College Football: The Playoff "fix" is worse than the problem itself.

For two years now college football has presented it's playoff and proceeded to step all over itself with it's decision making. "We're better than the B(C)S!" they shouted from the hilltops, "and MUCH better than the old bowl system!" they crowed.

Except, they're not.  Case in point.

Chair: Houston has done 'all it can' via scheduling to deserve playoff consideration. Jon Solomon, CBS Sports

"They've got to win the games," Hocutt said. "They've got to impress the committee in the manner in which they win."

Hocutt stressed that committee members don't look at past years to evaluate teams. There was skepticism Thursday by media members, who believe that when a team such as Houston is trying to prove itself, success in a recent season likely inherently factors into a committee member's mind, even if such an opinion goes unspoken. Houston dominated Florida State to win the Peach Bowl last season while going 13-1.

"We're looking at it from this year's perspective only," Hocutt said. "In the year that I sat in this room last year, never once was historical content brought forward or even in hallway conversations."

Emphasis mine.

In a way, we're right back to where we were in the old poll system.  Before computers and the B(C)S and it's rigging to favor the SEC, there was the AP and UPI polls which determined a National Champion based on the "eye test" of either supposed 'sage' college football writers or various university SID's filling out polls and submitting them under the coach's names. (How the so-called "coaches" poll worked, and still works for that matter)

No one really knew, for sure, who the number one team in all of the land was because it was only settled in the minds of writers who probably only paid attention to around 25 percent (each) of the college football played every year.

True, in today's Internet and new-media saturated age it's possible to consume more college football, but we're still back to the bad old days when a group of supposed "experts" sit around and decide, based largely on the eye-test, who the best team in the country really is.

And, OF COURSE, each committee member is taking prior years' performance into account. You have to. If they weren't then Houston and Western Michigan would not be separated by such a large gap. (although I'm betting that gap narrows when the first CFP poll comes out)

For their part, the CFP Committee is trying to do it's level best to soften the blow should UH go undefeated and then get left out of the playoff, which is what I think is going to happen, even IF the Cougars dominate the Cardinals.

The ONLY way to determine a "true national champion" is to settle it on the field, absent voters or polls or *shudder* selection committees.

The ONLY way to fix this mess is to expand the playoff to 10 teams, with six play-in games and 4 byes. Win your conference championship (however your conference chooses to determine it) and you're in.

The best part?  This would only add one round to the existing system. At most, it would mean that a team has to play one more game. (should a seed 5-10 make it to the championship game.)  You would play this outside of the existing bowl system, allowing the bowls to take the conference runners-up to preserve their existing conference ties.

This needs to be done sooner rather than later because what we're getting stuck with now is the hubris of a few people with skins in the game acting as if they are nothing more than impartial observers. It's also depriving over half of Division 1 schools the opportunity to compete for a title. This is wrong and it should be fixed.

One last point:  Former USC Athletic Director Pat Hayden was on the CFP Committee until last year.

What does THAT tell you about the current mess that we're in?

Gamble Blogging: A Lifetime of Running Cold (Part III) The Poker Tales

Before I ever stepped foot in a casino, there was 7-card stud.

It has always been, and will always be, my favorite variant of poker.

While other poker players were idolizing Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negrano I was studying the play of Johnny Moss and Chip Reese. People clamor for the Poker Brat, I was fascinated by the "Grand Old Man of Poker" and other players.

But for me, 7-card stud was (and is) a game played at home.  Even before the "poker" boom finding a good game of 7-card stud outside of Atlantic City was tough. Texas Hold-Em has always ruled the mainstream poker room, despite the fact that it's (in my mind) the worst game of all the variants to play.

My early gambling life was full of 7-card stud home games. I used to play with friends for change. I would like to tell you that I was a 7-card version of Matt Damon rounding in the underground poker rooms of Midland and Houston but that would be a lie.  But I did get games almost whenever I wanted them. Quietly, without raising a fuss. You see, gambling was illegal in Texas (still is for the most part) and I've always been risk-averse to getting caught. Plus, my parents were not, shall we say, "open" to having a gambler in the family, probably doing to our Baptist up-bringing.

I'll never forget the first time I played 7-card. It was at a friends house in Midland in 1989. I "stayed over" with some other friends and we played cards until 6 o'clock in the morning. None of us were any good, and our stakes were micro, but I caught the bug from that point on and to this day I can't put 7-card down.

And that's how it went for years. I'd head over to a friends house with a sixer of Miller Genuine Draft and we'd play cards for hours. As I got older the stakes got a little higher, but never too high, and the tables got a little smaller with fewer and fewer players joining in as guys got married, had kids or generally lost interest in the game.

Not me though, I loved 7-card stud. I actually, at the time, became pretty good at it. My knack for reading other people is slightly above average, but no where near where you need to be for a successful run at professional poker.  My mathematical knowledge is fair but, again, nowhere near where it needs to be for a successful pro-poker career.

Then there's the fact that I don't WANT to play poker as a profession, and I never have. I enjoy playing poker and I always want it to remain a game. I thought about, for a minute, making a run at a professional career in Texas Hold 'Em.  And while I can beat most weekenders and conventioneers at a table, I'm just not good enough to beat the professionals or top players. Plus, as I stated. Poker should be fun.

Finally, after watching the WSOP on ESPN for a few years, I decided I'd give this live, sitting in a casino, poker thing a try.  In 2005 my family decided to take a trip to the Grand Coushatta Hotel & Casino in Kinder, Louisiana. They had, at the time, a small poker room that was supposed to have attached to it some pretty good action and fair games.

I was brave, I bought into a 2/4 limit game with a hundred dollars.  I played Texas Hold 'Em for 5 hours, and walked away from the table with $100.  Five hours, no money made, or lost.  I won three pretty good sized pots the entire 5 hours, and folded most of rest of the time.  As grinds go it was fine decaffinated espresso.

But it made me think, falsely, that I might be good enough to give this poker game a whirl.  So I would head out to the Isle of Capri from time to time in Lake Charles to play poker. I'd arrive on a Friday evening, eat dinner, and play until early Saturday morning. Then I'd drive home.

Lather, rinse, repeat for several years. Throw in also the odd trip to Choctaw casino in Durant, Oklahoma and I had a pretty good regional casino poker tour going on. Overall, of course, I lost. Because, at hold 'em, I'm not very good. I'm easy to trap, get over-excited when I (finally) get a hand and over-bet the pot frequently when I do.

Finally, in 2012, I decided that I was ready to hit a Las Vegas poker room and see just how good I was. Sort of.  Because I decided to play at the no-action pit that is Circus Circus, which was horrible until I ran into two poker players who were worse than I.

And I won.  Amazingly.  Despite being card-dead I bluffed or semi-bluffed off of those two jokers around $2,000. At one point one said to another before folding "I have no idea what he's holding".  I knew right then I was NOT the sucker at the table.

After that trip I was feeling pretty good about myself, and not worried at all that the run of cards I was on bordered on historically bad levels. The best hand that I caught the entire Vegas trip as 2-pair. I hadn't made a flush since before Moses, and even my straights were being caught on the joker end of things.  In short, disaster was on the horizon, but I was too convinced of my ability to read and bluff to notice.

In 2013 I made yet another weekend trip to Lake Charles, this was during the time that they had both boats open, and the 3rd floor of the 2nd boat was entirely devoted to poker.  I was living large this time, I had a bank-roll of $1000 (half of my Vegas winnings) and was ready to jump into the "adult side of the pool" by playing 1-2 no-limit (don't laugh).

I got to the poker room around 10 PM and started playing around eleven.  From eleven to around 2 AM I was actually doing pretty good. I was up around $200, which was nothing special but it was a profit and the quality of player at this table was better than what I beat in Vegas.

At around 2:30 AM, the worm turned.  I was holding AK off and the flop came out A-K-K. I had flopped a King-high Full boat. The only hand that could beat me was AA and, since no one re-raised my opening raise pre-flop, I thought I was OK. The turn card was a 7, which was a blank, so I bet into it around 1/2 the pot. One guy, a very loud and mouthy local, came along. The river is where everything went wrong.  Of course, the Ace came out, the ace of Diamonds in fact, and I had the sneaking suspicion that I might be beat.  I min-bet. Realizing, at this point, that the Ace had me at a disadvantage. If the guy raised, I wasn't sure how I could call. If he folded, of course, I won, but that Ace had given him all of the power.

Then he called.  Which was an odd play.  But he did so I turned over my boat and he immediately whipped over his AA and started pointing at me and calling me some names that involved the initials "M.F."  'I got you, you MF' etc.

"Idiot", I replied, "got lucky on the river."

What happened next was surreal.

"Sir, please don't insult the other guests" - This came from the dealer.  And I realized he was looking at me. I just got MF'd by a guy who had caught a one-outer on the river and he was jumping my shit for calling him an idiot? (It was only after all of this that someone informed me the guy who beat me was a local, regular.)

I lost it for a minute.  Then the poker room manager came over, informed me of my breach of poker-room rules and asked me to leave.

I was stunned.  And pissed, and utterly done with Texas Hold 'Em and casino poker all-together.  I hadn't been drinking, at all, so at 3:30 AM I cashed out, got in my car and drove home. I told my wife that I was done with live poker and would never play it at Isle of Capri again, something I've held to until this day.

At that point I was all but done playing Texas Hold 'Em, and live poker in casinos all-together. I did have one last go in Vegas, which reaffirmed my decision to not play, but that story is best told in conjunction with another tale, so I'll save it.

However, if you want a 7-card home game I'm all ears.

Gamble Blogging: A Lifetime of Running Cold (Part II): Vegas! Baby!

As I stated in part one of this series, I have been gambling, to some extent, for a large portion of my life. I played my first hand of 7-card stud when I was 16, and would play that game almost exclusively for years until I first went to a casino in 1991. (Back then, the gambling/drinking age in Louisiana was 18, so it was normal for Texas teens to travel there as a "rite of passage" and lose money in the casinos.)

Prior to that first casino visit in Lake Charles, Louisiana, I really hadn't paid much attention to casinos. They offer negative expectation games (which I didn't like) and, to be honest, I was a little intimidated with blackjack, poker in a casino, etc.  Plus, I was broke through most of the late Nineties, early Aughts which precluded me dumping a ton of money into entertainment. Most days I was just trying to scrape together enough money to pay the bills and possibly buy some Totino's party pizzas.

Also, I drank, a little too much back in those days, something that I now write off to the ignorance of youth.  I still do, occasionally, partake in alcohol, but it's far less often these days and the quality of drink is much, much higher.

That catalyst for that change was meeting, and marrying, my wife. My wife is a woman who always found challenges in healthy exercise. She wanted to lift weights and work out and, secondarily, to compete.  So we found ourselves training her to compete in NPC Figure (think of it as bodybuilding 'light') competitions. Prior to her first competition in November 2007, the IFBB was holding their annual Mr. Olympia contest in late September.

Of course, we HAD to go. So, we went.

Now you might think, as a poker player (albeit a home game player exclusively) that I would have been to Las Vegas before I was 34, but you would be wrong. I've never been much for bachelor parties (I've attended only 5 in my life, none in Vegas and only one that involved a strip-club), and I was not, then, much of a traveler. Prior to 2007 I had only been on a plane three times in my life.

So, off to Las Vegas we went. The wife to watch the bodybuilding and attend the product exposition (and event in and of itself) myself to gamble in a Vegas casino for the first time. I still remember getting off the plane to this day. To my mind, McCarron is one of the great airports in the country, and not because of the slot-machines (although those help) but because of the baggage claim area in what is now Terminal 1. It's a gaudy, glitzy, campy, totally Las Vegas place that advertises magic, burlesque and big-name stars all surrounded by the normal trappings of an airport. In short: It's still my favorite place to de-plane in the world.

One of my least favorite things to do in the world is walk outside of those airport doors for the first time. Even in September it was hot, and dry. It's like stepping out of a wonder land straight into the waiting mouth of the Devil's largest kiln.

On our first taxi ride we got long-hauled. Of course, back then I didn't know what that was. Today I always get a car from a limo service so that's not a concern. On the upside, they'll always let us stop by a CVS or Walgreen's to pick up water, energy drinks and other sundries that we can get for 1/3 of the price off the Strip.

The Strip, when you see it for the first time, even 10 years ago, unless you are dead it almost takes your breath away. The lights combined with the size of the resorts is staggering, it almost belies belief. You've seen Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold at the beginning of Vegas Vacation in the limo? That was me, but in a cab. It was one of the best cab rides I've ever had up until that point in my life.

We were deposited at Treasure Island (not yet TI, and they still had the ship) which was where I found the cheapest rooms at the time. Unfortunately for us, the Mr. Olympia was being held at the Mandalay Bay, and we didn't realize just how far that was down the Strip from where we were staying. Still, TI was, and remains, one of my favorite properties on the Strip, probably because I have (mostly) good memories there.

We checked in, got to our room, and my wife took a nap while I hit the casino. I walked up to a .25 cent Wheel of Fortune slot, put in $20 and won $200 on the third spin. In retrospect this was one of the worst things to happen to me because I still feel a need to play the old, classic, 3-coin per play Wheel machines whenever I can find them.

Being conservative, I quit. Cashed out the ticket (it was actually $236.50, an amount I'll never forget) and went up to the room to take a nap myself before heading to the show.  Friday night at the Mr. Olympia was "ladies night" back then. So we watched the show and then went to an after-party being put on by Craig Titus and Kelly Ryan, two competitors who are now both in jail for killing their live-in associate some years later.  Great crowd those bodybuilders, and that's the biggest reason my wife quit competing a little over a year later.

To be fair though, some of them were pretty nice. But all of them were, how to say this....sexually "liberated" and for my wife it just came down to one to many times being propositioned by men (and women) in order to improve her placings etc.

So after the after party my wife went back to the hotel and went to bed, and I went over to the old Steamboat hotel and casino to get my revenge on blackjack.

Some revenge. I got destroyed. First, (remember, this was in my younger, much, MUCH, wilder days) I drank too much bourbon and coke. Second, I still was just a hunch player in blackjack. I tried to act all suave and cool as my $200 winnings went away and then started cutting into my $500 bank roll for the trip and, to be honest, I really should have stopped. But I was drunk and having fun and, 4 hours later, at 5:30AM, I had blown through my entire bank-roll and one additional trip to the ATM to "get it back".

I was also way, way too drunk, out of cigarettes (something else that I used to do but don't any more) and over 3/4 of the way down the Strip from my hotel.  The only option was walking, so...walk I did. Somehow I made it to my room and made it to the bad. The next day, at noon, when I woke up, my wife was ready to go to the Expo but I was too hungover. I had blown it. I spent most of the day in bed, only emerging at 5PM to grab something light to eat before heading to the evening show.

I was clearly done gambling for this trip and, to be honest, I didn't want to ever play blackjack again. I was sick, defeated, and utterly beaten down. Worst of all I cost my wife a day at the exposition, something she didn't let me live down until it was her turn to get sick in Vegas.

But that's a story for another part of this tale.

College Football Week 6: Stubbornly. The FIVE

My gut feeling this week is that this would be the week in the season where I didn't do a FIVE.  Part of the reasoning for this was that I'm one step below awful this year (7-23 ATS so far with no signs of improvement) and the 2nd reason was that I'm looking over the lines and I'm less than enthused.

That said, I made a commitment at the beginning of the season to see this through whether good or bad so....here we go....


With little fanfare (and diminishing readership) the Week 6 FIVE:

1. Maryland (-1) @ Penn State. The conventional wisdom here is that Maryland hasn't played anyone of note yet and Penn State has, so that means Penn State is not as bad as everyone thinks they might be. The problem with this line of thinking is that, Penn State has lost to every good team they've played.  Maryland 24 Penn State 17. Maryland to cover -1.

2. Texas vs. Oklahoma (-10.5). With Oklahoma ranked #20 and Texas un-ranked this is the lowest national profile this game has had in years. But it's still a rivalry game and it's still one of the better spectacles in sport. And it's still must-watch TV. Oklahoma's win over TCU was big last week, and I think Strong is in the midst of losing this Longhorn team. Texas 10 OU 31. Oklahoma to cover -10.5.

3. Notre Dame @ North Carolina State (-2). The thought here is that Notre Dame cannot stop a stiff Jr. High marching band, so NC State should score more than them.  The problem with that thinking is that ND has more athletes.  I think Duke was a wake-up call. The Irish will still struggle against teams with athletic offenses, but not here. Notre Dame 24 NCSt 20. Notre Dame on the ML.

4. Tennessee @ Texas A&M (-7). The battle for the interim "team with the best chance to lose least badly to Alabama" in the overrated (this year) and unbalanced SEC. Tennessee has been living the charmed life so far, I think their fairly dust runs out against an aTm defense that I admittedly underrated.  But that's a LOT of points.  Tennessee 24 aTm 27. Tennessee to cover +7.

5. Colorado @ USC (-5). The Trojans have lost all 3 road games badly, and won both home games they've played in dominating fashion. Colorado is improved, but the talent gaps is too big here with a team that plays much, much better at home. RunRalphieRun 27 USC 34. USC to cover -5.



A quick run-down of 'other' games.....


Iowa (-15) @ Minnesota. Is Iowa in the middle of a meltdown?  Or are they just in a slump?  I think it could be the former given that they have little to speak of on offense. It's games like these that Minnesota's porous defense isn't that much of a liability. Iowa 24 Minnesota 26.

LSU (-3) @ Florida. Florida will still probably be without Luke Del Rio and LSU is suddenly looking much, much better.  We've sung this verse before. LSU 31 Florida 10.

Toledo (-17) @ Eastern Michigan. The EMU's are 4-1 and have a chance to make a bowl. This is a feel-good story that should continue throughout the season despite hitting a small bump in the road at home this week. Toledo is a good team. Toledo 38 EMU 10.

Virginia Tech @ North Carolina (-2.5). Believe it or not, this is a battle of Top 25 teams. Va Tech 36 UNC 45.

Alabama (-14) @ Arkansas. These types of matchups show just how shallow the SEC is this year. Bama 42 Arkansas 14.

Houston (-17) @ Navy. I expect the Cougars to do OK against Navy's running attack. Where I worry for them is the game after this because of the gear shift that Tulsa provides. UH 48 Navy 14.

Texas Tech @ Kansas State (-7). Mahomes III is out of this game and the thinking is that the Wizard of the Little Apple is going to finally get his. This is a tough game to call because Tech's defense is historically awful and K-State can't score.  Call it a coin flip. Tech 35 K-State 37.

Washington (-8.5) @ Oregon. By Mark Helfrich. Washington 38 Oregon 6.

Florida State @ Miami (-3). Starting to think Jimbo has one foot out the door. FSU 17 Miami 24.


And finally.....

Two things.....

1. The small school that I'm now pulling for to improve things, as long as they're not playing Michigan.

UNLV @ San Diego State (-14). UNLV true Freshman QB Dalton Moore is a beautiful disaster of a player. I'm so pulling for UNLV to turn it around. Unfortunately, this year, WR injuries could be harmful.  And the Aztecs are good, and MAD after being upset last weekend. UNLV 21 SDSt 48.

2. I'm (sort of) starting to believe a little bit. (but I still think we lose to Ohio State).

Michigan (-28) @ Rutgers. To be honest, I see this as a glorified scrimmage game for Michigan. The score will be whatever Harbaugh wants it to be. Michigan 52 Rutgers 6.


Enjoy the week of college football (which starts Wednesday night FWIW)

Gamble Blogging: A lifetime of running cold. (Part 1)

I am not what you would call a "lucky" gambler. I've never hit a jackpot, I've never had a straight flush in 3-card poker, I've never had a big run in blackjack, and despite playing poker for 27 years now (in various iterations, both live, online and video) I've never, ever hit a royal (or even a straight) flush when real money was in play.

I'm not exaggerating here. My best live poker hand, ever, was 4-6's that I caught at the Choctaw Casino in 2011.  And it only bagged me a pot of around $100 since only one guy came along with me (playing 4-8 limit) and I knew that I couldn't over-bet, or bet the maximum, because he would go away.  I've seen straight and royal flushes, been beaten by them (5 times so far) but I've never actually caught them.

My biggest gambling win to date was a $2 Superfecta hit at Delta Downs in 2010 on race 9. On a lark, after thinking I spotted something in the prior performances that made it seem as if the race would end this way, I bet 4-7-5-8 straight. Total wager: $2. Total win: $653.27. It's the first, and only, time I've ever had to fill out a form W-2G in my life. And even then I was JUST over the 300/1 minimum payout in Louisiana that triggered the tax form.

And while I gladly paid the taxes, after taking some partial legitimate gambling losses as an offset against it, I've never had that feeling again.

I think that's part of the reason why I like to gamble but don't have a driving need to gamble. Honestly I could take it or leave it but I do enjoy it as a form of entertainment. There's no way I'd even consider being a gambling "pro" because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would eventually hit the mother of all cold streaks and that would anger my wife. (A wonderful woman, whom I love but has no risk tolerance when it comes to gambling).

I caught the casino bug in 1991, after a trip to Lake Charles with some co-workers from a local restaurant.  We would get off work at night at around 11 PM, then drive to Lake Charles from Houston, sometimes arriving at the casinos at around 2 AM. We'd play until around 8 AM, drive back home, go by someone's house and shower up, take a quick nap, and then be back on the restaurant floor for our evening shifts around 4 PM.  It would not be unusual for us to head to the bar for drinks after work that night, before stumbling home around 3 AM for some sleep. Of course, I was much younger back then.

I'll never forget that first trip to a casino however, at the time I thought it was the greatest place in the world.  We went to the Isle of Capri, which is still there and exists as the "budget" casino option in Lake Charles these days.  Back then there was also a Harrah's, but it was damaged in one of Louisiana's many hurricanes and is no longer there today.

I want to say that, back in the day, the boats would leave the harbor and paddle around Lake Prien all night, but I could be remembering that incorrectly.

Once we arrived I remember that one of my co-workers, an assistant manager whose name I don't remember, put $5 into a slot machine and won $500 within three pulls. Needless to say, her gambling was finished for the night so she just hung around the other assistant manager (who she was not-so-secretly sleeping with) and watched him play blackjack all night.

That first gambling trip I got hammered, both figuratively and literally. Free drinks while gambling was a new one for me, and it didn't take me too long to over-imbibe on whiskey and cokes. I also didn't have a clue what I was doing playing blackjack.

Drunk and clueless I proceeded to blow through a $500 bankroll in short order. Thinking back, I might have lasted 3 hours. So, I was done, no one (wisely) would lend a drunk novice any more money to blow, so I settled in to sober up and watch my friend play until it was time to go.

My buddy was on a heater. A heater so hot that he had accumulated $10K from a starting bankroll of $2K at the $25/25K table.. He got more dealt blackjacks in the hour I watched him than I received all evening. It was amazing to watch as he kept racking up win after win after win. I didn't realize it then (Novice!) but he was counting cards as well as playing with a strategy and progression.

He was also getting drunk.  VERY drunk.  So, as it came down to time to leave he turned around, looked at the group and said "I've never made a five-thousand dollar bet". His logic was that, should he lose, he'd still be up over double him money and he could say that he'd made the biggest bet of his life. If he won, well, he was buying drinks that night at the bar.

You can imagine what happened next. He was dealt 7-4 and the dealer had a 5 showing. I remember him uttering a curse word as well all looked on.  Even with my limited knowledge of gambling etiquette I knew that it was bad form to coach him. With a grunt (which I still remember today) he pushed out the other $5K to double down.  This left him with around $200 out of his original stack.

Of course, he pulled a 3.  His only hope was for the dealer to bust.

There was no way that was ever going to happen. The dealer showed his second card to be another 5 and then promptly turned over a King for 20.  Almost six hours of work, gone in one hand.  An $8K gain turned into an $1800 loss in around 1 minute. It was, to this day, the 2nd most brutal gambling beat I have ever seen.

It also instilled into me a lifetime devotion to conservatism on the gaming tables. When gambling sober (which used to be a rarity but not in the last few years) I walk away with wins now and consider myself lucky to have them. I don't make out-of-bounds bets and I never bet more than 20% of my stack.  Ever.

For a while, a long while, after witnessing that disaster, I was too conservative, I didn't play blackjack for a long time after the whipping that I took and I secured myself solely to quarter slots. Eventually I moved to the .20/.30/.40 cent bets on penny slots. It was a long, hard slog of gambling for me that changed the first time I visited Las Vegas....


That's a story for the 'next' installment.

College Football: Week 5 FIVE: When you're running cold....

Another week, yet another losing record.  At this point I'm not even quite sure why I'm keeping the FIVE alive this year, except for humility's sake.

Not only was I off this week, but I was WAY off. In prior weeks the games were close, and then the team I picked found some creative way to blow it. In this week's picks the outcomes were pretty much known from the start.

1. Stanford. This is one of those losses that could damage a team. Not only did Washington beat them, the Huskies beat the Cardinal up and stopped McCafferey cold.  This is the 2nd time in as many weeks that Mister Christian has been contained.  Also, injuries aside it didn't appear that Stanford had the athletes to compete with Washington, it was carnage from the opening snap.

2. BYU. I'm not sure what happened in this game, despite the fact that I watched it live. BYU looked both horrible and pretty good at the same time. The Cougars do have issues on the defensive side of the ball however, which is a big reason why I think they are 2-3 instead of something better.

3. Northwestern. My lone "win" this week. I should have picked NW on the ML but I didn't because I already had two underdog upsets picked.  Unfortunately, the two that I picked to have a chance to pull the upset got hammered.  Iowa now has two problems. 1. They are offensively inept again. 2. They've committed themselves to a middling Head Coach for a long, long time.

4. Arizona State. Here's the thing: I STILL think that USC has some big problems and are going to struggle the remainder of the year. But I also realize that the Sun Devils have crap on defense. I thought the USC clown show would overcome the ASU lack of talent. I was wrong.

5. Minnesota. This one stung. Because I really thought the Gophers should have won the game. As it was, it went to overtime and was a pretty good game to watch, as far as those things go.  Still, the middle-to-bottom of the B1G is not very good this year.

So, that's officially carnage then. 1-4 for the week which puts me at a pretty hopeless 7-23 with little hope of breaking even now by the end of the year. I'm either going to need a massive turnaround, or an impossible do-over to get this right.  This is the worst year that I've had picking games in my FIVE since I started the thing.

I am running cold. Not just in football picking, but in all aspects of gaming right now. My last two trips to casinos have been washouts. In August, I went to Las Vegas and got whipped at every game I played. Video Poker? Nothing. Blackjack? Awful. 3-card Poker? Nope.  It was carnage. Then, a few weeks ago, the wife and I spent an evening in Lake Charles and the result was the same.

Forget a royal flush (which I have never gotten, in any iteration of poker) I'd settle for a full house right now. I'd be ecstatic with a four of a kind. It's that bad.

For most of us, that's the way gaming goes. You find yourself on the down side of the standard deviation most of the time. These are negative expectation games after all. The question is then, why play at all?

Because it's fun. Period. (For me that is)

I don't gamble to 'make a living' or hoping to get rich, I gamble because I enjoy doing it and it's the only recreational activity that provides me with the chance (no matter how slim) to strike it big. When you're running bad, the only thing to do is to take a look at your fundamentals and try again. But, always self-scout. What are you betting? How are you betting? Why are you making those bets? If you're struggling it's good to practice, and then practice again. And keep practicing until you get it right.

Work through slumps in your time away from the actual casinos and you'll do better when you actually get inside them.  One caveat: It's very important to practice like you play. In other words, try to replicate the real-world conditions in your practice environment. In many cases, that means adding distractions.

It's easier to be nailing perfect video poker strategy in a quiet room with a closed door than it is inside a casino with scantily-clad cocktail waitresses walking around. Casinos are designed to frustrate the player's focus, to throw him (or her) off his (or her) game.

With that said, tomorrow (writing this Sunday night, to publish Monday morning) I'll be back in my distraction-filled environment trying my darndest to turn this mess around.

It's either that or finding a live-chicken to sacrifice to the gaming gods. Which could be messy.