A release party in…2020?
I have been anticipating this for a long time, the event that I reveal to the public something that has consumed much of my free time every autumn for the better part of the last decade. Mind you, it hasn’t always been clear that I would ever put something like this out there; I’ll get to the whys, the whens and the hows as I move through this process, but let’s just say that what once was a hobby of sorts, a series of methodical testing and data crunching and starting over again and again, at some point became evidence of enough promise to make a big release not only probable, but inevitable. And as the 2019 College Football season wrapped up, it was clearer than ever that 2020 would be the year. Want to guess what’s next? Yeah. All of that.
I don’t want to get hyperbolic here. This is, in the end, about picking winners in college football. There might be a lot of work behind it, with an elaborate spreadsheet, tied together by some highly scrutinized algorithms, but it is not, can not become a 2020 tragedy. It can certainly fail because of 2020, and that would be somewhat deflating because of said efforts, but despite worrying quite a bit about that, I’m aware of how awful a turn this year took a short time after the last football season ended and I’d like to try to refrain from piling on to the doom and gloom with something at least meant to be fun, now that football is back. Remember fun?
So here we go! The big reveal! The release party! The roll-out! What I’m going to use this site for is not only to give you my system’s picks every week, but also gradually give you most of the process and reasoning by which I’ve come to these picks. There is a lot, so I couldn’t possibly unload all of it onto your doorstep at once, but if you’re interested in the science behind it, I’ll certainly be happy to share, well, most of it anyway. I will omit just enough to maintain a trace of ownership, but if you want to know the foundation behind picking games at 58-62% for 7 straight years, I will give that to you, no charge. And if you just want the picks, they’re all yours, no charge. And if you really just like reading about it, you’re my favorite kind of human, and of course, no charge.
At this point, I think I’d like to give you some basics of what you can expect, and then expand on all of it in future posts.
1) I pick college football games and college only. I know you love the NFL and I’m aware that the NFL gambling industry in our country is unparalleled by any other sport. I still don’t have picks for those games and probably won’t anytime soon. I also don’t have other sports, but the wheels are turning on how I could go about at least 1 or 2 of those, it just won’t be all that soon either.
2) At some point every week, I make my picks, and that’s when I lock in my spreads. There are almost always a couple of games on my wait list, and I will pick those later if the spreads move to my liking, but for the most part, the spreads I’m using are the spreads I locked in at. If you get a different spread than mine, then if could be better than mine and it could also be worse. I don’t want to declare myself a winner in a close call that you lose, but it happens sometimes. Sorry in advance, but good on you for the times it works in you favor.
3) You’ll find that my system isn’t just about picking the right teams, but also picking the right games to play in the first place. I don’t play all of them, not even close, so please understand that picking the game you want to play will often times not be what I’m doing here.
4) 58-62% might not seem like much, but I’m under the impression that it’s very good, even by professional gamblers’ standards. Just remember that 40% is still a lot of losing and sometimes I lose badly. It does get frustrating, but keep in mind that if you had bet all of my picks for the last 7 years and bet the same amount on every game, it probably would have made you a lot of money, depending on how much you like to stake your bets to. Also, I never would have guessed that I’d be wearing a mask every time I wanted to buy a carton of eggs, and I can’t really guess what the pandemic will do to my picks either. Bet accordingly.
5) If anything you read is confusing to you and you need further explanation, go to my contact page and shoot me a message. I’m well aware that my circle of friends can give me a false impression of “general knowledge” and can guarantee that I am uniquely ignorant of some things you might consider pretty basic as well, so I’ll be happy to do my part in bringing my world to you as long as you are taking the time to read what I have to say.
All that being said, here are my picks for this week, Saturday, September 19:
Louisiana Lafayette -17 at Georgia State
Tulane -7 at home vs Navy
Tulsa +23 at Oklahoma State
Louisiana Tech +5.5 at Southern Mississippi
Wake Forest +2 at North Carolina State
Just 5 this week, which doubles the total picks I’ve made so far, but is dramatically low by most years’ standards and the lack of sample size will be the thing I think you’ll find to be most disturbing to me about this season, but I’ll get into that a lot more in future weeks. So far I am 2-3, which is actually somewhat reassuring from where I started. In the first week, my system picked Middle Tennessee and Navy and both got clobbered, so to say I was a little worried would be a massive understatement. Last weeks picks though felt a lot more familiar. Louisiana Lafayette was my big winner against Iowa State, South Alabama beat the Tulane spread and Notre Dame nearly covered for me to take the hat trick and put my system back at 60% to start the season. They didn’t, of course, so I’m 2-3 now, but here’s to a big week that gets me back there anyway!
