For the first time in decades, we’re not on the panel of forecasters in the weekly Press-Telegram Football Picks contest. The official reason is we wanted to spend more time with our family.
If there is an unofficial reason, it’s that we totally dominated the thing because our knowledge of football is, to just grab a word out of the ether, terrifying.
We are not a football fan. We jumped on the not-a-football-fan bandwagon three years ago, when it became apparent that the sport is just too barbaric for a civilized person to enjoy, and we also sort of developed a distaste for a certain kind of football fan who talks about games and matchups all week till we just want to pound them into the ground and give them a concussion, so you can see where we’re at: the precise midway point between morality and mayhem, but anti-football either way.
We still have a ways to go before we’re a complete pacifist regarding the game. You don’t just quit cold turkey. We still find ourself sneaking the odd peek at the Super Bowl, and we tend to care about the results of certain games especially in college, even if we don’t watch them, because we don’t like football. See? It’s complicated.
Still, you did the right thing if you came to us asking for advice on how to beat your office or sportsbar companions in forecasting football games, because our method had us losing only two (one stupidly) games in the first week (prior to Monday night)– and that includes picking the Kansas City Chiefs over the New England Patriots and Jacksonville over Houston.
Why did we pick K.C. over the Super Bowl champs? Easy. We hate New England and hope they lose every game for the rest of their life, or at least until their coach and quarterback are fired. Of course, picking against the Pats isn’t an Rx for success in the long run, but we’ll probably keep doing it, especially because we’re not in the newspaper anymore. We don’t even know why we bother.
The one game we stupidly gave back was picking Cincinnati over Baltimore. And, we also picked the Rams to lose, because why wouldn’t you?
So, we’re not going to do any more forecasting. We’ve got other things to watch, like golf, tennis and Icelandic police procedurals on Hulu and Netflix. We’ve gotta walk the dogs, read the Sunday New York Times, clean up the Barn (you really have to stay on top of outdoor bars; we have not stayed on top of the Barn), and maybe take on the garage if it’s not too hot, cold, windy, earthquaky or droughtish.
But before we walk out of your pigskin life forever, here are some short-term tips to get you through this gambling season.
• Bet on the teams that are based in the city you’d wish to live in (that’s how we got Jacksonville over Houston).
• Bet on teams whose real-life mascot could win in a fight.
• Steer clear of Eli Manning.
• Take the visitors when the point spread is an odd number.
• Bet against teams that are the subject of a TV reality show that’s following their progress.
• Take Buffalo at home when it’s cold.
• If Phil Simms ever pops up on an NFL broadcast again, listen to the radio.
• And, if you can afford it, take the opponent against the New England Patriots.
Contact Tim Grobaty at 562-714-2116, tgrobaty@scng.com, @grobaty on Twitter.
