Betting Post Mortem and Rock Paper Scissors (It All Makes Sense)

I'm not sure if anyone followed along at home, but on a whim of stupidity I decided to overlook the fact that Stewart Mandel is a mealy wimp with Cheetoes-stains on his t-shirt and bought into his picks to inform my bets for the weekend. (I should have given more creedence to the alarm sounding in my head once I noticed his uncanny resemblence to Jared from the Subway commericals.)

Here's what I took.

Missouri -1.5 at home against Oklahoma
UCLA -1.5 at home against Washington State
Florida -13.5 against Georgia
Georgia Tech -5 at home against Miami
Texas Tech +10.5 at home against Texas

And after going 2/5 and finishing down in the money sector, here's what I'll take away: nobody's got a fucking clue how a game's going to play out. From here on out I'm going with my gut. That's the same gut that said the Trojan's were in trouble, and the same gut that says Switter's "analysis" of the "numbers" pertinent to Ohio State/Michigan (below) is about as well researched as the skidmarks in his underwear.

Or, the Bush Administration's reasoning for starting the Iraq War as Dave at Michigan points out:

As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein "had long-established ties with Al Qaeda."...later that year, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

We've seen this tactic before; stop trying to confuse the issue.

Looking at how teams did against common opponents (particularly when they are all victories) is just silly...pointing to it at all is confusing a comparison of two teams. Is there any difference, at all, between beating a team by 21 or 14? What about playing two of the three games you mentioned w/o your best offensive weapon? 2 of the three on the road? It just makes me sad to see a once proud college football blog, like collegefootball.blogspot

.michiganosu.blog.blog denegrated with such Corsoian analysis.

It only stings because it's true.

The transitive property doesn't even work in Rock Paper Scissors. Try it for yourself: paper beats rock, and rock beats scissors, so paper should have no problem mopping the floor with scissors right? We know how this game ends.

Admittedly, Rock Paper Scissors is a much simpler game than college football (it's purely logical for instance), but we can still glean something from its simplicity. There's always a paper to someone's rock, a scissors to someone's paper and a rock to someone's scissors.

Knowing this, we can continue to make excuses or elementary comparisons like four year olds matching the right shape with the right hole, or we can shut up and enjoy the season like gentlemen. This is a complicated world, with complicated complications complicating the outcomes of football games. The Game is coming and will be decided on the field where we will see the simplicity emerge, who is rock and who is paper. Any of our conjecture in the meantime is just a way to fend off our own insecurities (assuming we have any).

So I say to Switters, stop blathering incoherently as a way to deal with your fear.