JUST BREAKING EVEN

I’ve actually done very well since that one infamous Sunday, but the NFL season seems to be dragging on at this point.

Chicago 14(+3.5), Green Bay 21
My general rule of thumb with the Bears at this point is sell off as many points as possible, because there is no chance that they cover at any number. Mercifully, I followed this on gametracker and was able to avoid what I’m sure was lots of sloppy play from Jay Cutler.

Minnesota 30, Cincinnati 10(Under 42)
This one had all the makings of a classic under screw job. Cincinnati fumbled at the end of the half to give Minnesota basically a free 3 points. Minnesota was able to run out the clock, though, at the end of the game without scoring and it stayed under.

MNF: Arizona is still probably overrated from their Super Bowl appearance and beat the Vikings in prime time last weekend. San Francisco lost to Seattle last weekend. You do the math.

HOOPS: GAMES OF NOTE

I was just scrolling through a list of some teams yesterday over on KenPom and I compiled this list of the following games to watch through next Saturday. I also added line guesses, which at this point should only provide some hilarity when Vegas releases their’s.

Dec 15th:
Portland St. v. St. Mary’s
Geuss: Portland St. +19.5
St. Mary’s has been rolling teams so far this year, including wins against Oregon and a blowout on ESPN against San Diego St. I can’t see Portland St. being too popular, but I doubt this game gets much attention, either.

Dec 16th:
Richmond @ South Carolina
Richmond +8
It’s early to take too much meaningful information from KenPom’s numbers but Richmond has beaten Mississippi St.(12), Missouri(13) and Old Dominion(22) so far this season. Don’t go crazy over that but it means Richmond has beat some teams that got off to a hot start this season.

Dec 19th:
Richmond v. Florida
Richmond +4.5
See above.

Old Dominion @ Georgetown
ODU +7.5
G-town has a shiny undefeated record and two good wins in a row(Butler, Washington) plus a win over Temple earlier in the season. ODU has played some decent competition tough, but is coming off a loss to public darling Dayton.

Fordham v. Villanova
Fordham +26
We all know the Villanova story at this point, but Fordham is 2-7 and their leading minute guy and best player has transfered. Good times.

Texas v. UNC
Texas -8.5
I think both these teams are going to be pretty overrated, but one only one of them has a chance of being legitimately good. In related news, Texas has a great chance of plowing through UNC and Michigan St.(Dec 22) in consecutive games before Christmas and being hilariously overrated going forward.

Love the Richmond and ODU games on Saturday, Fordham seems like a guaranteed loser, the Texas line will raise some eyebrows and the rest of the games I mentioned seem pretty marginal for a slow week.

HOOT HOOT

Temple 75 (+3), ToughnessU 65
I think that when this season is all said and done, we can look back and chuckle that we were able to get 3 points in this situation. Temple trailed by 6 at halftime but reeled off an 11-0 run to kick things off after the break and never looked back. Nice game from Juan Fernandez who dropped 33 for Temple and shot 7-9 on 3-pointers. That added up to 96.6% eFG% for the game for those of you scoring at home.

I scanned through the scoreboard quickly for the next two days and there doesn’t appear to be anything even remotely interesting.

Overall: 7-7, +.63

TRIBE

William & Mary 13 (+3.5), ToughnessU 14
If you don’t think luck plays a part in football, you’re wrong. In the first half William and Mary dominated gaining 257 yards to Villanova’s 70. Of course when your average starting position in your own 9.5 yard line, your opponents is the 39.5 yard line and you throw a deflected-bobbled interception after a penalty nullified a near-TD pass, that’s when you only lead 10-0 at the half.

Almost on cue, Villanova came out with a 62 yard touchdown drive on their first drive of the second half and what could have been an easy win turned into a potential remote-thrower. Later, the Wildcats converted on a fake punt, got the benefit of a very disputable video replay reversal and of course ended the game with the ball inside the Tribe 10 yard line threatening the blood pressure of W&M backers everywhere.

It’s safe to say William and Mary probably would have been favored over either team in the national title game, but there probably won’t be any angles for next Friday night in Chattanooga now that ToughnessU is through to the final.

Hoops:
LaSalle +21.5 -110(1)

COLLEGE GAMES OF INTEREST THIS WEEKEND

Coincidentally or not, my interest in college baskeball Saturdays has an inverse relationship with the number of college football games played that weekend. First though, the two college games this weekend.

1-AA
Villanova -3.5 against William and Mary is a pretty funny line, since its hard to believe these two teams are approximately equal when Villanova beat W&M 28-17 earlier this season, is coming off a 46-7 win over UNH and Villanova has been ranked near the top spot all season long. Look a little closer and William and Mary outgained Villanova(472-283) significantly in the first meeting and actually had a better net yardage in CAA games this season. I haven’t appropriately counted for the basketball toughness carry over factor yet, but W&M in a nationally televised game looks like a good idea.

Can’t really say I have much of an opinion on the other one. Obviously, App St. is one of those 1-aa teams you have heard of, but Montana is undefeated, is historically a good program, has been highly ranked all season and is coming off a blowout win. I’d say this looks like a pass.

Hoops:
I guess it’s because it is early, but I really couldn’t come up with any opinions on any of these games tomorrow:

I’ll be looking into the consensus numbers for the following games:
LaSalle v. Kansas
Presbyterian v. UNC

I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t look like there is too much of interest tomorrow.

A TRUE HERO

Only a legend like Hurricane Steve could pull something like this off in round 1:

WRAPPING IT UP: BIG EAST

Thanks to a link from ML’s Twitter, my defining memory of this conference will be that Villanova was closer to Cincinnati than Cincinnati is to Alabama in Sagarin’s predictor rankings. In fact, only Cincy, Pittsburgh and WVU rank ahead of Villanova as Big East teams.

Cincinnati
You could basically call the Bearcats, “Clemson with an easier schedule and better luck.” This was not that great of a team this year, they just happened to win some games they probably should not have. They lose Pike and Gilyard for next season, though it’s hard to say how people will view them as Collaros was pretty good filling in for Pike and it looks like there is a good chance that Kelly will be out the door in the off-season. I would say they have enough to be competitive again, but not the best.

Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh was only a small step below Cincinnati this year, with again the big difference being luck. They’ll have to replace Stull at QB, Wannstache is still the coach, but this team should probably open as the Big East favorites next year. Recruiting-wise, Rivals.com has them as the best team in the Big East for 2 of the past 3 years.

Syracuse
The ‘Cuse will obviously have to fill the shoes of the legendary Greg Paulus, but other than that, I see them remaining as a pretty under-rated Big East squad. The Orange actually out-gained opponents in conference play, which helps explain some crazy lines despite a 1-6 conference record.

Connecticut
There is a decent chance they lose Randy Edsall, but if they don’t I think they are another potentially over-rated squad.
A win against Notre Dame, probably disguises the fact that they were out-gained by conference opponents and have had the worst rated recruiting class in the Big East in two of the last three years. I’m not sure how people will treat this team next year, but I’d say they are closer to Louisville than the top of the conference.

As these are going to be exceedingly quick, and used as a jumping off point next August, I don’t think there is much more to touch on. Louisville was bad, and should be bad again next year, but I don’t think there is any reason to expect them to be particularly under-rated.

A TWO WEEK HURRICANE

First up, I’d like to introduce Golf Stats. The idea is to use it to put up all my rankings type stuff over there, so it’s well organized and easily searchable. All the “analysis” will go on as usual.

Last week
A Hurricane touched down off the Australian coast, unfortunately it was a lot weaker than anticipated. Elsewhere, Big Shot Bob scored a nice victory in South Africa. Lost a little on the match-ups, but Big Shot Bob carried me through to a winning week. It should be interesting to see going forward how Allenby and Furyk, probably the two best players in the world who haven’t won regularly, react to finally getting a win.

Australian PGA

TOP-20

A lot easier process this week, as Ogilvy is the defending champ and Steve Marino is going off at 45-1. It’s safe to say, though, that there is nothing that happened while Steve was approximately 65-over par last week that really changed how he should be valued.

Match-ups
Hurricane Steve -110 v. Scott Strange(2)
Hurricane Steve -130 v. Marc Leishman(1)
Big Shot Bob +105 v. Adam Scott(1)

You can argue with me that Adam Scott has fully returned to his form from last year that had him ranked in the top-3 of the world. I’ll tell you that Big Shot Bob was a better player round for round in each of the last two years, despite more wins from Adam Scott.

Leishman is still getting too much credit for three good weeks during the FedEx playoffs with that line. Normally wouldn’t care about Strange, but he has won on the European Tour and seemed to be pretty overrated when I last heard his name at the Volvo Match Play.

Dunhill Championship

TOP 20

This event feels like everything would be a force. If I had to narrow it down to one guy, I would say Oliver Fisher, who has some talent, but generally played like garbage this year after a promising 2008. I’d still like to see some signs of life first, or wait for a tournament with some bigger names.

Match-ups
None.

Schwartzel v. Els seems okay, but close enough to a fair line that I’ll pass. Another one that interested me was Cabrera Bello over Molinari, considering the last time I saw him he was dancing around like an idiot at the Omega World Cup. Again, I think that is pushing it for such a weak event. There are better things I can be doing than refreshing this pretty weak scoreboard.

I doubt I’ll get involved with the Shark Shootout, but if I do, I’ll post it tomorrow.

BUILT. MARYLAND. TOUGH.

Maryland 86(+2), Villanova 95
Watching Maryland on T.V. it seemed like they couldn’t get a stop to save their lives against hyper-tough Villanova, but the Wildcats were less efficient on offense than Duke in a loss to Wisconsin, although 1.17 ppp is still scoring pretty well. Maryland absolutely got killed on the boards going 30/50 on defensive chances and 7/49 on offensive chances. Not surprisingly, Villanova had a 29-10 advantage in second chance points.

Dec 8:
Might dabble on an Indiana team that has lost to BU, Ole Miss, George Mason and is coming off a loss against Maryland. Pittsburgh is 7-1, but if you count legitimate opponents you can downgrade that to 0-1. As a historically decent program, Indiana probably isn’t as unpopular as they should be and Pitt’s two most noticed games this year are a blowout to Texas and a 2OT win against Duquesne. Not exactly my favorite play here.

Another marginal option could be TCU taking on Texas Tech. The Red Raiders coming off a big win against Washington only giving one point. The two knocks on this are, not on ESPN or a high profile game and my #HornedFrog boner may be carrying over sports.

EVERYONE SUCKS

Well done, BCS.

You managed to take a season with legitimate questions surrounding the top-4 teams(easily Bama, Texas, TCU and UF) and put the teams in an arrangement that perfectly covers your ass.

Well done.

Consider the likely scenario, Texas or Alabama wins the national title, one of them is obviously undefeated. Cincinnati is put in the worst possible match-up for them, what should be a blowout for Florida. Then, obviously, TCU or Boise State will remain undefeated, but they have never been given a chance to knock off a BCS AQ school, thus putting a series dent in any potential they should be the real national champion. Just a total cop-out from the BCS, but they make a lot of money off the perception that they pick a national champion*, so it makes sense.

*In fairness, I have always thought the BCS system is better than a playoff for determining a national champion as almost always it puts the best team in the title game, which is not the case in playoff system(See Arizona v. Pittsburgh in last year’s Super Bowl). This is blatantly wrong this year in that neither Bama, Texas or UF appeared to be traditional powerhouses that normally sit atop the rankings and TCU is the strongest non-AQ team in relation to the field I have ever seen. The match-ups are a slap in the face to what could be some interesting showdowns.

Consider the BCS could have pitted TCU-Florida, Cincy-Iowa and Boise State-Georgia Tech. I’ll throw down a quick and probably conservative estimate and give TCU(35%), Cincy(70%) and Boise(40%) in this scenario and there is almost a 10% chance that there are 4 undefeated teams when the season is done.

As it stands there is a 100% chance of multiple undefeateds, but only a small chance that Cincy wins and causes any real outrage. Let’s face it, as much as I like the Horned Frogs and feel bad for them, there will be far from a national outcry on their behalf.

So, when you wonder why the BCS put down so many terrible match-ups this year and will likely suffer decreased attendance and tv ratings, just remember they make take a hit this year, but its better in their minds of taking the risk the of undermining the whole system with multiple undefeated teams.

Like I said, well done.

Nebraska 12(+14), Texas 10
I think that instant replay call at the end of the Texas-Nebraska game was quite possibly the worst call I ever seen all season.

True, the ball did hit the ground out of bounds with one second clearly showing on the clock. So, it should have been one second on the clock, right?

Well, no.

If you look at how the clock is run for the rest of the game, the ball hits the ground, the clockmaster sees it, he stops the clock. In that scenario, almost always one additional second, at least, rolls off the clock. Of course, the only play that is reviewed is the one at the end of the game that matters.

The point is, replay should be there to make the game more fair. changing how the game is officiated in the final second does not make the game more fair.

If the NCAA wants to go to the trouble to use video and a speed clock to be exact the entire game, then I’ll honor this call. Until then, this was an absolute robbery by the refs.

Refs -500 W, over opponents of Undefeated BCS teams
See above. Also, with Pitt driving to win late in the game, the refs threw a flag for facemasking on Cincy, got together, discussed it, and picked the flag up. What a joke. How many times do you see a facemask flag picked up? Obviously, there have been many more better examples this season of calls blatantly favoring undefeated teams, but you get the point.

Clemson 34(PK), Georgia Tech(39)
Honestly a pretty even game that if you played 100 times probably goes close to 50-50. The real story of this game was CJ Spiller who should, in my opinion, finish number 2 in the Heisman voting.

Number 1?

That goes to Mr.* Suh. What a performance he put on what I thought was a pretty good Texas offensive line. He was a beast, all over the field, and was the one guy that stuck out with his performance from a sloppy game. He’s also probably the number one pick in the draft, and that is enough to give him my meaningless best player in the country vote.

*Don’t want to try to spell that first name.

Pitt 44(+2), Cincy 45
This Cincy team is terrible. They needed 256 yards of kickoff return yardage from Mardy Gilyard and a Pitt missed extra point to squeak by the Wannstache. Florida should have the talent to on defense to pressure take it to Cincy and if Dion Lewis can run for 194 yards on 47 carries out of the I-formation, I shudder to think what Tebow and Demps are going to do. That’s why a spread of 11 isn’t surprising.

ECU 38(+2.5), Houston 32
Houston had no problem moving the ball, as usual, but they couldn’t really stop the Purple Pirates and 3 of Case Keenum’s insane 75 attempts were intercepted. By the second half of this one, I was comfortable watching the Wannstache blow it in Pittsburgh.

One final note, go join the Contrarianville group on ESPN’s Bowl Mania. Group name is “Contrarianville” and no password is needed