Protect Your Unit Week 2 Results

(DISCLAIMER: This game is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

The great actor, Floridian, and college football player Burt Reynolds passed away this week. He played for Florida State in 1954 and 1957, and was a legendary supporter of the program the rest of his life. NCAA.com even has a clip of him carrying the ball. It appears to be his 55-yard run in the 1954 Auburn game, which FSU lost 33-0.

I grew up in northern Palm Beach County in the 1970s and 1980s. Most people from there have a Burt Reynolds story. Everyone I know who met him described him as much like the characters he played: congenial, charming, witty, a little arrogant, but not enough to make you dislike him. A true magnificent bastard.

My story is about going to watch the filming of Smokey and the Bandit 2. In particular, the scene where Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) fails to jump the Indiantown Road bridge in Jupiter:

This clip doesn’t show it, but the bridge tenders flip a coin on whether to raise or lower the drawbridge to get them unstuck. The beeping you hear is the stress monitor the sheriff wears throughout the movie.

Here’s what that little bridge looks like now:

Kind of a visual metaphor for how much the world has changed since then. Florida is much more developed, and the freewheeling 1970s are long gone. But Burt Reynolds’ movies, while outdated, are still entertaining. And for me, they’re full of locations I recognize from my youth. Pass the popcorn, and let us remember The Bandit fondly.

Now for the results. Parlays were again the story, and we had some big winners there:

• BullsOnParade won $600 fake dollars on TCU, Houston, and Army against the spread. Solid picking here, as all of those teams covered easily. He also hit on Georgia and Cincinnati, winning $665.91 total.
• And that’s not even the top winner! mcgies852 won $699.30 total. This includes $475 on two different parlays: Houston/USF/Tulsa and Houston/USF/Cincinnati. I don’t think anyone’s ever hit two parlays in a week before; I’ll have to check. He also bet all these games individually, and USF on the money line, having a perfect week.
• BrianMartin also hit a 2-way on Buffalo and Cincinnati, for $130 fake dollars, and won $287.95 overall.
• Lots of people bet the USF money line (which was about +145), and were rewarded. The Georgia Tech game had 16 bets total, which paid a total of 714.94. Other popular and successful plays were Cincinnati (12 bets, won a total of 339.91) and TCU (11 bets, won 202.46).
• The biggest losers were Kentucky-Florida and Rice-Hawaii. Kentucky beat UF for the first time since Kerwin Bell was the Gator quarterback. That sounds like a joke, but it’s true; the last UK win was in 1986. Hawaii won, but did not cover the 17.5 points against Rice. Hawaii also did in anthonyvito’s three-way parlay, which otherwise would have won.
• Collin and mmmmsnouts took a bad beat on Air Force-FAU. Air Force got a meaningless blocked punt return touchdown in the last minute to give the Academy a backdoor cover.
• We had 7 Gambletron bets this week, which went 4-3. Winners were Navy (twice), Iowa State, and Army. All three losses were Memphis. Yes, both sides of Navy-Memphis appeared in the Gambletron at different times; this can happen.

Standings:

So three horses have surged ahead of the pack, but there’s a long way to go. Those players will also have to bet at least 5% of their stack each week, and can bet up to 25%.

• The Floyd’s Money Team Degenerate Bet of the Week is shared by jrjs and HerdCountry941, for betting the only FCS game that had a line. For some reason, Towson-Wake Forest had a point spread all week, instead of getting one late as FCS vs FBS games usually do. They both took Wake -17.5, who covered.
• Randolph and Mortimer Spite Bet of the Week will not be awarded to a bet against Skip Holtz or UCF, since they both had FCS opponents and no published lines. I award it to McIntyre2K7, who wagered one fake dollar that Cincinnati would lose to its local rival Miami of Ohio for the first time in 12 years. They didn’t.

I made a couple more website fixes. Weekly limits, and your amount won this week, now display correctly. The View Picks page now shows all past bets for everyone. Still working on little improvements. The News and What’s New pages keep a list of known issues.

Week 3 games: Thursday football starts, with Boston College-Wake Forest. Ohio State travels to TCU in a big inter-conference game. Group of Five contender Boise State has a test at Oklahoma State. LSU-Auburn is the only other game between Top 25 teams. Can Kansas win two in a row? They host Rutgers. Colorado State-Florida could be interesting after CSU beat Arkansas and Florida looked very lackluster.

USF plays Illinois at Soldier Field. How many NFL stadiums has USF played in now? There’s RJS, Soldier Field, the Dolphins’ stadium (Miami), Lincoln Financial Field (Temple), Heinz Field (Pittsburgh), Charlotte (two bowl games), Paul Brown Stadium (Cincinnati in 2014), and Reliant Stadium (Houston, 2013). That’s eight. We could add Qualcomm Stadium (San Diego State, 1999), the Liberty Bowl, which hosted the Tennessee Oilers for two years, and the old Tampa Stadium for a total of eleven. Let me know if I missed any. Bonus points: name all the MLB and MLS stadiums USF has played in.

In other AAC games, East Carolina (at Virginia Tech) and SMU (at Michigan) play Top 25 opponents. Other AAC vs Power 5 games are Houston-Texas Tech, Temple-Maryland, and Central Florida-North Carolina. Georgia State plays Memphis on Friday. Tulane travels to UAB. Tulsa hosts Arkansas State. UConn (Rhode Island), Navy (Lehigh), and Cincinnati (Alabama A&M) all play FCS foes.

Opening lines for Week 3 will be posted Sunday night.