Week 4 Picks

Every week I will pick all the ACC games against the spread, as well as the biggest national games of the weekend, and occasionally the UGA game, even though those are unlikely to fit either of those two criteria.

There will be three categories. “Free Money” are the games I feel the most confident about. “Solid bets” are next, and then “Toss-ups” are the ones that could go either way. I’ll keep track of how I am doing with a chart that I’ll update each week, so you readers can make fun of me for (probably) being sub .500 and correctly picking more “Toss-ups” than “Free Money” bets.

Last week I went 2 for 3 on free money. NC St. and Stanford covered pretty easily (they really should stop letting west coast teams schedule home games against east coast teams at 8:15 pacific time…) but Maryland forgot to show up.

I went 1 for 2 on solid bets. Arizona, or the Riz as I call them, may in fact be pretty good. But Texas covered without too much trouble. That maybe should have been “free money”.

Once again my toss ups appeared to in fact be toss ups. GT and Clemson covered, but FSU decided to show up this time, VT somehow covered, and Duke, well, why did I pick Duke? That’s my own fault. 2 for 5.

So far on the season:

Free Money	5 for 7
Solid Bets	6 for 10
Toss Ups	3 for 9
Total	14 for 26

Clearly, if you went to Vegas and just put 10,000 down on each of my “free money” bets every week, you would have a pretty good year. (The previous sentence should in no way be read as guaranteeing anything in any way, or even advising you to make any bets at all. Any money you lose is your own fault. I accept no liability for any misplaced reliance on your part.)

Here are this week’s picks.

Free Money:

Miami is favored by 3.5 against Pitt. They will cover that. The Canes looked pretty good against Ohio St. for parts of the game anyway, and I think Pitt is very overrated. Miami has had two weeks to let that embarrassing national tv loss simmer, and I think they come out wild eyed and overwhelm the Panthers.

Alabama is favored at Arkansas by 7.5. Take Bama. Big. Don’t assume Arkansas is any good just because they won at UGA, and don’t forget the SEC West is a one horse race. Petrino is good enough to give Saban problems if he had a running game. He doesn’t.

North Carolina is a half point dog to Rutgers. Why do they do half points again? Teams can’t tie, so this is exactly the same thing as a pick em. You are just picking who wins, why don’t they call it that? Anyway, UNC covers by a lot. Rutgers = not very good.

Georgia is a half point dog to Miss. St. Read that again and then bet everything you have on UGA. Richt doesn’t lose these kind of games. UGA actually plays better on the road. And, even though both teams have lost two in a row, only the UGA dawgs are in a must win. Miss. St. still doesn’t know what “must win” means, because 4-8 in Starkville isn’t that big of a deal.

Solid Bets:

Florida St. by 17.5 over Wake Forest. Take the Noles. I know that Wake Forest doesn’t still have that ridiculous win streak over Florida St. going, but I think the karma from whoever sold their soul to the devil to allow Wake to enjoy that streak is still coming around. This will be a blowout, which would be rare for an ACC team over a Grobe coached Wake team. But its coming.

VT at BC. BC is getting 3.5 points. Take the Eagles. They will have a chance to win, but I think if VT wins it will be by only field goal. On paper the Hokies should win handily, but we know that BC always looks terrible on paper. Fortunately for the boys from Chestnut Hill, they play the games on grass.

GT favored by 8.5 at home against NC St. GT covers with a comfortable 14-17 point win. I’ll tell you why in the NC St. preview that I’ll post later tonight.

Auburn wins by more than 2.5 at home against the Lame Flops. Still not convinced the shamecocks are necessarily any good. Or Auburn for that matter.

LSU beats the pants of WVU at home. They’ll cover 8.5.

Toss-Ups:

Maryland favored by 10.5 against FIU. Who cares? I’ll take FIU just for laughs.

Duke favored by 6.5 against Army. See: Maryland above. I’ll take Duke, because I am determined to bet on Duke once and win.

I think 17.5 is a good spread for Boise over Oregon St., so this is a toss up. I’ll take Boise.

Starting this week I am ending all of my weekly pick articles with two original Joshua Nesbitt jokes, inspired by nesbitt4heisman.com. There is a wall there and GT fans post Nesbitt jokes in the form of the Chuck Norris/Tim Tebow jokes. Feel free to rate these in the comment section, and/or vote on which one you like better:

1: Joshua Nesbitt’s strength coach once told him to keep lifting weights even when it hurts, because “pain is just weakness leaving the body”. Joshua immediately rammed him with his shoulder and knocked the coach unconscious. You see, Joshua has no idea what pain is, and he does not like to be confused.

2: Joshua Nesbitt does not have a threshold for pain. He has a guest house for the SOB.