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| Thanks to the College Football Playoff and a few new bowls, we've got 39 games to pick this year. |
It's the second year of our (hopefully) annual Bowl Pick'em challenge and, like a Charmander growing into a promising Charmeleon, then eventually a Charizard, we're evolving from last year.
Gone is Yahoo, because, seriously, Yahoo fantasy sports are the worst now. We have begrudgingly switched to ESPN, but the rules are the same: Make a pick for every bowl game and rank that pick based on how confident you are in it being true.
This year we've also added correspondent and college football guru Andy Dougherty to the party, and each of us has a slightly different methodology. Well, except for Joe's wife Caity, she's still picking with her gut.
Enjoy!
(Note: You can view our picks through screen-captures of the ESPN league that we set up. You won't be able to see anything from the thumbnails but you can click to enlarge.)
(Other Note: There was some confusion as to which way the confidence points went. Is 1 at the top of the page your most confident pick, or is 39 your most confident pick and worth 39 points? After reading the rules, we're pretty sure it is the latter, but all of us except Jeremy did the former... Oh well.)
Editor Joe Parello
I'm going with my same methodology from last year. You know, since I won and all. Once again I am putting my trust in Vegas (the house always wins, right?) and picking every Vegas favorite, then ranking the game by how large the spread is.
This year's biggest line is Stanford (-14) over Maryland, so that's my top confidence pick, while my bottom pick is Oklahoma over Clemson in a PK. My tie-breaker in that decision was the fact that Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson is out for the game.
Once again, I have a few picks I don't feel great about. For instance, I actually like Texas against Arkansas, despite the fact that the Longhorns are 6-point dogs, but this methodology brought me a championship last year, so if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Editor Jeremy Conlin
I had no methodology. I made these picks at four in the morning. I sorta went with Vegas favorites unless I didn't feel like it, and I'm pretty sure I picked every SEC West team and put them in the top half of my confidence rankings.
(Also, it has been brought to my attention that I may have ordered my confidence ranking completely backwards. So the picks that I'm sure about are worth the least points, and the ones I'm not sure about at all are worth the most points. But staying with my gambling tradition, my mistakes are probably more accurate than my conscious decisions. So I'm leaving it.)
Joe's Wife Caity
If you think Jeremy had no methodology, you should see my picks! First of all, I picked the winner of the Alabama/OSU game to defeat the winner of the Oregon/FSU game, but then I said the Oregon/FSU winner would take out the Alabama/OSU winner 35-28 in my tie-breaker.
Try to figure that one out.
Ed. Note- Caity did not actually write this, but she did make that tie-breaker mistake. We are not letting her fix it.
Correspondent Andy Dougherty
Vegas has beaten me pretty badly with picks against the spread this year, so I’ll try to get Vegas to work in my favor this time. I used Vegas odds as a framework for my Bowl picks. Then I looked at the games to see if any spreads seemed a little out of place.
The one that jumped out the most was Arizona’s 3.5-point spread against Boise State. Arizona won the Pac-12 South, one of the strongest divisions in college football. The Wildcats also handed No. 2 Oregon its only loss of the season. Arizona will be Boise State’s first ranked opponent since Week 1, when the Broncos lost to Ole Miss by 22.
And if Air Force could beat Boise State by 14, Arizona should be able to get the job done pretty comfortably as well. All of the Vegas favorites were justifiable, so I stuck close to the odds for my other picks.
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