The Monday nighter isn’t over yet but considering it’s holiday week and people will be busy I’ll post this week’s games now.
Thursday’s matchup between New Orleans and the Rams looks like a good one but I’ll pass considering the time frame. There will be one Saturday game which was my 6th choice but it’s good to have one of those I think.
On tap:
Saturday
Cincinnati (-2.5) at Pittsburgh 3:30
Sunday
Detroit (-3) at Minnesota Noon Cleveland at Houston (-2.5) Noon
Jacksonville at Tampa Bay (-1.5) 3:05 Dallas at Miami (-1.5) 3:25
Xmas Day
Baltimore at San Francisco (-5.5) 7:15
All times Central.
Odds are in brackets. Biggest spreads of the week are Buffalo (11.5) over Chargers, Raiders at KC (10.5) and Giants at Eagles (10.5). Biggest spread of the included games is the last one, but a game between the # 1 team in each conference has to be included.
Good luck to everyone as always and Happy Holidays!!
I get this for sure. In my small-time gambling days for what is now ancient history of cash at the counter at the sports book in Las Vegas, though I think you can still do this in some spots, I deliberately skipped all such games including especially all those divisional rivalries that were home team -3 and so forth.
I figured “wait a minute!” I’m trying to win MONEY here not just play. If I wanted a 50/50 deal, I can flip my own coin for free.
And that is the opposite of a pool like this one that is for fun only. The picks are supposed to be difficult. It is very different than the much easier CFL pool that presents a maximum of 4 games a week with usually one or two blowouts expected.
In fact every week I include at least one game that I think is an easier pick and this week the field has identified what I thought would be that game. Picking KC to beat Carolina straight up isn’t worth the time to include and shows nothing about the predictive ability of the participants. If every game was a coin flip that would be perfect, but even with 32 teams there are almost never even 6 of those games in a given week.
To paraphrase former USGA president Sandy Tatum’s quote after the first round of the US Open at Winged Foot in 1974, we’re not trying to humiliate the best football pool participants in the world, we’re trying to identify them.
