was now mixing in some Captain Morgan for good measure. Needless to say I was not to be denied. So when my Nebraska Cornhusker bet (I figured ‘cornhuskers!…now how can that lose on Thanksgiving!?’) failed to bail me out, I bet it all on over, (in the SD ST/TCU late night special), and when that was losing by half I doubled up on the second half over. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me for the 32nd time shame on…well I’ve pretty much run out of people to blame. But that’s the life we live when we gamble…and I can’t wait until Thursday night, when I can get right back on the grind!
Can you believe it the season is already half over! I’m definitely going to look into this time distortion effect and translate it to my work week, but I’ll worry about that in the off season. To stay disciplined (HA!) I’ve decided to post my picks, so here are the Thursdays bets:
SAN DIEGO ST
vs. AIR FORCEI’ve always thought it strange that AIR FORCE runs a ground based attack, but they seem to do ok, putting up over 500 yards vs. ND, 350 vs. Navy, and 400 vs. TCU so far this year and averaging 6.72 y/r. As for SAN DIEGO ST they run a pro based offence that has yet to put up the point totals from last year but are still putting up almost 400 yards/game.
The Azetec defence is another story, giving up over 400 yards in each of the last four games. It doesn’t really seem to matter what your style is: run heavy, balanced, or air, the common theme is that there are plenty of yards to be gained. Now with a defence like that you’d think they would be allowing more points their average of 24/game…the key to that would be a ranking of 8h in turnover margin. Similarly enough the Falcon defence has allowed 30+ points and over 400 yards to each of it’s DIV-1 opponents.
I know historically these teams have played some low scoring games, and San Diego St seems to have some success vs. option based attacks, but I’m going with the OVER 59 (1.1U to win 1.0U).
SOUTH CALIFORNIA
vs. CALIFORNIAAnother Thursday night show down for CAL, versus a USC team who comes in off a bye week. Over the last decade a road favourite coming off a bye week has a mere ~35% winning percentage against the spread.
Defensively…well USC is a shadow of its former self, and California is nothing to write home about either. Both teams have apt scoring ability and there should be lots of points scored in the game. But if you look at the numbers in terms of points scored/allowed, passing yards gained/allowed, rushing yards gained/allowed etc.. they are very comparable, if anything I’d give a slight edge to CAL. Granted they’ve played different teams, different situations, but to me these teams were comparable enough. CAL is 29th in T/O margin compared with 104th for USC and that may just be the difference in this game. CAL also ranks higher in red-zone conversion %, combine that with the home field advantage and I will take the points with
CALIFORNIA +3 (1.05U to win 1.0U).Disclaimer: I will most probably lose, especially if you follow me. I cannot take reasonability for you losing your rent money, or when your new HD television is broken by your remote. If I’ve lost I will already be sleeping in the mall and watching the highlights on closed captioning.
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