Weekend Wesults (a day late - switched with UAD this week!)

Thanks for your patience with us flip-flopping these articles this week - with all the coaching changes (and more coming! Amazing!), we wanted to get our two cents - or rather, our two senses - in as quickly as we could! Besides, both the NFL and CFL had thrilling Monday night games to wait for the conclusion of... Anyway - on to our results!

So, our Canadian Football League predictions: Toronto over Ottawa (28-23) from last Tuesday; Hamilton over Saskatchewan (34-20)…Calgary holds off Edmonton (holding our breath on this one – 30-27)…BC to defeat Winnipeg (in Vancouver, not a stretch: 20-14)…and Montreal catches Toronto on six days rest (28-27, despite the Argos being favored otherwise). OOPS!

Results? 2-3 straight up (got the first two right), 4-1 against the spread (missed the last one). OVERALL, 37-28 straight up, 37-26-3 ATS.

Next, our National Football League predictions: Houston (+0.5) upsets Indianapolis Thursday night…on Sunday, Atlanta (-8) covers against Washington…Cincinnati (-3) covers against Seattle…Green Bay (-9.5) covers against the Rams…Philadelphia (-4.5) covers against New Orleans…and Buffalo (-2.5) covers at Tennessee. On the flip side of that coin, Cleveland (+6.5) beats the spread against the Ravens…Chicago (+9.5) stays close to the Chiefs…and Jacksonville (+2.5) at least covers against Tampa. In the late games Sunday, Arizona (-3), New England (-9.5), Denver (-5.5), and the Giants (-7) all win by more than those spreads against Detroit, Dallas, Oakland, and San Francisco, respectively. Finally, on Monday night, Pittsburgh (+3) upsets San Diego.

Results? Nailed 8 out of 14 completely (Green Bay, Philly, Cleveland, Chicago, Arizona, New England, Denver, and Pittsburgh, thanks to the wildcat Deveon Bell!); also picked winners Atlanta, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and the Giants; only missed two games completely – Houston lost to Indy, and Tampa covered against Jacksonville. So, 8-6 against the spread, 12-2 winners. OVERALL, we’re 52-24; against the spread we’re 49-27.

With our college picks, there are so MANY that it’s too time consuming to list all the wins and losses we went through, but let’s give you the overall breakdown…

There was a large group of games where we felt that the favorite would not only win but cover the Vegas spread… Of those 38 games, we went 19-19 regarding that particular call against the spread, and seven of those 38 actually lost their games (so we were 31-7 with those straight up).

Then, we had a list of 17 games where we thought the underdog would at least beat the spread and (in some cases) win outright:

Within that group, we correctly called four upsets (out of five predictions – VERY nice!) – Wisconsin over Nebraska, U Conn over UCF, Rice over Florida Atlantic, and San Diego St over Hawaii. Overall in this group, we nailed 16 out of 17 winners (16-1!) and went 9-8 against the spread.

Finally, we predicted margins of victory for all 54 FCS games last weekend, and nailed a couple right on the number: Bethune-Cookman Thursday night over SC State, 17-14, and Western Carolina over Mercer by three as well.  Overall, we got 38 winners (don’t know how pleased we are with a 38-16 record on this…), and there were 20 of those games in which we got within ten points of the actual score, which actually is pretty good! Some of the games, though, really caught us by surprise – Rhode Island shutting someone out? (20-0 over Delaware!) UC Davis winning and Montana losing? Maine and Richmond beating Albany and Elon surprised us, Central Connecticut beating ANYONE surprised us (35-33 over Bryant), and the Big South (where we PROMISED no upsets!) saw lowly Gardner-Webb upset a Liberty team we had picked by 19!

So, on the whole, our college football predictions looked like this for Week 5: Straight up, we went 85-24 all across the board this weekend (47-8 in the FBS alone), and against the Vegas spread, which is just for FBS games, we went a pedestrian 28-27. For the season, we are 448-117 overall and 240-215 ATS, with 2 pushes. That’s down to 79% straight up and still at 53% against the spread. Not as impressive as the rest of our body of work this year!

As for our competition success, in our NFL “Pigskin Pick’em”, we are in the top 10% out of 500,000 entries in the straight up competition, and in the top 1% (in fact, the top thousand entries) in the competition against the spread!

For the college pick’em game, as you might expect from our struggles above, we’re not nearly as high, although we ARE in the top third of the 250,000 entries at 68+%! So, room to improve!

(And don’t forget that we ended the AFL season in the top 1% for finals and 5% for the season!)

Finally, for the Canadian Football League “Pick’em” prediction contest, we’re still in the top fifth, continuing to sit right around #2000-#2500 out of 14,000 (somewhere between 80-85%, depending on how we do that week)!

So, we may not be perfect, but we’re WAY better than average on all fronts!

It's college bowl season!

Sorry for the delay in this post: real life intervened. But, here are the 38 scheduled bowl games and their predicted outcomes, not just from Following Football but from Sagarin, ESPN, and Vegas:

Dec 20:                                          ESPN             SAGARIN           VEGAS           Following FB
Nevada v LA-Lafayette:              Nev by 4        Nev by 1.4           Nev by 1.          ULL by 1/2
Utah St v UTEP:                            USU by 13  USU by 8.8.    USU by 10.     USU by 12
Utah v Colorado St:                      CSU by 3.      Utah by 5.6     Utah by 3       CSU by 1/2
W Michigan v Air Force:             WM by 7.      WM by 0.5.        AF by 1.5.       AF by 6
Bowling Green v S Alabama:     BG by 1         SA by 2.4.           SA by 3.            SA by 1/2 

Dec 22
BYU v Memphis:                            Mem by 7.  Mem by 2.0    Mem by 1.5.    Mem by 3

Dec 23
Marshall v N Illinois:                    Mrsh by 7.  Mrsh by 12.5. Mrsh by 10   Mrsh by 4
Navy v San Diego St:                    SDSU by 1.    SDSU by 3.1.       SDSU by 3.     Navy by 1

Dec 24
C Michigan v W Kentucky:          WK by 13.     WK by 5.0.     WK by 4.      WK by 5
Fresno St v Rice:                            Rice by 8.     Rice by 2.6.    Rice by 2.5   Rice by 1/2

Dec 26
Illinois v Louisiana Tech:            LT by 11.       LT by 9.1.       LT by 6.          LT by 4
Rutgers v North Carolina:          NC by 3.          NC by 2.7.         NC by 3.            Rut by 1/2. 
N Carolina St v UCF:                    NCS by 1.      UCF by 3.3.      UCF by 2.         UCF by 2 1/2

...and we'll pick up the second week later in this week. But for Bowl Season, we're scoring a little differently...or at least, a little additionally! We'll ALSO keep a tally of which of these four highly esteemed methodologies picks the highest number of game winners, straight up. To the victor belong the non-existent spoils! 

Michigan's AD resigns. You know what's coming next, right?

With the sudden but not totally unexpected resignation of the University of Michigan athletic director, Dave Brandon, the heat rises another three notches (if that's possible) on football coach Brady Hoke.

Is that possible?

Watching a coach dangle in the wind is such a painful sight, especially for those of us who've lived the life. Unlike most professional jobs requiring a college education, coaches are hired and fired on a whim - no real reason required. 

It might be, as it often is in sports jobs, simply a matter of losing more than you win, or at least losing more than the "general expectation". Nine wins a year wasn't enough for Frank Solich at Nebraska (following national championships from his mentor Tom Osbourne), but it's plenty at Ohio University, where he's had good but not spectacular teams for almost a decade now. 

Brady Hoke won big at Ball State and at San Diego State, but for some reason it hasn't translated to what Michigan fans expect from Big Blue. Did he forget how to coach? Unlikely. Is it possible that what works for him in smaller-level schools doesn't work (for whatever reason) at the school with more football wins than any university in history? Yes. 

Sometimes, you change coaches because their goals are not the same as your goals. Gordon (writing) can testify that sometimes, what administrations and fans see from the outside doesn't always match the reality at ground level. He had a job that had experienced some success through what turned out to be smoke and mirrors, a program that was a hollow shell about to collapse, but the outside world had only the shell to guide by. 

Michigan is no longer a destination school for modern athletes. Neither are most of the Rust Belt schools. That doesn't mean a coach can't succeed in the upper midwest (re: Meyer, Urban); it does mean that not every coach can succeed there. Having the name "Michigan" on your polo shirt doesn't get you into every 5-star recruit's home any more. Alabama, yes. USC, yes. Michigan? Nebraska? Not necessarily. Michigan, find the best AD you can find. Then find the best football coach who's willing to come to Ann Arbor.

You're going to need it.

Friday night update

San Diego St and Stanford lived up to billing, winning reasonably at about the expected margin. However, it was UNLV's night in the spotlight, upsetting dark horse darling Fresno State 30-27 in overtime in front of the twelve dedicated Rebel football fans in Sam Boyd Stadium (an exaggeration - there aren't that many). First conference loss for the Bulldogs, first conference win for Vegas. Maybe the last; who knows? 

On tap for today... An exciting daytime slate, so save your housework for the evening...
The 10 am Mountain time starts include Florida St/Syracuse, West Virginia/Texas Tech, Georgia/Missouri, Northwestern/Minnesota (both undefeated in the Big Ten!), Cincy/Miami, Duke/GT, and the State Fair spectacular, Oklahoma/Texas! Clickers at the ready!

The 1:30 MDT slot is even better, with headline games including two Tier 1 teams, Auburn/Mississippi St, two more undefeateds in TCU/ Baylor, tier 2 powerhouses Oregon/UCLA, Louisville/Clemson, and Michigan St/Purdue.

And if you like car crashes, don't miss the battle of the winless in the MAC, UMass at Kent St, or the Sun Belt version of New Mexico St at Troy, where the winless Trojans are actually favored...

The evening games aren't quite as compelling: Alabama/Arkansas, Washington/Cal, Penn State/Michigan, LSU/Florida, Texas A&M/Ole Miss, and USC/Arizona. Nothing to sneeze at, and our remote will be in use, but nothing like the midday slate.

(And Wyoming plays at Hawaii in a 7 pm Hawaii start, which places it as a Sunday game for those of you in the Eastern time zone! Gotta love college football!)

Games in American Football for Week 6...

The weekend starts on Thursday night, as the Indianapolis Colts go to Houston to play the Texans in the game of the night (BYU at UCF is a yawner - sorry, boys...). As much as the Following Football crowd loves JJ Watt (he who proposed to a six year old girl who swooned over him on YouTube last year!), you cannot bet against Andrew Luck in a prime time game (not that you should ever bet on football - especially pro football! WAY too unpredictable - even we so-called 'experts' are correct against the spread about as often as a coin flip!). We like the COLTS over the TEXANS by more than the 3 point spread.

Friday
San Diego State should beat New Mexico handily (by more than six), and we don't see Washington State allowing Stanford to beat them by the seventeen points the oddsmakers suggest. Take the Aztecs and the Cougars (for recreational purposes only!).

SATURDAY
 The games we like: Cincinnati won't lose by two touchdowns to Miami of FL...Expect West Virginia to go to Texas Tech and handle the Red Raiders easily...Texas Longhorn fans should watch something else Saturday than their game against Oklahoma: go cruise the State Fair, have a corn dog, or (gag!) deep-fried sweet tea (how do you even do that?). But the Sooners will demolish them sooner rather than later... Georgia Tech by more than four over Duke, thanks to the work of their chaplain's pre-game speeches...Kent State, despite being winless, will beat up UMass, who can't figure out how to win a game when the opposing team hands it to them (as Miami-OH did last week)...Not a no-brainer, but we like Baylor to win against the TCU Horned Frogs by more than the 8 1/2 point spread at home...Oregon will be quacking mad, and ready to rush right through the paper-mache offensive line of UCLA Saturday; expect a big Duck win...Idaho won't break their winless streak at Georgia Southern this week, but they will hold it closer than three TDs...We absolutely cannot believe that Michigan is favored over Penn State Saturday night; the Nittany Lions will make cat food out of them...LSU should be more than a 1 1/2 point favorite at Florida, but most bettors can't believe that the SEC West is as weak as the SEC East is strong. Literally, the first place team in the West would lose against all but Arkansas in the East, and even Arkansas would be 4-3 or better in the West. Take the Tigers.

SUNDAY
Again, betting on NFL games in the age of parity is like playing roulette, but here's a couple of games we think we can guess the way the chips will fall: The Broncos should end up ten or more points clear of the Jets, but Peyton'll wait until being back in Denver to break the TD record...We like the Panthers to keep close to the Bengals, and the Steelers to stay close to the Browns, although we have no confidence on victories in either case... The Redskins, Raiders, and Giants are all expected to lose (to the Cardinals, Chargers, and Eagles, respectively), but we think the line-makers are too conservative. Take the favorites and the points.

And on Monday night, it's hard for us to see the Rams staying closer than a field goal to the Forty-Niners, even at home.