Last week was very good for both flavors of Mythical Picks. There were no Ponderosa Spread games to consider but in my "games of interest" I made six selections and went 5-1 for the weekend. That produced a weekly Mythical Profit of $390. Combined with the picks for the balance of the season, the cumulative totals for the season have the picks at 41-28-2 which would produce a mythical profit of $1020.
Notwithstanding prior successes, no one should use any information here as the basis for the decision to make a real wager or for a decision as to which side to back in a real wager. If you did that, you'd need to affix a product warning to your bathroom mirror saying, "WARNING: Objects in the mirror are dumber than they appear to be."
General Comments:
Alabama did indeed fire Mike Shula despite the fact that they gave him a contract extension less than a year ago. According to one report, the buyout cost Alabama $4M because of that recent contract extension. Remember a few years ago when everyone screeched about Shula getting the job over Sylvester Croom? Well, Croom is now finishing up his 3rd year at Mississippi State and the results aren't pretty; Mississippi State has won three games in each of Croom's seasons there. At least the Bama boys had one year with 10 wins…
Chuck Amato is out at NC State as I thought he would be unless the team excelled this year. Yes, his record was over .500 at NC State [49-37] and yes, he took the team to four bowl games, but his ACC record was 25-31 and the team never finished in contention for anything meaningful in his tenure at the school. Amato had three years left on his contract and I haven't seen any reporting on the magnitude of his buyout. One rumor about Amato's replacement is Bill Cowher who has behaved as if he might not be all that thrilled about staying in Pittsburgh too much longer. He's an NC State alum and he bought a home in Raleigh where he and his family plan to retire. The problem I have with that rumor is that Cowher can make $5M a year or more coaching in the NFL and can't make more than 25% of that number at NC State. And whenever anyone tells you it's not about the money, that's your sign that it is only about the money…
In any event, NC State needs a "name" for their coach. With Butch Davis taking up residence 20 miles away at UNC and the emergence of Jim Grobe as a "hot property" at Wake Forest, NC State could be in danger of being relegated to the status of "not as bad as Duke" in the cosmos of North Carolina football.
I wonder if Walt Harris at Stanford can survive the winter. In two years at Stanford, Harris is 6-16; that's not good by any measure. However, last year he lost to UC-Davis, which is a Division 1-AA school, providing a foul odor to a 5-6 season. This year, Stanford is 1-10 and has not been competitive in all of those ten losses. It would take a season this bad for alums to forget about that loss to UC Davis but it is also a season this bad that might get alums to thinking about a new coach. Harris got the reputation as a complainer and a whiner when he was at Pitt; perhaps the Stanford alums are the ones doing the whining and complaining now.
Speaking of Pitt, they got their lunch handed to them by Louisville last weekend. Pitt is now 6-6 on the season making them bowl eligible. You may not realize that their record also has them on a 5 game losing streak. You probably don't realize that the Panthers have given up 139 points in their last 3 games. I don't know what bowl game they will be going to, but you can be sure that the organizing committee will not be mentioning those factoids in the publicity hype leading up to the game.
You may wonder why coaches are eager to take a team like Pitt to a minor - and meaningless - bowl game. The recruiting advantage can't be more than marginal; the payout to the school is minimal; there are added costs to get the team there; in the case of a school like Pitt there are added weeks of practice in less than ideal weather conditions. The answer lies in that last item. It gives the coaching staff an extra four or five weeks of practice with the team that opponents who did not make it to a bowl game cannot have. And part of the "Coaches' Creed" is that more practice time equals better performance on the field. Coaches see this extra month of practice as a down payment on next year's successes.
USA Today provides a lot of interesting data for sports fans but the paper needs to consider a serious change to the college football poll it publishes. The USA Today coaches' poll is part of the "equation" used by the BCS to determine who goes where during the bowl season and it is become pretty evident that the coaches aren't always the one doing the voting and that the coaches don't watch all of the pertinent games. Active coaches are concerned with their next opponent and not a game in a far off conference that may have a bearing on national rankings down the road somewhere. So, while I will stipulate the competence of current coaches, there is no reason to suspect that the coaches are willing or able to deliver that competency to their voting. So, the message is to ditch that poll - - because there is something already in existence out there to replace it.
A year or two ago, someone named Andy Curtin created the Masters Coaches Poll. This poll used 17 retired college football coaches until earlier this year when Bo Schembechler died and the panel was reduced to 16. I don't have the full roster but I know that George Welsh, Gene Stallings, Troy Donahue, John Cooper and R.C. Slocum are part of the panel. The strengths of this panel are several-fold. First of all the panel members actually watch the games involving the teams that might be ranked in the important area of the BCS games. Secondly, they have coaches from all parts of the country so there isn't any real regional bias going on. Third, the panel "meets" via a conference call weekly to discuss the teams and the basis for the individual votes. And it should go without saying that the members of this panel also know something about college football.
With Larry Coker fired at Miami, I've heard more than enough nonsense from former Miami players about how this year's team just didn't play "Hurricane football". What all of those bloviators managed not to say is that the fans of "The U" are just like all the other fans in Miami - they're bandwagoners. The attendance at the BC game was an embarrassing 23,500. Coaches being contacted for the Miami job need to look at that number and realize that their program will be excoriated over any loss and abandoned by fans if there are more than three losses in any season. The reason for coaches to want to go there is simple. According to reports, Larry Coker will get $2.5M over the next 5 years just to go away and there's no "offset clause" in that buyout meaning he can coach somewhere else and still collect his "Miami Buyout". Imagine getting $2.5M AND not having to put up with Donna Shalala at the same time. Now there's a sweet deal indeed.
The folks who run the sportsbook at the Las Vegas Hilton seem pretty convinced that it will be USC vs. Ohio State in the BCS National Championship Game. They've posted an early line on the game that looks like this:
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Ohio State - 6 at USC (52): [Just in case you wanted to "get down" early…]
Nebraska/Oklahoma just has to be a better game than last year's Big 12 Championship game. Last year, Texas beat Colorado 70-3; the Christians had a better shot at whipping the Lions in the Roman Coliseum than Colorado had in that game.
Florida and Arkansas meet in the SEC Championship Game. Florida is one of the "one-loss teams" hoping to get the call from the BCS mavens to play Ohio State in the National Championship Game. Arkansas lost to LSU last week mainly because its passing attack was non-existent. The Arkansas QB, Casey Dick, was 5-20 for the game for a total of 60 yards. If that happens again, Florida might win this game convincingly enough to get that BCS call it wants. But if Arkansas can avoid a passing performance that would be embarrassing even at the high school level, it can win this game because they have two very good running backs and an offensive line that more than held its own against a good LSU defense. This game is one to watch.
Florida International has a chance this week to join Duke with an 0-12 record; FIU hosts Troy State as it tries to avoid this ignominy. This is not a game to watch.
By the way, in a previous note, I wondered just how many rushing yards Navy would pile up against a less than stout Temple defense. I said it could go over 400 yards for the day. The final tally was 420 yards rushing for the Middies in a 42-6 tune-up for their game with Army this weekend.
Ponderosa Spread Games:
Normally, there aren't any Ponderosa Spread games at this time of the year because many schools end their seasons with big time rivalry games and spreads there are usually well under the 24 point "definition" for a Ponderosa Spread. However, this week we do have two games that cross that threshold.
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Stanford at Cal - 29 [Rivalry be damned; Stanford just stinks.]
UConn at Louisville - 27
For the conference championship games, I'll pick winners just because the games are important even though I don't see any wagering value in two of the three major conference championship games.
I like Oklahoma to beat Nebraska in the Big 12 Championship. It should be cold this weekend in KC and that could hinder Nebraska's passing game.
This is purely a hunch, but I like Arkansas to pull a mild upset here.
Army/Navy is always an interesting game even in those years when the line doesn't excite me. This is one of those years. Navy has been the far better team this year and ought to win convincingly on Saturday.
West Virginia/Rutgers is important with regard to where Big East teams will land in the bowl picture. Rutgers has played better at home than on the road this year. It should be cold and windy in Morgantown this weekend. Neither team is great at throwing the ball so the team that gets a lead should win. I like West Virginia at home this weekend.
Wake Forest at Ga Tech - 2 (41.5): Neither team is an offensive juggernaut and neither team has a shut-down defense. Both teams seem to play just well enough to win more often than not. I have a hunch that points will be at a premium in this game and the final score could be 16-14 either way. So, I'll take the game UNDER.
Oregon State at Hawaii - 7 (72): Hawaii QB, Colt Brennan has thrown 51 TDs this year; the NCAA record is 54 [David Klingler]. Hawaii has won 9 games in a row and has scored more than 40 points in every one of those games. Hawaii has also scored in 21 consecutive quarters of football games. Oregon State's defense is not the hallmark of the team; they win by outscoring opponents not by shutting them down. OSU has scored more than 30 points in four of its last five games and it put up more than 30 points against USC whose defense is significantly better than Hawaii's. I think the ball will go up and down the field here in large chunks; so, yet again, I'll take a game involving Hawaii as an OVER.
Air Force at TCU - 16 (49): On Wall Street, they say, "The trend is your friend." This is a "trend bet". Air Force has lost its last three games, which is bad enough; the most recent loss was to UNLV, which is nothing short of horrendous. TCU is 9-2 on the year and has piled it on weaker opponents. The only thing I don't like here is that TCU already has its bowl bid (Poinsettia Bowl) and it could come out flat. I'll play that the Horned Frogs don't do that and take TCU to win and cover.
Good luck.
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