This week in the AFL - Round 9!

So, here we go with Friday night footy coming up at 4 am our time this coming morning...the home team, Grand Finalists last year, versus the bottom-of-the-ladder team that just fired its coach two days ago. Hard to see this being close, isn't it? And yet, Sydney/Carlton (at 60.5 points) is NOT the widest spread of the weekend! That would be Hawthorn over by the decimated Gold Coast by 62.5 Saturday afternoon, because the Hawks' pattern this year after a loss is to come back the next week and take it out on their opponent big time...and they're playing in Tasmania, where they've never lost...AND they're simply that much better than Gold Coast anyway. Pick Sydney and Hawthorn..and as ridiculous as it sounds, take the points. Hawthorn wins by MORE than 62.5 (we say 100). (Our ratings say it'll be 68 for both games, by the way.)

The rest of the weekend, though, looks much better:

Port Adelaide @ Melbourne - the Power are a much better team, favored by about 20, but they're not playing well, and Melbourne's trying to play well. We're taking Melbourne with the points to keep it close.

GWS @ Western - the two most "fun" teams of the season so far! Three weeks ago, this would have been a coin flip, best of three...of seven....of fifteen... Now, however, the Bulldogs are showing some flaws again, and the Giants have their first three-game winning streak going in their history; they're playing really well, and they've shown that going on the road to Melbourne is not a problem. Taking GWS to cover.

Essendon @ Richmond - "Dreamtime at the 'G", as they call it for some weird reason. This game is always supposed to be the highlight of the "Indigenous Round", where the AFL honors its native Australians (the "Indigenous"), of which many of the leagues stars are (Lance Franklin, Eddie Betts, Cyril Rioli, and so forth. It's a great testimony to the efforts Australia goes to in order to integrate a subjugated people, as we've essentially failed to with the Native Americans ("Indians") in this country. (Oh, and we're punting Richmond to win - bettors have it as a tossup.)

Fremantle @ Adelaide - You could have left off the opponent and made the prediction: It's almost impossible to defeat the Dockers right now. The oddsmakers have them as 20 point faves, and our ratings suggest it'll be higher than that. Freo all the way.

St. Kilda @ Brisbane - 22 of 24 writers at Real Footy - The Age (one of the major coverage sources I use - in fact, some of the player of the year tallies come from them) have this going to the home team. I disagree. The Saints are playing strong footy with a lineup that can't handle the big boys. But Brisbane is hardly a big boy any more. Saints in an upset.\

North Melbourne @ Collingwood - Here's my other upset: I'm taking the Magpies over the Kangaroos, two of the weirdest mascots (and very Australian, I must add!). Fremantle absolutely destroyed North last week, exposing a ton of problems that Collingwood will be eager to exploit. North hasn't been good against good teams this year, and despite my pre-season predictions, Collingwood's been a good team! Collingwood by a goal.

Geelong @ West Coast - This is a tough journey for any club, and so much of Geelong's roster is young now, unused to this tough place to play. Geelong will give them a good fight (and I'm taking the Cats with the points) but West Coast Eagles win the game narrowly.

(By the way, my record this season is pretty good: I've won 49 of 72 this season, ahead of 23 of the experts on The Age, ahead of 95% of the AFL Tipsters as well! My "betting record", although I refuse to actually bet on sports, is well about 50% too, sitting at 42-30.)

So, let's see how we did in Week Nine...

According to out full FBS tiering system, we made four CFL predictions, five NFL picks, and a total of 18 in the major college ranks. How did those 27 Week 9 forecasts go? We're not afraid to show you!

Failures: lost one CFL game (Calgary lost), and two NFL games (New Orleans beat Carolina big, and Cleveland came two points short of covering over Tampa).

We lost ten of eighteen college games. Of the ones where our tiers had results reversed, we missed almost all of them: Ole Miss (Auburn won), UNLV (New Mexico won), Arizona (UCLA by ten), Middle Tennessee (BYU won big), and Kentucky (Mizzou won easily). We also missed on what we thought were spread errors in games we favored Rutgers (lost 37-0 to Wisconsin), FIU (lost to Rice), North Carolina (Miami annihilated the Tar Heels 47-20), Eastern Michigan (failed to cover against Central 38-7), and Oklahoma St (K-St whupped 'em 48-14).

Successes: Got the other three Canadian victors (Hamilton, Edmonton, and Montreal, what we thought were the three harder games!) and three other NFL picks (Philadelphia handled the Texans, Oakland stayed closer than fifteen to Seattle, and the Colts beat the Giants easily).

But our Saturday record was south of five hundred by a game. We did get Duke over Pitt (but barely: 51-48 in OT) and Utah covering against Arizona St (OT again, losing by three). The other six wins were Iowa's rout of Northwestern, BC's win at Virginia Tech, LA-Tech's splattering of Western KY 59-10, Georgia Tech beating Virginia 35-10, Wyoming with the big upset at Fresno, and Utah St handling Hawaii as we expected them to, 35-14.

So, overall, we went 14-13. Basically flipping a coin. Ah well. We will live and learn. More predictions for the weekend are coming very soon!

NFL Week 9 tiers split again!

Time to divide the pros a little finer! (More finely? With more fineness? Ah, whatever....) So, here are our NFL SEXTILES (oooooh! Sounds dirty!):

TIER A: Arizona, Denver, Indianapolis (presuming a win Monday night), New England, and Philadelphia.

TIER B: Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Green Bay, Seattle, and the winner of the Baltimore/Pittsburgh SNF game currently playing.

TIER C: Buffalo, Cleveland, Kansas City, Miami, San Diego, and tonight's loser.

TIER D: Carolina, Houston, Minnesota, New Orleans, and San Francisco. (Did you imagine seeing the Niners and Saints in the bottom half?)

TIER E: Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New Yorkish Giants, and Washington.

TIER F: Jacksonville, New Yorkish Jets, Oakland, Tampa Bay, and Tennessee.

CFL update for "Week 9" (which is really 19 in Canadian...)

As expected, Montreal won at home against Toronto, 17-14, holding its home court edge as was the case the previous week in Toronto. This clinches a playoff spot for the Alouettes, and gives Hamilton the final spot IF they also hold home field next week in the final leg of the virtual "round-robin" Eastern conference tournament.

Meanwhile, the one upset was Winnipeg's final game of the season (they have a bye next week) being a defeat of first place Calgary - who possibly held back on their top players' exposure in preparation for the playoffs? Hamilton beat Ottawa and the Eskimos annihilated the BC Lions, 37-3. 

Week 9 - the Basement Tiers (P through U, not that "P-U" is implied...)

Here are the lowest six tiers for Week 9, our "bottom 37", if you will...

Tier P: Colorado (2-7), Indiana (3-5), Ohio (4-5), Purdue (3-6), South Florida (3-6), and Alabama-Birmingham (5-4).

Tier Q: Buffalo (3-5), Florida International (3-6), Iowa St (2-6), South Alabama (5-3), Vanderbilt (3-6), and Wake Forest (2-6).

Tier R: Four-win Akron, three-win Appalachian St, Ball St, and Southern Miss, and two-win Army and Kansas.

Tier S is the other grouping with seven teams this week, including the following two and three win teams from the Group of Five conferences: Hawaii, New Mexico, Old Dominion, Tulane, UNLV, UTSA, and Western Kentucky.

The "Bottom Twelve" begins with Tier T, which features the following familiar names: Eastern Michigan (2-7), Miami of Ohio (2-8), North Texas (2-6), Tulsa (1-7), U Conn (2-6), and U Mass (2-7).

And finally, the "Bottom Six" (aka Tier U), the same six as last week: Georgia St (1-8), Idaho (1-7), Kent St (1-7), New Mexico St (2-7, but wins against other Bottom Six teams), Troy (1-8), and the only winless team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, SMU (0-7).

Week 9 - the "Water Tiers" (H-to-O... get it?)

Tier H: Air Force (6-2), Arkansas (4-5 in the toughest division in history), Boston College (6-3), Penn St (4-4), Stanford (5-4), and Utah St (6-3). 

Tier I: Two divisions have to have seven teams to total 128 FBS teams, and right now this is one of those: Cincinnati (5-3), Northern Illinois (6-2), Oregon St (4-4). Pitt (4-5), Rutgers (5-4), Tennessee (4-5), and Chris Petersen's Washington Huskies, at 6-3 in his first season in purple.

Tier J: Houston and Memphis (both 5-3 from the AAC), Nevada (6-3), and three ACC schools: Virginia, North Carolina, and North Carolina St (the Pack is 5-4; the others are 4-5).

Tier K: Two conference leaders from the Sun Belt and Conference USA headline Tier K: Georgia Southern (7-2) and Louisiana Tech (6-3). They're joined by 5-3 Bowling Green and Temple, and 4-5 former champions Texas and Virginia Tech.

Tier L: BYU (5-4), Navy (4-5 after a great game against Notre Dame), Northwestern (freefalling at 3-5), Syracuse (3-6), and 4-5 Toledo and Louisiana-Lafayette.

Tier M: Three 5-3 teams (Central Florida, UTEP, Rice), and three Michigan teams - Central Michigan, Western Michigan, and Big Blue themselves, the Michigan Wolverines, who are NOT happy to be classified with their little brothers...

Tier N: Arkansas St (5-4), Illinois (4-5), Middle Tennessee (5-4), San Diego St (4-4), Texas Tech (3-6), and Wyoming (4-5).

AND finally, our brand new Tier O!: With seven teams in all the tiers from K-P, it was easy to separate out one more tier - we'd said we didn't know why we left out this tier last week; this must have been why! Florida Atlantic (3-6), both Fresno St (3-6) and San Jose St (3-5) from the Mountain West; Texas St (5-3) and Louisiana-Monroe (4-4) from the Sun Belt; and the Pac-12's wild guns from Washington St (2-7).

Week 9 College Tiers - the Top Third (Tiers A through G)...

Thanks to the classic 35-31 SEC matchup in Oxford, there was one change in the Top Six, with a straight swap that moved Auburn into Tier A and Ole Miss down to Tier B with their second loss (they're still the highest of the two-loss teams, but consider their two losses!). 

Look also for movement upwards from K-State, Arizona St, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, and UCLA; falls from Georgia (where's the rushing D?), Kentucky, and East Carolina in particular...

Tier A: 8-0 Florida St and Mississippi St, along with 7-1 Alabama, Auburn, Notre Dame (barely), and TCU (even more barely!).

Tier B: Besides 7-2 Ole Miss, five one-loss teams with "acceptable" losses and impressive wins fill out the knights-in-waiting: Baylor, Kansas St, Michigan St, Ohio St, Oregon.

Tier C: These are the "if bedlam strikes above us - and it's been known to happen" teams in terms of the CFP committee's four precious roses: Four Pac-12 teams (Arizona at 6-2, Arizona St at 7-1, USC at 6-3, and Utah at 6-2) sit alongside LSU (7-2) and Nebraska (8-1). Truth be told, this tier doesn't need all four Pac-12 teams, but none of the teams below them deserve to knock them out. Probably Arizona St is the only truly likely possibility to challenge, along with the Tigers and Huskers.

Tier D: Under the heading, "if hell freezes over", we look at these clubs in slots 19-24: 6-1 Duke, Georgia and Missouri from the SEC East (two losses each), 5-2 Oklahoma, 7-2 UCLA, and 6-2 Wisconsin, so much more impressive in recent weeks.

Tier E: A wild mixture sits just outside the top 24, ranging from 5-4 Kentucky to 8-0 Marshall (needless to say, the competition differs from C-USA to the SEC!). Also present are Clemson (6-2), the Mountain West's best, Colorado St (8-1), 7-2 Georgia Tech (who impressed yesterday against Virginia), and hard-luck West Virginia, whose three losses are to Alabama, Oklahoma, and TCU.

Tier F: Six six-win teams populate tier F - East Carolina, Iowa, Louisville, Maryland, Miami-FL, and Minnesota.

Tier G: Rounding off the upper 42 are 6-2 Boise St, 5-4 California-Berkeley, 5-4 Oklahoma St, and three more SEC teams with erratic records: Florida, South Carolina, and Texas A&M. 

FCS Week 9 in review

Truth be told, we only do a partial review of the FCS level - basically, as reader interest dictates, or ours! - so if you're interested in a team we don't discuss, let us know!

So, North Dakota St won number 33 in a row, after a slight scare (down three at the half) against South Dakota St, 37-17; meanwhile, Rhode Island dropped its 13th straight and Savannah St its 18th in a row...

And in the Big Sky, Eastern Washington annihilated North Dakota 54-3; Cal Poly knocked off previous leaders Montana St 35-27, and Idaho St kept up their turnaround season by winning at Portland St, 31-13.

Finally, Harvard beat Dartmouth 23-12 in the battle of Ivy League unbeatens today!

Navy looks awfully good all of a sudden!

Since late in the second quarter, the Midshipman have run off 24 points in a row against the Tier A Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and lead 31-28. Remember, Navy lost forty-three in a row against the Irish over four and a half decades - this would make the plebes pee their government issued pants!

How do you win a championship?

With plays like this: Second down, goal to go from the 3. Arkansas threatening to tie (or 
lead w a two-pt conversion), five minutes to go in the game. 

2nd down - Williams rushes to the 1.
3rd down - Williams loses yardage to the 3.
4th down - Collins rushes for no gain. Over on downs after seventeen plays.

Mississippi St is absolutely on their way to a championship. They might not win it, but we wouldn't bet against them.

Here's the definition of a BOTTOM SIX team!

The Idaho Vandals, down 37-28 to Arkansas St (at home, mind you) with seven minutes to go in the game, has the ball on their own 25, first and ten, with a chance to make a drive and a statement. Here's their drive chart for this pivotal drive:

1st and 10 on the 25: False start, five yard penalty.
1st and 15 on the 20: Offensive holding, ten yard penalty, replay first down.
1st and 25 on the 10: Offensive holding (again), half the distance, replay first down.
1st and 30 on the 5: Jerrel Brown runs for 3 yards, fumbles, recovered by Ark St.

Needless to say, the Red Wolves scored two plays later and won 44-28. Sad.

Week 9 upset alerts...and "as expected" alerts!,

Start in Division 1A - excuse us: "FCS"! - where defending champion North Dakota St trails 10-6 at the half to South Dakota St, which would be a huge upset, especially on the Bison's home field! What are NOT upsets are losses by Rhode Island (#13 in a row, falling to 0-9 this season by losing 28-13 at Delaware) and our personal favorite, Savannah St, who fell 59-7 at South Carolina St to extend its losing streak to eighteen, nine last year and nine this.

As for the FBS ranks, as usual, some of the "upsets" we called in advance, and some we missed entirely: 

Duke took two OTs to beat Pitt, who helped them out by missing a 26 yarder on the last play of regulation. We favored them, though Vegas had it the other way. Two OTs means we were half right.

East Carolina lost both their game and their favored underdog status today...TCU trails West Virginia by thirteen late in the third...and at the World's Largest Cocktail Party, the best drinks are being served on the Florida side of the parking lot, leading Georgia 24-7 in the third.

Looking forward to Week 9 in college football with our SCIENTIFIC tools!

There are some great games coming this weekend, the first one on Thursday night when Tier F Louisville hosts Tier A Florida St! By tiering, the best game of the weekend should be Auburn @ Ole Miss, where the polls have the Tigers above the Rebels, but we have Ole Miss in Tier A and Auburn a rung lower in B; hence, we're favoring Ole Miss (and, if we were actually making bets, "taking the points").

Other marquee games include TCU @ West Virginia (tiers A vs. C), Kentucky @ Missouri (tiers D vs. E; unlike the oddsmakers, we like the Wildcats), Arkansas @ Mississippi St (tiers H vs. A), Arizona @ UCLA (again, they're favoring the lower tiered team, so we'll take tier C Arizona and the points over the tier E Bruins), and Stanford @ Oregon.

Going strictly by tiers, and using the old saw about home field being about a three-point advantage, we've noticed that the point spread for this week's games generally matches up very well with our 20-tier system. As a general rule, the expected margin of victory will be somewhere between 1-2.5 points per tier, plus or minus the three points for the home field. The actual average is 1.75 points per tier, with the median at 1.5 points per tier. So, if two teams are four tiers apart on last week's listing, expect the higher team to be favored by 4-10 points, most likely 6-7, + the three points for home field.

Given those parameters, and strictly using our wisened separation tool better known as "guessing" where teams should fall, we took a look at the 54 FBS games scheduled this weekend for "outliers" to see if there were some easy predictions we could make based on this statistical creation:

Predictions based on our tier system and the Vegas odds...

*Iowa should be favored by more than 4 at home against Northwestern.
*Rutgers shouldn't be eleven point underdogs at home against Wisconsin (more like 2).
*Florida International shouldn't be 6 1/2 point dogs at home to Rice (also about 2).
*Why is Duke not favored over Pitt? Tier D over tier I? They should be giving points!
*North Carolina will be closer to the Hurricanes than seventeen points...
*Boston College shouldn't be getting points from Virginia Tech (or, at least not three)!
*Eastern Michigan shouldn't be more than about a touchdown underdog to Central Michigan (not 16 1/2 points, anyway!). 
*Louisiana Tech should be a much bigger favorite over Tier R Western Kentucky - six points at home isn't sufficient.
*Virginia at Georgia Tech shouldn't be just the three point home field advantage...the Yellowjackets deserve at least a TD spread in their favor.
*Part of the continued over-valuing of the Cougars after Tayson Hill's injury: Middle Tennessee should NOT be the underdog at home again BYU.
*And Kentucky should be favored over Missouri - or at least, not down six!
*We see both UNLV and Ole Miss as higher tiered teams at home (against New Mexico and Auburn, respectively), and with the three-point home bump should be more than one and two point faves, in turn. More like five each.
*Oklahoma St will be a one TD underdog to Kansas St, not two.
*Arizona will flat out beat UCLA in Los Angeles, not lose by four.
*Fresno St may be favored at home, but Wyoming shouldn't be getting 10 1/2 points!
*See previous comment with Utah not getting five points against Arizona St!
*Finally, it's hard to estimate what the trip to the islands does to a team, but we think Utah St deserves more love than a three point spread when they play at Hawaii late Saturday night!

We'll see how those predictions go this weekend! Eighteen chances to be proven wrong! A prognosticator's dream!

We should KNOW better...

..but we do it anyway. Here are our predictions for Week 9 of the NFL season and Week 17 of the CFL season...

CFL: We like Hamilton by a touchdown at Ottawa, who's playing well for a 2-14 team...Calgary will easily handle the sinking Winnipeg Bombers, who started the year 5-1 and have only won once since...As good as British Columbia has looked the last few weeks, the home field and value of the second place seeding will keep the Edmonton Eskimos from losing to the Lions Saturday...And in the game of the weekend, the second of the three-game round-robin pits Toronto at Montreal, and we like the Alouettes to win at home and send Toronto out of playoff contention.

NFL: This is one of those weeks where the oddsmakers have it right (insofar as they agree with US!). The only discrepancy we see is favoring the Saints on the road against a team from their own tier; we think the Carolina Panthers not only cover but win this game outright and definitively. 

Beyond that? Vegas has the Browns beating the Bucs by 6 1/2 (it should be more), the Cowboys over the Cardinals (have to, because they're in Dallas, but I'm not betting against Arizona!), the Eagles by just 2 over the Texans (we'd go higher), the Chiefs by ten over the Jets (we'd go higher IF we thought KC could score), the Bengals by twelve over the Jaguars (about right), Dolphins by one over the Chargers (in Miami, so that's how we'd play it, too), Vikings get the three point home field edge over the Skins (they're even teams, so that's right), the 49ers by ten over the Rams (yep), the Broncos by 3 1/2 over the Patriots (who cares? Just enjoy Manning v Brady!), Seahawks by fifteen over Oakland (we have no confidence in Seattle right now; take the points, except DON'T GAMBLE!), Steelers by 1 1/2 over the Ravens, in Pittsburgh (hmm...I don't know about that one...), and the Colts by just 3 1/2 over the Giants on Monday night (no way. Andrew Luck in prime time? At least a TD...)

So, to summarize the NFL "bets" (which we refuse to actually BET on), we'd go with the Panthers, the Browns, the Eagles, the Raiders, and the Colts. And only the Panthers v Saints actually fails to match the quintiles we've set up, so it's the lone prediction we give with confidence.