kidbourbon

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Have you not learned your lesson betting MLs? Didn't you just lose 2 grand or so on a LSU ML play from last year?

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Not an LSU play, but I did have a bad ML burn last year.

But, no, that didn't scare me. I've been at this for six years. When you play the ML as frequently as I tend to, you'll eventually get burned. It doesn't make it an inherently bad play, and in fact I would argue that that's where the most value can be found, at least in college football.*

There are two components of risk: magnitude and likelihood. ML betting -- at least favorite ML betting -- registers higher on the magnitude component than ATS betting, but lower on the likelihood prong. I see the two as being equally risky, just in different ways.



*The ML is a terrible play in basketball generally. And it's probably a bad play in the NFL, but I don't bet NFL so I can't say for sure.

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blades8088

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Do you post emoticons as a substitute for writing words because you find writing words to be kind of tricky? Or is it because you're a homosexual?

*And, to be clear, there's nothing wrong with being a homosexual.

More ramblings on random games:

Boise-17 v. Fresno: I don't love this line, as Boise isn't quite the covering machine they used to be, but I do like the moneyline. There is simply an approaching zero value percent chance of a team that just got beat the previous week by dogshit UNLV rolling onto the blue turf and coming out with a win. Especially when that team sorta sucks in the first place and would lose to the upcoming home team regardless of the existence of the Smurf Turf.

Boise -750 seems like a bargain to me.

FIU+22: Marshall has been beating the absolute funk out of teams this year, and Karrem Cato is in fact realer than even the real deal holyfield, but I also like this FIU team quite a bit. They covered for me last weekend and that was no fluke. I've directed many a pejorative at that the coaching prowess of one Ron Turner, but this year he seems to be proving me wrong. Florida International has definitely pulled away from even Schnelly's old team FAU in the "new Florida school" power poll.

So with those competing considerations, I'm likely to lay off this one.

The MAC is not a friendly betting conference like it's been in years past. There's just very little stratification this year, which means there is much more NFL-esque head-scratching unpredictability, which is no good for a gambler. The two MAC games I might consider trying on for size would be Akron-3 at Ohio or BGSU-3 at home. The rest of them look like pretty spot-on lines too me...meaning, that it wouldn't be advisable for me to make plays on them, and so I wont.

I like UAB-1 on the road against MTSU. UAB has been solid. They burned me one weekend, but, other than that, they've been continually exceeding expections. Good for them.

Alabama-13.5: This is too many points, but I definitely think Bama wins this game. As such, I wish the line wer several points lower that that the spread would be bettable, and also the moneyline much more desirable. I'm not ruling out the possibility that this one heads in the direction from whence it came. If not, I may be tempted to do the unorthodox "points on underdog/ ML on favorite" play.

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But Bobby

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1) Threw down on Utah when I saw VT's hopes were bleak.

2) Let Bobby out of your head, and

3) Eat a dick.

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I think Simmons is far better as an aggregator of talent than as a talent himself. Grantland and 30 for 30 are his babies, and they are the two best things ESPN has done in the past decade.

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How did he acquire the clout to do 30 for 30 and Grantland?

Not because nobody was reading him. In fact, he was the most widely read sports columnist in the country, and probably still is. People say he's talentless because he doesn't write ornate sentences. Meh. He's a plenty talented writer.

Some random ramblings about a few games:


Baylor-7.5 over WEST VIRGINIA: If Baylor can score at will against TCU, then they're going to score at will against WVU, a team with a significantly less imposing defense. And while Baylor's defense is obviously something less than the '85 Bears, WVU doesn't have the same weapons as TCU and won't be able to put up crazy gaudy numbers liked the Horned Frogs did. I expect Baylor to score a lot of points, and WVU to score significantly fewer. And I don't care how rowdy and drunk the fans are going to be in Mo-town. So long as they aren't allowed to actually set couches ablaze on the actual field of play, I think Baylor will be able to go on about their business.

Cincinnati-14 over SMU: the natty did not cover last week against The U, but they did at least manage to put 34 points on the scoreboard. The problem they had -- and that they've been having this year -- is that they're not particularly adept at stopping other teams from putting lots and lots of points on the scoreboard. And The U did just that, and to the tune of 55 points. But here's the deal: SMU is really really bad on offense. As in, 125th in offensive S&P+ bad (there are 128 teams). A really bad offense tends to have trouble scoring against even a weak defense. And I think that will be the case here. Let's go Gunner!

UCLA-6.5 over CAL: Really Vegas? Are you sure this is the line you want to post? This is the same Cal team that lost to Washington 7-31 last Saturday....at home (in a town chock full of tree-hugging hippies who don't a hemp necklace about college football, I've always questioned how much HFA *really* amounts to for Cal). Well, okay, if you insist.

Western Kentucky-5.5 over FLORIDA ATLANTIC: Florida International has been solid this year. Florida Atlantic has been somewhat less than solid. It's important not to get the two confused.

Notre Dame+11.5 over FREE SHOES UNIVERSITY: I'm not terribly confident in this pick, but FSU has looked very beatable this year, Brian Kelly is a way better coach than Jimbo Fisher, and you have to think the many distractions will at some point affect Winston's on-field play. I think the Domers keep it close.

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You forgot one:

Mr. Little Jeans - Pocketknife

Here's a review: LINK /

Haunted


ETA: I would call it Electropop. Girl can sing, though. It's good.

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Yeah, just keep this in the hopper. 5 albums a week is too many.

Nice

Who is this bobbyray guy and why do people keep talking about him?

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Sorry thats what I meant. I don't remember it being after the Spinks fight. I though it was before.

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It was before, but it wasn't until after the Spinks fight that he fired Rooney. Which was the effective end for him.

Firing Bill Cayton may have come before the Spinks fight, but he could have gone on and been fine as a fighter without Cayton. Rooney was the guy he needed. Rooney was the guy who knew how to train him in the way he'd been taught to fight since he was 13.

See, here's the deal, and this sounds like a trivial point, but it's not. Fighting the way Tyson did in all the fights up to and including that Spinks fight (i.e. the style that Cus taught him). It isn't a natural thing. You don't naturally constantly bob and weave and duck and twist and throw combinations like that. That shite is taught and then reinforced through hours of muscle memory in the gym or it goes away and you just resort to trying to land single knockout punches.

I used to box myself and I can attest to that. The way you move in a boxing ring -- both with footwork (though some people have more natural footwork than others) and upper body movements and throwing combinations as a rule -- is very much a reinforced through practice thing. And especially a style like Tyson's that was so hypertechnical, and especially with a guy like Tyson who was both perfectly designed to fight that style and completley reliant on doing the same.

Tyson was a short fighter, and so he needed to fight the way that Cus taught or he wasn't going to be worth a shite. When you saw Buster Douglas knock him out, or when you saw Lennox Lewis whup his arse for 8 rounds, you saw a guy just walking straight into punches That's not how Tyson fought in his prime (i.e being trained by Cus/Rooney). The only way he could fight was to fight like he did, which was pretty much an exaggerated (and better, because Tyson was more athletic, quick, balanced, and strong than Frazier) version of the way Joe Frazier fought (and, yes, I know Cus trained Floyd Patterson, but Patterson's phsical build was so different from Tyson's that he fought Cus' style in a way that barely resembled Tyson. Frazier is the better analog.)

Can you imagine what a Frazier/Ali fight would have looked like had Joe not been constantly bobbing and weaving. It would have been over by round 5.

And now this is probably where you might say: "okay, but why is it that Tyson needed a specific trainer to be able to fight that way?". And the answer is because Tyson was a freaking lunatic drug addict hyper sex fiend with no discipline whatsoever and who wasn't going to answer to anybody because nobody was going to attempt to be anything other than a "yes man" to Tyson.

So, yes, Tyson was fatally flawed, and maybe doomed to go down the road he went down later even if it hadn't been sooner. But Tyson's boxing style was not fatally flawed. It was technical and ferocious and amazing. And the popular saying that "Tyson got beat because somebody finally stood up to him" is the biggest simpleton load of crap on the planet. Tyson got beat because he fired Kevin Rooney and stopped training properly and stopped fighting like Tyson, and was thus rendered a 5-10 dude walking straight into jabs.

There's no single argument in sports that is more lazy and completely bunk than the nonsense notion spouted off (and as characterized in the above paragraph) by the guy I already called out, and thousands of other simpleton minions just like him.