Last week was a good one for college football fans - unless you are a fan of teams that were favored in the Ponderosa Spread games. Those six favorites covered in only two games making the Favorites 2-4 against the spread so far this year.

I picked six games last week and did slightly better. I had three winners so my record for the year is 3-3 and the net result for the year to date is minus $30 - mythically.

No one reading this would be foolish enough to take any commentary here and use it as the basis for making a wager or choosing the side of a wager if that wager involved real money. That would be dumb; in fact it would make you dumb enough to ask an amnesiac how he came to acquire his condition.

General Comments:

Not only did Ohio State look very strong in beating Texas at Texas, the results of last weekend had to be encouraging to the Ohio State fans in terms of the rest of the season. Once a team is ranked #1 in the nation - no matter when that happens -, its goal has to become playing in the bowl game that is most likely to produce the national champion for that year. The best way to do that is to go undefeated. And Ohio State put one hurdle behind it last week and saw some of the hurdles in front of it appear to be a bit lower than they seemed to be two weeks ago. Consider:

Notre Dame waxed Penn State. The Lions weren't just beaten; they were pummeled.

Granted Iowa was playing on the road without their #1 QB, but it still took them OT to beat a truly miserable Syracuse team.

Other than those two opponents, the only others that might provide a stern test are Michigan State (underdogs to Pitt this week) and Michigan. The rest of the schedule consists of Bowling Green, Cincinnati and the detritus of the Big Ten.

Absent Ohio State beating itself, this looks like an 11-1 team at the very worst when it comes time to do the BCS selection process.

If you watched the Ohio State Texas game on ABC, I hope you enjoyed Kirk Herbstreit's performance as a game analyst as much as I did. He's good on ESPN's College Game Day, but he was even better in the booth. He needs to join the list of people doing sports broadcasting who are underappreciated and underutilized by their employers. Pam Ward (ESPN) and Ian Eagle (CBS) are the charter members of that club.

Since I mentioned "detritus of the Big Ten", can we have a moment of silence for Northwestern, please. Two weeks ago, they were the feelgood story du jour. The Wildcats put it all together to honor their former coach who died over the summer of a heart attack and beat a MAC school. Last week those same Northwestern players went onto their home field and lost to Division 1-AA New Hampshire by 17 points. Holy letdown, Batman!

Northwestern fans can take solace however that they are not Temple fans. I've said it before and I'll say it again here: Temple would be lots better off if it dropped Division 1-A football and dropped down to Division 1-AA or even Division II. This program is beyond resuscitation; it would need a Dr. Frankenstein to rebuild it from spare parts that he might scrounge from the scrap heaps of other schools. Last weekend, Temple lost to Louisville by the nail-biting score of 62-0. In their last 41 games, Temple is 4-37; in their last 30 games, they have given up 60 points or more on five different occasions. Oh, in case you were wondering, Temple did not win any of those games where they gave up 60 points… You've heard coaches sugar-coat bad losses in the past but here is what Temple coach Al Golden had to say after looking at the films of the Louisville debacle:

"I'm looking at it right now, saying there's no way we could have beaten them."

Mississippi State fans are probably wondering what it will take for the team to score a point. SEC rivals have shut out the Bulldogs in both of the first two games this year and their offense has been non-existent. Mississippi State gets Tulane this weekend; if they are shut out this week, there may be calls to jettison Sylvester Croom - despite the horribly politically incorrect tone that such calls would take. Believe it or not, Mississippi State - the only Division 1-A team who has not scored a point all year - is favored over Tulane by 11 points. Are you getting a focus on what the oddsmakers think of the Green Wave this year? Tulane was Croom's first opponent when he arrived at Mississippi State two years ago and the Bulldogs won that game. However, since then Croom's charges are 5-18…

Colorado lost their opener to Division 1-AA Montana State and then lost to cross-state rival, Colorado State. That's bad on the face of it; but when you look closely, it gets worse. If you assume that Montana State is a Division 1-AA juggernaut, you might rationalize the opening game loss. However, Montana State rolled over and played dead in losing the next week to Chadron State.

Quick Quiz. No peeking; no googling…

Identify the city and state that Chadron State calls home…

At the moment, there is a hubbub in Kansas over tickets to Kansas football games. No, I don't understand that either since it does not involve forcing people to take the tickets and to use them to watch Kansas play football games. What has happened is that Kansas has a new rule requiring everyone - including 3-month old babies - to have a ticket to get in and there are no discounts for those tickets. As you can imagine, this has generated a huge amount of emoting from people who actually want to go to Kansas games and from some sports commentators. The ravings are predictable; Kansas should be more family-oriented and fan-friendly; at least, can't there be a sizeable discount for "toddler tickets"; and so on. Naturally, I'll take the other side of that argument.

Look, if I go to a football game - or any sporting event - I'm there to watch the game. I want to concentrate on the action on the field and get into the ebb and flow of the game action. There are lots of things that can go on around me that would be distracting and/or annoying to me; very high on that list would be a bunch of crumb-crunchers who will not get nearly the level of supervision and discipline they would need not to annoy me. So, thank you to the Kansas Athletic Department. If you can make your crowds "toddler-free", you have done a service for those people who are there actually to watch your team play football.

The Oregon/Oklahoma game this weekend is a big game for Oregon and it is also a big game for the PAC-10. I'm not going to try to make the PAC-10 out to be as weak as the Big East, but there aren't a lot of very good teams there. USC is a top-shelf program; there's no doubt about that. After that, there are question marks all over the league.

Cal was humiliated by Tennessee - a team that beat Air Force by a single point last week in Knoxville.

Oregon State got waxed by Boise State.

San José State is what I call a "bowl eligibility school"; it won't be bowl eligible because it's a team other schools schedule to help them amass six wins to become bowl eligible. Stanford lost to this "bowl eligibility school".

Arizona needed to kick a very late field goal against LSU to narrow the margin of their loss to 45-3.

Washington still "lacks credibility" despite the presence of Ty Willingham. Give me points for diplomacy and tact in that last sentence, please.

UCLA beat Rice by only 10 points. Rice could give up 80 this weekend to Texas.

So, the Oregon/Oklahoma game is important to establish some level of quality in the part of the PAC-10 that isn't called USC…

Illinois plays Syracuse this weekend and that game will emit a stench that might permeate west of the Rockies. If Illinois loses, that will be its second consecutive loss to a Big East team. The rest of the Big Ten should consider tossing Illinois to the curb if that happens. Here are two miserable teams; it's really a shame someone has to win. However, there will be some very good games this weekend:

Michigan/Notre Dame will match two teams ranked in the Top-15 in everyone's rankings and both deserve to be there.

Auburn plays LSU and the winner of that game has the inside track to the SEC Championship game.

USC/Nebraska might be interesting - although it probably would have been way more interesting ten years ago. Actually, USC should blow the doors off Nebraska on Saturday but I put it here so I could pose this semi-rhetorical question:

When QB John David Booty barks out signals for USC, should they be referred to as "Booty calls"?

Miami/Louisville will be a good game. If Miami loses, Larry Coker will be excoriated and the howls for his scalp will reach 120 decibels. If Louisville loses, Bobby Petrino will be called an overpaid and overrated carpetbagger. Someone will lose and neither coach deserves what will happen to him afterwards.

Florida plays Tennessee and the real question is which Tennessee team will show up. The one that mauled Cal or the one that barely escaped the clutches of Air Force?

Games of interest:
Here are seven Ponderosa Spread Games for this week:

Temple at Minnesota - 42
Duke at Va Tech - 35
Texas - 32 at Rice
Cincy at Ohio State - 30
Florida Atlantic at Oklahoma State - 30
Army at Texas A&M - 27
Louisiana-Monroe at Alabama - 24.5

Texas - 32 at Rice (54.5): If Texas is even miffed after last week's loss and has refocused itself, the Longhorns could score 55 all by themselves. Rice can probably contribute 10-14 points to the total. So I want this game OVER 54.5.

Tulane at Mississippi State - 11 (40): The Mississippi State defense isn't all that bad but their offense stinks. So, I'll take this game UNDER 40.

Akron - 1 at Central Michigan (47.5): Both of these teams covered last week against opponents from BCS Conferences. Akron beat NC State outright; Central Michigan stayed close to Michigan. I like Akron here on the assumption that they will not let down too much from their win last week since this is a conference game against one of the better teams in the MAC. I'll take Akron and lay the point.

Miami at Louisville - 5 (???): No, I don't know why I can't find an over/under line on this game; I just can't. I do like Miami here getting 5 points. The Miami defense is a whole lot better than the one's Louisville has seen so far this year from Kentucky and Temple.

Arizona State - 9.5 at Colorado (50): Colorado is ranked third from the bottom in all of Division 1-A in total offense so far. And that is after playing Montana State and Colorado State so let's not assume that they've been up against defensive juggernauts. Defensively, Colorado has not given up a lot of points - - but then again look at whom they have played. Arizona State has shown that it can score against weaker defenses; they beat Nevada by more than 30 last week. I'll take Arizona State and lay the points here.

Good luck.

<< Back to Wagers

= Home = Recent = Topical = Wagers =
= Archives = Pros = Scores = Contact =