The entire field has been backsliding for a couple of weeks now, and I think I've found the two root causes:
- People lining up to put large sums of fake money on whoever is playing Pittsburgh and losing, out of spite or hilarious overestimation of USF's true ability level. Which is a lot lower than it appeared to be.
- People just throwing fake money out the window with expensive, low-percentage parlays. Not naming names, but Ken has done this three weeks in a row.
This week the escapees from Big East prison took a lot of our fake money with them, and there weren't many winners in the group. In fact, Kevin took the lead by not playing at all. Here are the current standings, with everyone's complete picks available here.
- Kevin Meacham, The UConn Blog: $1,486.08
- Chas Rich, Pitt Blather: $1,415.90
- Scott, Bearcats Blog: $1,343.63
- Voodoo 5, Voodoo Five: $1,108.10
- GarySJ, Voodoo Five: $958.43
- Mengus22, Big East Coast Bias: $958.15
- Chris Lane, The Nova Blog: $880.46
- WVUIE97, The Smoking Musket: $775.80
- Hoya Suxa: $771.82
- Andrew Porter, The UConn Blog: $661.37
- Toro Grande, Voodoo Five: $565.01
- Casual Hoya: $550.01
- Ken DeCelles, Voodoo Five: $121.28
BEST BET: Not one particular bet this week, but I wanted to take my hat off to Chas for his recent hot streak. He hit all four fake bets this week and has won something like 10 or 11 out of his last 13. Any real gambler would kill to have a run like that.
WORST BET: WILL YOU STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY ON $248 PARLAYS KEN, YOU'RE MAKING US ALL LOOK BAD. Fortunately next week he won't be able to put $248 on a fake parlay because he only has $121.28 left. So once he comes up with another parlay and blows all of that, it will be sudden death time, which I am eagerly awaiting.
MOST DEGENERATE BET: I thought about giving this to Scott for banging Middle Tennessee giving 22 points to Memphis. But that's just common sense at this point, even thought I never thought we'd be at the stage where Memphis is +22 against a Sun Belt team. Remember when the Tigers blew USF up in 2004? That seems like it was about 50 years ago, right?
Where was I? Oh yeah, degenerate bet. I'm going with Gary deciding out of the clear blue sky that he was going to put fake money on Akron against Eastern Michigan. Any time you feel the urge for some low-grade MACtion, and win, you're probably going to take this category.