Pick the Unpaid Pros

I'm looking forward to a great weekend of football, and I think I'm slowly becoming one of those people who enjoy the college game more than the NFL. Don't get me wrong--I *love* the NFL, but unless you're sitting in a sportsbook with access to multiple games, or have DirectTV with the Sunday Ticket, it's just a royal pain in the ass to sit through an NFL game with all the damn commercials. At least on Saturdays, with the college games, there are usually more games available than I have TV's, so it's a rare moment indeed where all three TVs are showing commercials at the same time.

And living here in Nevada, where wagering on the games is not only legal, but encouraged, I find college to be easier to pick. The NFL is damn near next to impossible, and it's reflected in the fact that just today I made my very first picks of the NFL season. But we'll get to those in a moment.

As of last weekend, I'm 12-6 this season when it comes to picking college games against the spread. And last week was a terrible week for me. I had both UCLA and Louisville covering as favorites, and both of them lost outright. But this is the week that we right the ship, as they say.

Normally, I only pick five or six game a week, but this week I saw so many juicy ones that I went with seven of them. Here they are:

Illinois -2.5 over Indiana

Penn St -2.5 over Michigan

Cal -14 over Arizona

ASU -12 over Oregon State

UCLA -6.5 over Washington

Michigan State -11 over Notre Dame (I'm ridin' the Anti-Notre Dame bandwagon until the wheels fall off!!! Haven't lost yet!)

South Carolina +18 over LSU


Not only do I like these seven games, but I was also tempted to take Kentucky over Arkansas (they're getting 7 points, but I want to see one more game out of them--I'm thinking they shot their wad last week and are in for a letdown, so I didn't touch this game). I was also thinking about taking Iowa and the 7 points against Wisconsin, since the Badgers can't seem to cover this year like they were doing consistently last season, but opted out. And Bowling Green over Temple by 21.5 seems like a gimme, but damn, that's a lot of chalk. So I passed on those.

As far as the NFL goes, there were only four games I liked on Sunday's schedule:

Indy -6 over Houston

Patriots -16 over Buffalo

Packers +5 over San Diego

Steelers -9 over San Fran

And although I didn't bet it, like a dumbass, I like Dallas getting three points against Chicago. For whatever reason, I thought it was a Monday night game, and didn't get a bet in. But I can do it later tonight. Hopefully the line hasn't changed against me.

I can't wait for kickoff. Until then, sleepy time!

Mikey