In the past few days the Vikings won a game, the Lynx (non-sausage version) won the WNBA title, and the Wild kicked off what should be a promising season with a win. For at least a moment, things were looking up in the worst sports city in America. Unfortunately, there's no break from the losing on a personal level, as my football acumen is being made a mockery of on a weekly basis, and it's starting to get aggravating.
At the beginning of the NFL season, I set up an online group to do football picks with the immediate family. I'm talking against the spread here, none of that pansy garbage picking games straight up. If your knowledge doesn't translate to gambling, well then what did you really know? Nothing of any great value.
This was supposed to be a fun way to build camraderie amongst the fam, add a little spice to watching football in person on Thanksgiving and Christmas, typical stuff. It was also supposed to do one other thing, assert my dominance as the greatest football mind in gene pool. Objective #1 is going well. Objective #2? Not so much.
Current standings have me sitting 5th out of 6 participants; 2nd-4th is a 3-way tie, and only two games ahead of me at this point. None of that is a problem, as making up two games is easy enough to do. The problem isn't even that I'm 8 games out of 1st place, with the gap growing ever wider. The problem is that the current 1st place entry belongs to my sister, the only female in the group, and the person making me question everything I thought I knew about the NFL.
Now this isn't some sexist rant about how men should never be bested by women in sports endeavors. Every year I get beat by scores of women in Final Four pools, shrug my shoulders and move on with my life. It's a one-shot tourney, in which most people have never seen half the teams play, the height of randomness.
No, this rant is about being bested in a sport I follow religiously, read up on, dissect, re-watch old games and just generally waste too much of my life on. This is about statistical improbability. Everyone has their way of thinking about football gambling. When in doubt, maybe you favor AFC over NFC, look at teams traveling West to East, beware of the trap games and backdoor covers, whatever. My sister, or as she will henceforth be known, Rainwoman, use the time-honored tactic of picking based on who would win a fight between team mascots.
Scoff if you want, I did at first. It was hard not to chuckle at logic along the lines of "a falcon would never have a chance against an eagle, have you Wikipedia'ed them lately?" or "no way could some pirate tame a colt, I'd bet on the horse every time". We are now 5 weeks in, and after a blistering 11-2 performance to start pulling away from a pack that includes her brothers, fiancee and father, no one is chuckling.
Do you know how hard it is to go 11-2 against the spread?
F*cking hard my friend, we're talking calculus-level, let's leave it at that.
I picked the Bears on Monday night, Rainwoman picked the Lions.
My logic was that the Bears had their backs against the wall, couldn't afford to fall three games back in the division and could move the ball on a Lions defense that had looked suspect when going down 20 points the last couple of weeks.
Her logic was that a bear would have no chance in Africa, so a lion at home was a no-brainer. The simpicity of it is rather elegant, and of course, correct, but it had little to do with football. We may have a savant on our hands here folks, at this point I'm waiting for her to start wandering around muttering "Definitely lions, lions in hot weather, better than bears, have to watch Wapner, I'm an excellent driver."
(There are a couple of games that seem fishy though, how is a Buccaneer not going to beat a 49er? One is a swashbuckling hgih seas adventure type, the other an old guy in the hills panning for gold? And shouldn't inanimate objects like Jets always lose in this system? I mean sure they could bowl over a Patriot pretty easily, but how the heck would they get in motion in the first place? If the Seattle Pilots were still around, that I could give ya, but I'm claiming shenanigans if the Jets or Browns are picked from here on out)
I'm not going down without a fight, I'll tell you that much. Some way, some how, I will get back to the mountaintop of family football expertise. Traditionally, I've always been a closer, as the season wears on, I do my best work, and this year will be no different. Granted that will be difficult if the 11-2 records keep getting cranked out, but if they do, I have a contingency plan for that as well.
Christmas roadtrip to Vegas anyone?
Hilarious!!!
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