DISCLAIMER: This contest is for entertainment purposes only. No actual wagering is being performed.
On the way back to Tampa from Gainesville, I sat in the back of Toro's car and figured everyone was totally going down in flames. Georgia Tech honked to Kansas. West Virginia barely won against Marshall and was never a threat to cover. Florida State was gunned by Oklahoma. Syracuse lost handily to Washington. And of course James Madison shocked the hell out of Virginia Tech. Clearly with all the weird things happening on Saturday, there would be some brutality awaiting me when I did the math.
Well, not quite. Here are the standings after two weeks, and notice where the person who projected all that failure onto everyone else is on the list.
- Scott (Bearcats Blog) - $1,043.64
- Sean Keeley (Troy Nunes Is an Absolute Magician) - $990.91
- Toro Grande - $955.40
- Chas Rich (Pitt Blather) - $918.19
- Hoya Suxa - $915.91
- WVUIE97 (The Smoking Musket) - $893.18
- Kevin Meacham (The UConn Blog) - $861.82
- Chris Lane (The Nova Blog) - $840.91
- Casual Hoya - $834.09
- Andrew Porter (The UConn Blog) - $815.91
- Ken DeCelles - $811.36
- Voodoo 5 - $771.91
Yeeeee-ha! Last place!
Everyone's individual picks, results, and a graph of the scores so far can be found in this Microsoft Excel file.
So how is Scott the only player in the black after two weeks? Because he had this week's...
BEST BET: Scott was sure he was taking a wild swing in the dark with his five-team parlay -- picking Auburn (-1.5), NC State (+3.5), Oregon (-12), Stanford (-6), and Washington (-13.5) to all cover. He even said, "That 5 team parlay is the halfcourt shot of the week. Jesus, this is right into last place." Well...
And that's how you end up in first place.
WORST BET: So many to choose from. Maybe everyone who took Georgia Tech over Kansas, then watched in horror as the Jayhawks won outright and the Jackets played poorly enough that when someone asked Paul Johnson about injuries at his press conference Monday, he answered that no one played hard enough to get hurt.
But I have to go with myself, not because my picks were particularly bad, but because I was SO GODDAMN SURE they were going to come through. I was so confident in Florida State that I picked the money line, instead of just taking the 7.5 points. "The Noles are winning this game," I said. And then they went out and gave up 44 points in three quarters and tried TWO different field goals later on to cut the Sooner lead to 44-10. 360-degree fail.
MOST DEGENERATE BET: He wasn't the only one who picked this game, but Kevin wins this award for specifically saying he picked Army to cover -3 against Hawaii because the game was starting at 7:00am Hawaii time. He even called Army a bunch of evil geniuses for doing it. And then the Warriors went out and did not support the troops by jumping on the Black Knights 21-0 in the first quarter and hanging on for the win.