iggymcfly

All right the seven inning line sucked, so I actually put $75 on the Astros to win tonight, even though I've got $250 on the ChiSox to win the series. I have a feeling I'm going to regret this.

OK, I did it. I put $250 on the White Sox. I'm still not ruling out betting the 5-inning line on Clemens and the Astros tonight, but I'm on board the Chicago bandwagon as far as the series goes.

I love when College Gameday's at a relevant campus like Texas, so that they can justifiably talk about the home school all the time. It's almost like having Raw in Canada, in that they're just baiting the crowd constantly. Every five minutes, somebody's either taking a jab at Vince Young or saying that Texas is the only team that will end the year undefeated, or just something to fuck with the home crowd.

This is kind of random, but does anyone else think that Michigan has a really good chance to win the Big Ten? If they run the table, they'll only have two losses, and they'll have the tiebreak with both Penn State and Ohio State. They've been playing a lot better lately, and they've still got most of the nucleus of last year's Rose Bowl team. With Hart healthy, I think beating Iowa and OSU is far from a stretch. All they need to do is make sure that Penn State and Wisconsin both pick up another loss and they should be in.

Just out of curiosity, which teams are currently on probation? (Yes, I'm extremely bored.)

As for the game in Tuscaloosa, I like the Tide 9-7. Their offense isn't the same without Prothro, but what people don't realize is they've had one of the best defenses in the nation for years. At this point, I might consider them the best defense in the country. I really don't think the Vols are going to be able to do much against that kind of defense the way they've been playing lately. Tennessee got shut down by Florida, they got held to 17 by UAB, Georgia held them to 14, and even in the LSU game, the Tigers had them stopped for the whole first half. I just don't think that kind of team's going to be able to get the job done against a defense as strong as Alabama.

I'm really torn on this series. I've always kind of liked the White Sox, I never liked the Astros, and I was really planning on cheering the ChiSox on this postseason. On the other hand, though, I love Roger Clemens, Oswalt's been crazy good in the postseason, and I kinda got into the Astros over the NLCS. I want to get into this World Series because it looks like it's going to be really good, and I know that the only way I'm really going to do it is to put a sizable wager on one of the teams. This is where it gets really tricky. Even though I'd kind of lean toward the White Sox based on allegiance, the fact that their favored in a series where I think the Astros should be even money at worst gives me pause. Finally, the Sox are favored in game 1, even though they have Contreras going against Clemens which is such a good line, I almost can't pass it up. It's going to really fuck up my allegiances if I bet the Astros to win Game 1 and the White Sox to win the series. Plus, I really like the idea of just getting a team ahead of time, and cheering for them from start to finish. What should I do?

Thank god. Maybe the Orioles will finally get to the playoffs. Honestly, I've sat through nine seasons of third or fourth now, and I'm sick to death of it. Even if they get swept, I'll be thrilled just to see the O's make the postseason.

They really make me appreciate the default skin. They're something different, but trying to actually use the site with them makes my eyes bleed. Come to think of it, I like the general background on this site a lot. Most of the time, when I look at other forums sites, the bright, blinding colors are the first thing that turn me off.

I'm really curious. How do you end up owing one dollar anyway? If you earn under $1000 dollars or so, you don't have to pay taxes, and you'd think that if you earned over that, you'd have to pay taxes at the proper rate. How could you possibly owe one dollar in taxes?

I actually did that one time. I was blacked out at one of my friends' apartments, and I guess I decided to piss off the balcony. They started yelling at me to stop, so I did, but then I got it all over my pants, and decided I didn't want to wear them home. I walked out the door, and I probably would have made it all the way home, but I ran into this girl I hadn't seen in like six months, and she sent me back to get my pants. When I woke up the next morning, I was in my dorm, but instead of being in my room, I was in the lounge nine floors down in my boxers. My pants were upstairs, so apparently I made it home wearing them, and just forgot to put on new ones before I started wandering around again.

Average show, average fight, a little underwhelming on Whitehead's part. Heavyweights are when you want to tune out. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If you call that an average fight, I'd hate to see your idea of a bad one. Rashad at least got some decent offense in, but the white stiff (Mike maybe?) just stood there, occasionally going in to give Rashad a hug. Seriously, I don't think he landed one punch, knee, elbow, or kick the entire fight.

Um, why? I mean I get that SC would just cover the spread, but I'm totally missing where the irony would come from.

Oh come on. This is ridiculous. The NBA is mandating that it's players don't wear sunglasses or hats while they're traveling with the team. And they're basically saying that they have to wear a suit every time they give an interview. The fact that they even thought of this just shows how anal and PR-paranoid the NBA really is.

A team that finishes 9th (at 9-3 or something like that) and misses an 8-team playoff has a lot less to bitch about than a team that finished 3rd at 12-0 and misses a 2-team playoff. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True that. One of the tenets of real competition is that no team should be eliminated without losing or tying at least one game, and college football's the only major sport that violates that.

I'm surprised the guy can still get off. God, that must be the loosest pussy ever.

Yeah, it's the margin of victory thing again. For all the computers know, Notre Dame could have lost to USC by 30 and Michigan State by 27. The idea that they can't have some capped margin of victory standard involved in the computer rankings is ridiculous. If they capped it at 28 points, they wouldn't have to worry about poor Rice getting 100 points rung up on them by Texas, but they wouldn't take away crucial information from the computers' determinations. Using the Sagarin ratings again as an example, since they're convenient for me to find, the "official" Sagarin rankings used by the BCS that don't take margin of victory into account have Notre Dame at 23, whereas Sagarin's real rankings of which teams are best have the Irish at 12. Also, since margin of victory is incorporated in terms of what opponent was faced and not blindly as some naively assume, Texas Tech has actually been helped by the flaws in the system. The official BCS rankings that only take into account games played have Texas Tech at 6, while Sagarin's real ratings have Tech at 8 and his "pure points" rankings have them at 16. This is because Tech's poor performances against Kansas and Nebraska would actually affect them much more than whether they blew out I-AA teams as they were expected to. Oh, and for the record, Texas Tech's SOS is ranked 138th, falling behind several I-AA teams, and ranking below any team ranked in the Top 80. If you look at I-A teams exclusively, Texas Tech's SOS is second to last, leading only Arkansas State.

All right, I guess Spacemen Spiff's already PMed his picks, so I guess I'll just post mine here. Picks for the game of the week: THURSDAY Virginia Tech at Maryland FRIDAY Southern Miss at UAB SATURDAY Northwestern at Michigan State Virginia at North Carolina N.C. State at Wake Forest Michigan at Iowa Nebraska at Missouri Texas A&M at Kansas State Kentucky at Mississippi Rutgers at Connecticut Texas Tech at Texas Tennessee at Alabama Vanderbilt at South Carolina Auburn at LSU Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the Virginia Tech/Maryland game? 47 Tiebreak #2: How many passing yards will Texas Tech's Cody Hodges have against Texas? 296

Fuck yeah. I get a chance to redeem myself for last week's loss with a game against #1 Miami for first in the Big Atlantic. Of course, I'll have to give my picks a little bit of thought for this, and I'll probably PM them, but I felt like posting anyway.

That would be pretty funny. Just imagine, 8-3 Rutgers gets their first bowl game in 30 years, and it's the Orange Bowl against undefeated #3 Virginia Tech. Sure, it's not likely, but it's not impossible either. (Well, actually, I think the Fiesta Bowl would get stuck with them if Texas was in the Rose Bowl, but you get the idea.)

Actually, to be fair, CFN does make an effort, and they have Texas Tech at 12 and UCLA at 15. I'm really not seeing it at all, as Nebraska's the only Top 50 opponent they played all year, and they would have lost that game if that nose tackle had just dove to the ground. I think Texas Tech's the most overrated team in the country, and the idea that they can play with Texas is ludicrous. I say: Texas 52 Texas Tech 27 and that's with at least one garbage time TD for Tech.

Texas Tech was ranked in the preseason poll. I think the coaches see teams' records, and just have no idea whatsoever who they actually played. At least the writers who vote in the AP poll make an effort.

I got pulled over a few days ago and got off with a warning, but even though I got pulled over for "speeding", I'm pretty sure the real reason, I got pulled over was for suspected DUI. As soon as he found out I was sober (for a change, thank god), he just let me off with a warning.

The Korean scientist in the video says flat-out that their station is used for electomagnetic research. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, obviously if the whole thing's a psychological experiment, they're not going to tell them that the station's for psychology. In fact, now that I think of it, it's perfectly reasonable that the magnet would just be a diversion to distract from that fact.

Yeah, I was considering Northwestern for the last couple spots, but Michigan had done a little better in Big Ten play, and Arizona State had a 30 point win over them. Oregon State got consideration as well after the big win over Cal, but I went back to the fact that they lost to ASU by 18 at home, and decided that the Sun Devils should probably take the spot instead. Iowa and Maryland both look like teams that might end the year well, but Iowa's best win is over 2-4 Purdue, and Maryland's 1-2 against good teams (Clemson, WVU, and Virginia), despite getting all three games at home. Maryland's going to get plenty of chance to prove themselves the next couple weeks however, as they follow up a Thursday night game against Va. Tech with a road trip to Tallahassee.