Last weekend was pretty much 'plain vanilla time' for the NCAA Mythical Picks. The Ponderosa Spread favorites covered in two of the five games. That brings the Ponderosa Spread favorites to 18-13-1 in terms of covering for the season.
In my Mythical Picks, I went 3-2-1 for a mythical profit of $80. That brings the season total to 14-10-1, which would yield a profit of $300 if these were actual wagers.
By now you must realize that it would be less than smart for anyone to use the past results here or anything else I say here as the basis for making any kind of wager involving real and negotiable coin of the realm. If you did that, people might start to referring to you as a beer bottle - - you know, empty from the neck up.
General Comments:
Some time last week, I went through all the colleges having "Owls" as their nickname and showed that they all pretty much stunk at football. However, it also seems to extend to high schools. Oscoda (Michigan) High School teams are "The Owls". They just canceled the rest of their football season after losing their first four games by a combined score of 164-0. I wonder what kind of inspirational sign they had over the door to the locker room there. Perhaps an appropriate one might have been Morituri Te Salutamus. That's what was in the amphitheaters of Rome for the gladiators to read as they marched into the arena; it translates to "We, who are about to die, salute you."
Meanwhile, the Temple Owls scored more points last week against Vandy than they had scored in all of their previous games this season combined. Sadly, they did that by scoring all of14 points while Vandy seemed not to have a whole lot of trouble scoring 43 points. Vandy didn't cover, but they won comfortably. Georgia has only yielded 3 TDs all year and leads the nation in scoring defense; Temple has surrendered 28 TDs so far this year. That will give you an idea as to the disparity in defensive results here.
Temple is inarguably a horrid football team this year, but they seem to be building a tradition of incompetent "boobery". Last year, Temple was 0-11 for the season; the composite score for those 11 games was 498-107; they lost one game by a field goal and lost by more than 30 points to everyone else. I think the appropriate expression here is "YIKES!"
Utah State has also been extremely "scoring challenged" this year. But last week they managed to score 14 points in the first quarter and then added another 7 points in the fourth quarter. Sadly for the Aggies, Idaho scored 41 points throughout the game and Utah State went down one more time.
Larry Coker is in the crosshairs at Miami despite winning a national championship there and coming within a play of winning another one. He's won about 80% of his games there; let's not even imagine what the alums and students there might do after a season like a typical Temple football season. But he should be able to zone out for the next couple of weeks because the Athletic Director has given him a breather in the middle of the season. After playing UNC this weekend, the Hurricanes get Florida International and Duke in the next two games; the combined record for these three powder-puff opponents at the moment is 1-12. Even for a middling football program, that sequence of opponents represents "Cruise Control".
Maybe Larry Coker can relax for a short while, but John L. Smith at Michigan State has to be chugging Maalox about now. Two weeks ago, the Spartans coughed up a hairball - and a 16-point lead to boot - in the last nine minutes of the game and lost to Notre Dame. OK, Notre Dame is a good team so maybe that's not so horrid. But last week, the Spartans were favored by 26 points over Illinois - a team that hopes to be described as "hapless" instead of "pathetic" one of these days. Yet, the Spartans lost the game outright. That Illinois victory broke a 16 game road losing streak. I wonder if there is something about the number "16" that hexes Coach Smith? Whatever. So did the Athletic Director schedule a breather for Coach Smith this week? Hardly, he gets to go to Ann Arbor and play Michigan.
Ohio State doesn't seem to need a "breather" but they'll get one anyway. Bowling Green comes to visit in Columbus this weekend. Ohio State is a 35-point favorite and you might think that's appropriate for the #1 team in the polls when they take on a mid-major opponent. Except, Bowling Green has already lost one game by 35 points; that was to Kent State and Bowling Green also allowed Buffalo - the university not the Buffalo Bills - to score 40 points in a game. Amazingly, this line looks as if the oddsmakers are not giving OSU the proper respect. If carnage upsets you, please avert your eyes…
If two bad football teams playing each other upset you, avert your eyes from the Indiana/Illinois game. How bad is Indiana? The line has Illinois favored by 8; that should tell you something right there. I would not bet on this game with your money.
Along those lines, Rice (another team known as The Owls) is on the road to play Tulane. And Rice is a 3-point favorite. Rice is a bad team and they are a road favorite…Egad!
Do you like wide-open football? Do you love to see passes flying through the air and into the hands of receivers who are running free? Well, if you do, you should have watched the New Mexico State/UTEP game last week. The combined passing yardage was 919 yards. New Mexico State ran 96 plays and threw the ball 73 times; the QB was 48-73 for 505 yards. In minor league baseball, they have pitchers on pitch counts where they would be lifted before they get to 73 throws. I'll have something to say about New Mexico State in the "Games of Interest" section later.
TCU was positioned to be the "mid-major media darling" for this year. It was poised to be the upstart program that would go 12-0 and crash the BCS party. Lots of folks projected that TCU's game against Utah would be their only real obstacle to an undefeated season but last weekend, TCU tripped over one of the axioms of the malevolent universe: Reality Bites! The result was BYU 31 - - TCU 17.
Now the "mid-major media darling" seems to be Boise State who just waxed Utah. People are talking about them being the 12-0 gatecrasher come December. Too bad Boise State doesn't have TCU on the schedule for later in the season. That might be interesting…
When a team gains 574 yards of total offense, you should expect them to win. When you also learn that they led 17-0 in the early stages of that game, you'd be confident in guessing that they won handily. As Lee Corso says far too often, "Not so fast, my friend." Kansas had those stats last weekend against Nebraska and lost in OT by a score of 39-32. Nebraska only completed 15 passes on the day but their passing yardage was 395 yards; that's more than 26 yards per completion. And in amongst those long gains were 3 TD passes for 75 yards or longer. Wow, who's playing in the defensive backfield for Kansas? Captain Ahab, Frankenstein's Monster, Quasimodo and Mama Cass?
While I was watching Ohio State/Iowa last weekend, I distinctly heard Brent Mussberger say that Ohio State had covered the spread in its last "however many" games. I did a double take at that one. Given the paroxysms of horror that strike anyone involved with the NCAA hierarchy at the first hint of gambling on collegiate sports, I have to wonder if Brent was chastised for that remark during this week.
I mentioned RB, Garret Wolfe of Northern Illinois last week. He's gained about 1200 yards in five games and has a shot to break the single season NCAA rushing record held by Barry Sanders. Last week he burst out for 353 yards rushing against Ball State. And he still has a game against Temple coming up where he could go for 300 yards. In case you think that all of this is against mediocre competition, he ran for 171 yards against Ohio State and also had 114 yards receiving. Compare that to Texas output against Ohio State; the Longhorns had 175 yards rushing and 154 yards passing. Maybe this kid is pretty good?
There are a couple of really good games on tap for this weekend. Of course, Texas/Oklahoma has to be on that list since both teams aspire to a BCS bowl game and perhaps, if the cards fall right, a slot in the National Championship game. Both teams have one loss going in; a second loss would be a killer here. If Oklahoma loses, there will be really bad times in Soonerland because Oklahoma already has that "controversial loss" to Oregon on their slate; a loss to archrival Texas might be too much for Sooner Nation to bear. I suggest that Dr. Phil get his butt over to the game so that he can offer consolation and personal insight to the losing fans whoever they are.
Tennessee at Georgia should be a good game. Georgia's defense is really good but this will be the best offensive team they've seen so far. And a loss for Tennessee will probably assure that they will not be in the SEC Championship game.
Oregon visits Cal this weekend for a wide-open game. Both teams aspire to replace USC as the big dog in the PAC-10. Oregon visits USC on November 11; Cal visits USC the following week.
But the best game of the week - - because it is the only one matching two teams currently in the Top 10 - - has to be LSU at Florida. LSU opened here as a 2.5-point favorite on the road which is very interesting because LSU is ranked 10th and Florida is ranked 5th. The oddsmakers and the poll voters seemed not to agree here particularly when the game is in Gainesville at The Swamp. At the moment, the line is all over the place; you can still find it at 2.5 points and you can also find it as a "pick-'em" game. LSU only gives up 7.4 points per game; Florida only gives up 9.4 points per game. If you prefer to see games with 900 yards of offense and scoreboards that are lighting up like a torched Roman candle factory, this is not the game for you. But for me…
Games of Interest:
Here are nine Ponderosa Spread Games for this week. More often than not, the Ponderosa favorite is at home; this week, the favorites are on the road for five of the nine games.
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Bowling Green at Ohio State - 35
Louisiana Tech at Boise State - 35
Louisville - 32.5 at Middle Tennessee State (Friday Night)
Notre Dame - 31 at Stanford
Duke at Alabama - 28.5
San Diego State at BYU - 28
Fresno State - 27 at Utah State
Kent State - 24 at Temple
West Virginia - 24 at Mississippi State
Oregon at Cal - 5 (59): I also like this game OVER. I have no idea who will win the game however.
Nevada at Hawaii - 11 (61): Once again, two teams with big offenses and bad defenses play each other. The final score here might look like a Princeton basketball final score - say 53-47. You guessed it; I want this game OVER.
Pitt - 7 at Syracuse (41): Pitt can move the ball. Syracuse hasn't shown a whole lot of defense this year; they give up almost 380 yards a game. This is one of those plays where you take a team with a strength matched against an opponent's weakness. Even with Syracuse at home where they play much better than they do on the road, I'll take Pitt to win and cover.
Vanderbilt - 1 at Mississippi (38): I'm not even trying to imply that Vandy is any good; they're not. But Ole Miss just can't score; they don't even average 9 points a game. So the fact that Vandy has two starting linebackers out for the year and will start one - and possibly two - freshman linebackers doesn't mean that Vandy is doing to be staring up at a 20 point deficit in the middle of this game. And the Ole Miss defense is hardly anything to write home about. So, I'll take Vandy here and lay the point.
A friend - and Kentucky alum - sent along a note telling me to "bet the farm" on Kentucky this weekend when South Carolina rolls into town. He says the Wildcats will win outright and that he's taking Kentucky with the points and taking Kentucky on the money line at +230. And he's not betting $5 per wager either! Even with mythical money, I won't do that because when I look at the sidelines all I can see is Kentucky Coach, Rich "Our Miss" Brooks over there. That does it for me…
Good luck.
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