Here’s the picks:

One good bet this week, gulp…, Carolina will cover the spread against New Orleans. I sure hope they have some of what they had in Arizona left.

As I originally predicted, sans the computer, Minnesota is playing better than expected. Now it seems the computer is noticing. Here’s how the playoffs shake out:

E.W.

I would say something witty, but I ran out of wit.

Here’s the picks:

Thank the Football Gods there are no good bets this week. I’m 0-3 on the season now. I hope Tampa gets shut out in every game for the rest of the season…

Pittsburgh’s reign at the top of the Superbowl hill has ended, New England is back again. It boggles the mind the amount of fear they seem to have instilled in teams that have to play against them, they simply aren’t the greatest team ever and I’m waiting for some underdog to demonstrate it. Here’s how the playoffs look to me:

E.W.

Heard on CNN regarding the health care “reform” bill:

Broadcaster: If it is going to cost $890 billion, how is that not going to raise the deficit?

Analyst; It’s a deficit neutral spending bill.

Me: So… it’s magic?

Here’s the picks:

This week, there’s one good bet: Tampa will cover the spread. I know, I bet on Tampa before… but at least it probably won’t snow in Tampa.

Speaking of snow, cold weather, and rain (For you idiots who built domed stadiums, this is how God intended football to be played…) if your team comes from some place like Texas or Florida, or worse, some place indoors and you know you’re going on the road to some place like, say, Green Bay or Foxboro, here’s a tip on practice:

Find your nearest local meat packing plant. Make a deal with the owner to borrow their blast freezer for 3 hours a day. Put your whole team in there for the workout, and I mean everybody, put the fricken water boy in there. After a week of that, your team will be so glad to get into the nice warm snowy rain, playing football will be a breeze.

For extra points, set your kicker’s practice rig right in front of the freezer duct, if he can kick against that 50 MPH, -80° F wind, nothing Mother Nature does to him will bother him. “OH MY GOD! HE JUST GOT HIT BY LIGHTNING!… AND THE KICK IS GOOD!”

Here’s my take on the upcoming playoffs:

Somehow I expect Minnesota to do better than predicted, geriatric Favre is doing a good job of whooping up on those snot nosed kids on the other team. And he still sleeps good on the sidelines, just wake him up and tell him who won when it’s time to go to the lockers. Someone should send him a purple snuggie, for those sideline naps.

Today the kid wanted to make his picks, here they are:

E.W.

Six-year-old wisdom:

Queen: Ok, dinner’s ready, turn off the TV and come on.

Prince: Mom! It’s TV dinners, you’re supposed to have the TV on!

Here’s the picks:

Once again, there are no good bets.

I forgot last week to put my Superbowl picks, this week it got interesting, New England is no longer the king of the hill, they’ve been replaced by Pittsburgh. Also, Brett Favre has knocked Green Bay out of the playoffs almost entirely. Think they miss him?

E.W.

The Great Depression of the 21st Century is very depressing.

Here’s the picks:

There are two good bets this week (according to the computer…): Tampa will cover the spread, I buy that one, and Oakland won’t get shut completely out, not sure I buy that one. But just like on Wall Street, I’m gonna trust the machine.

E.W.

I miss the good ole days when the spreads moved some during the week, so I didn’t have only Oakland to bet on…

Here’s the picks:

Again there aren’t any good bets this week.  Last week I got 9 games, but did better than break even on bad bets.  Here are the bets (all bad…) this week:

Mostly underdogs here cause it looks like Vegas is expecting some serious ass whoopin’s this week.
E.W.

I think I’ve accidentally found a good indicator of the economy.  Good bets depend on idiots, with too much money and too much time, running down to Vegas and betting on Detroit (or maybe Washington…) to win by 10.  Last year I think there were 3 weeks that didn’t have any good bets, the 5 or 6 years before that probably had only one week.  This year, so far, there are no good bets at all. No one is coming to Vegas and moving the spreads.

Here are my week 1 picks:

I wrote a new game simulator, the spreadsheet based one was painfully slow, took nearly 30 minutes to get answers out of it. Now it takes about 5 minutes to simulate over a million games. It got 11 this week, so I’m happy with it.

Week 2:

Got 7 games… ouch. I’m beginning to wonder if I passed stats II or not now. I recall having a headache, but not much else.

Anyway, here are the week 3 picks:

The computer has flagged no good bets for all three weeks so far, which makes me think that the rabid crazy fans who always bet big on Detroit don’t have money for Vegas lately. As a result, only pros show up to bet.

The better modeling program lets me do something I wanted to do before, predict the playoffs. So here it is:

So far for the first three weeks the Pats win the Superbowl. I show this game twice cause it matters who has home field in the calculation, and by default there isn’t a home field in the Superbowl.

E.W.

Statistics is the art of using massive computer resources to make predictions so non-statisticians can say, “I told you so.”