Tuesday, November 12, 2024
#1
Every year, I play a game with thousands of other people on the Yahoo platform called College Pick'em. Every week, I pick the results of 25 college games against the spread, and hope to move up among the others playing across the country. I usually enter in three categories: fans of Baylor, people from Minnesota, and then the pool of everyone in the country. Right now, I am #1 in all three. [And yes, Class of '31 is my ID).
You may wonder what I did to achieve this lofty status after 11 weeks of play. Do I assiduously research injury reports and the latest news on every team?
No, I don't.
Do I have favorites that I bet on regularly?
No, I don't.
Do I furtively seek out the spirits of college football to divine the outcomes?
No, I don't.
Instead, I have a pretty simple process: I always pick the better academic institution (and I do have a system for that). It doesn't have anything to do with football, but it does have a lot to do with betting. The spread is established by how bets come down on each side, and there is a bias against good academic schools, so people tend to bet against Duke and Stanford and Northwestern (for example) for an irrational reason-- academic prowess. The strong academic schools also tend to be smaller, so there are fewer alums betting on their alma mater, skewing the odds. It usually puts me above average-- but this year I have had that and a lot of luck!
