Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Bowl Edition (now with the legal addendum that the B”C”S can’t call itself a “Championship”!!!)

For those of you who didn’t play last year, here’s how it works. You pick a winner for every bowl game. Then you bet 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 points on your pick. If the team you picked wins, you get the amount of points you bet on them. If they lose, you lose the amount of points you bet. Thus, if you are absolutely certain that Alabama will beat Texas, then you’d pick Alabama and bet 5 on them. Conversely, if you have no idea about who will win between Marshall and Ohio, then you’d pick one of the two at random and bet only 1 point on it. And if you’re certainty for a game falls between those two extremes you can bet 2, 3, or 4.

Easy enough? Everyone understand? Isn’t this more just and fair than the actual BCS itself?

Jeff is once again setting up the Xcel spreadsheet and it will count up all the points you got for correct picks and all points you lost for incorrect ones and whoever has the most points wins the bowl picks. If you played picks during the regular season we’ll add your bowl score to your regular season score and see who the overall winner was (did I mention I won the regular season picks?).

Ok, so here are the bowls organized in the following format: Bowl name: team 1 v team 2 (location and date). Also if you check the comment section you can see some of my comments about the bowl games (some insightful, some not) including what I think to be the best 10 games. Enough already, here’s the bowl games:

New Mexico: Fresno St v Wyoming (Albuquerque, NM 12/19)

St Petersburg: UCF v Rutgers (St Petersburg, FL 12/19)

New Orleans: Southern Miss v Middle Tennessee (New Orleans, LA 12/20)

Las Vegas: Oregon St v BYU (Las Vegas, NV 12/22)

Poinsettia: Utah v Cal (San Diego, CA 12/23)

Hawaii: Nevada v SMU (Hawaii 12/24)

?Little Ceasars?: Marshall v Ohio (Detroit, MI 12/26)

Meineke Car Care: Pitt v unc-chapel hill (Charlotte, NC 12/26)

Emerald: BC v USC (San Francisco, CA 12/26)

Music City: Kentucky v Clemson (Nashville, TN 12/27)

Independence: Texas A&M v Georgia (Shreveport, LA 12/28)

Eagle Bank: Army/UCLA v Temple (Washington, DC 12/29)

Champ Sports: Miami v Wisconsin (Orlando, FL 12/29)

Humanitarian: Bowling Green v Idaho (Boise, Idaho 12/30)

Holiday: Arizona v Nebraska (San Diego, CA 12/30)

Armed Forces: Houston v Air Force (Fort Worth, TX 12/31)

Sun: Oklahoma v Stanford (El Paso, TX 12/31)

Texas: Navy v Missouri (Houston, TX 12/31)

Insight: Minnesota v Iowa St (Tempe, AZ 12/31)

Peach: Virginia Tech v Tennessee (Atlanta, GA 12/31)

Outback: Northwestern v Auburn (Tampa, FL 1/1)

Capital One: Penn St v LSU (Orlando, FL 1/1)

Gator: West Virginia v Florida St (Jacksonville, FL 1/1)

Rose: Ohio St v Oregon (Pasadena, CA 1/1)

Sugar: Florida v Cincinnati (New Orleans, LA 1/1)

International: South Florida v Northern Illinois (Toronto, Canada? 1/2)

Papa John: South Carolina v Connecticut (Birmingham, AL 1/2)

Cotton: Oklahoma St v Ole Miss (Dallas, TX 1/2)

Liberty: Arkansas v East Carolina (Memphis, TN 1/2)

Alamo: Michigan St v Texas Tech (San Antonio, TX 1/2)

Fiesta: TCU v Boise St (Phoenix, AZ 1/4)

Orange: Georgia Tech v Iowa (Miami, FL 1/5)

GMAC: Central Michigan v Troy (Mobile, AL 1/6)

$$$ bowl that can no longer be legally called “Championship” thanks to Congress (hey, they did something right) because it is all a giant fraud that lines the pockets of wealthy college presidents and bowl organizers and giant corporate sponsors while exploiting the free labor of college athletes and robbing the general public of a legitimate playoff: Alabama v Texas (Pasadena, CA 1/7)

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Regular Season Final Standings

Sorry for taking so long to add these up, I was too busy being saddened by Duke’s loss to Wake. Here’s what happened in week 13:

Jared 31pts (6-4), Spears 21 (6-4), Shuler 13 (5-5), Jeff 13 (5-5), Trey 11 (4-6), Mao 9 (6-4)

Unbelievably Mao and I were tied going into the week and even though he went 6-4 he missed the 8, 6, 5, and 4 whereas I missed 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So here are the final scores:

Trey – 371

Mao – 369

Jeff – 369 (a tie for 2nd place)

Spears – 345

Shuler – 305

Jared – 293

Derrick – 250

Jim – 243

So I win, HAH! I barely edged out Jeff and Mao who tied for second and Spears wasn’t far behind and Shuler continued her excellent climb up standings.

Thanks for playing everybody and of course we will do a bowl picks thing like last year that will be its own competition and add to the regular season totals. So I’ll be in touch with folks about that. Thank again.

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week 13

Les Miles, you sir blew my effing mind Saturday night. What a game. All week we said it was weird that a non-ranked Ole Miss team would be favored by 4 over the number 8 ranked LSU Tigers who had only lost to Alabama and Florida. So we all stayed away from that gambling trap and then watched the most absurd game so far this year. The KKK protested that mourning at Ole Miss because the school made the band stop playing “From Dixie with Love”, a song that I love, and that was at best the fifth weirdest thing related to that game. Here’s the list: 5) KKK protest, 4) wasting 16 seconds after the crappy screen pass to call the final timeout, 3) the fact that they guy actually caught the hail mary pass but was short of the endzone; why wouldn’t you throw it into the endzone with that little time left?, 2) the absolute chaos when they try to run up and spike it with 1 second left and everyone in the building knows that isn’t enough time, 1) the post game interviews where Les Miles has no idea what to say but attempts to deny telling his QB to spike it despite the fact that he’s on video signaling to him to spike it and the fact that either way he blew the game because he waited too long to call his final timeout and then failed to give his offense two plays (the hail mary and something else) in case the first play worked but was short of the endzone and then Houston Nutt comes out for Ole Miss and is so elated and beside himself with disbelief that he keeps grabbing the sideline reporter around the waist like he wants to bend her over and kiss her circa the iconic WW2 photo of the sailor kissing the woman in Time Square on V-Day.

Amazing.

Last week’s scores: Trey 41pts (8-2), Spears 37 (7-3), Jeff 35 (7-3), Mao 35 (6-4), Jared 35 (6-4), Shuler 25 (6-4), Jim 29 (8-2) — Jim only missed two games but one of them was Stanford at 10, what a bummer

Totals:

Mao – 360

Trey – 360 (T$ can never be counted out)

Jeff – 356 (stayed even with Mao)

Spears – 324

Shuler – 292 (remember when Shuler was in a distant last place?)

Jared – 262

Derrick – 250 (has missed two weeks in a row)

Jim – 243

The games for this week:

Our Teams

Clemson (18) @ South Carolina – As always, I will hope for an embarrassing brawl while proudly wearing College of Charleston attire

Wake Forest @ Duke – With a win Duke will finish 6-6, which is our equivalent of a National Title

Virginia Tech (14) @ Virginia – The Al Groh farewell game

Tennessee @ Kentucky – I guess this is a rivalry of some sort

Georgia @ Georgia Tech (7) – Clean, Old Fashioned Hate

College GameDay Game

Florida St @ Florida (1) – Let the Tim Tebow slurp fest begin

Fillers

Ole Miss (25) @ Mississippi St – The famous Egg Bowl

Utah (21) @ BYU (19) – An interesting game that almost no one will watch

Oklahoma St (12) @ Oklahoma

UCLA @ USC (20)

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week 12

Is anyone else sort of not excited about basketball season? I love college basketball, but the one and done Freshman thing is so infuriating that I feel like there’s no point watching. So this year I’m resolving to only watch Duke games. And even that is angering because Singler is only a Junior but you know he’s leaving and the same goes for Nolan Smith. The NBA is ruining college basketball and if I ever meet David Stern I swear to God on high I will fight him right then and there. Like Manny Pacquiao I will pummel him within an inch of his life.

Speaking of, boxing is officially back. MMA was nice for a while, but boxing is back thanks to Pacquiao who might be the best fighter I’ve ever seen and is certainly the most entertaining. Unfortunately all my winnings from the Pacquiao fight were lost when the Colts failed to cover a 1.5 spread, winning by only 1 thanks to a ridiculous coaching move by the Pats. And that brings us back to football.

Last week’s scores: Trey 47pts (8-2), Jeff 39 (9-1), Spears 33 (6-4), Mao 31 (6-4), Shuler 29 (7-3), Jim 29 (6-4), Jared -13 (4-6)

Totals:

Mao – 325 (a subpar performance last week opened the door)

Jeff – 321 (continues to be on a tear)

Trey – 319 (of course I won the week named after Bobby Hurley’s retired number)

Spears – 287 (has a fighting chance)

Shuler – 267 (could catch Spears)

Derrick – 250 (missed last week)

Jared – 227 (tanking on purpose to get a higher draft pick)

Jim – 214 (must catch Jared to save face)

Bryan – 144 (pretty much not playing anymore)

 

This week’s games:

Our Teams

Ohio St (10) @ Michigan – Doesn’t it seem too early in the year for this storied rivalry?

Duke @ Miami (20) – Well, at least we came close to bowl eligibility

NC St @ Virginia Tech (15)

Wisconsin (16) @ Northwestern

Virginia @ Clemson (23)

Vanderbilt @ Tennessee – UT better win this one by a lot

College GameDay Game

Oregon (11) @ Arizona – Really? I guess Kirk just wants to party with hot chicks

Fillers

Cal (25) @ Stanford (17) – I dare you to pick either team with even a degree of confidence

LSU (8) @ Ole Miss – A rivalry game

UConn @ Notre Dame – I’m including this one just to see if Charlie Weiss will get fired or not

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week Bobby Hurley’s Retired Jersey (11)

First of all nobody give up if you’re behind in the scores for two reasons: 1) just about every week one person makes up around 20pts on the leaders and 2) as we did last year, we’ll do a bowl pick ‘em that will add to the regular season scores for a cumulative winner but will also be a stand alone thing, thus even if you are dead last in the regular season you can save face by winning the bowl pick ‘em stage.

Secondly, other than Duke losing, last week was the perfect week of football. GT won, UT won, Notre Dame lost for the second year in a row to Navy, FSU lost which ensures that Bowden’s career will end in a totally melodrama, UVA lost which means Al Groh is one week closer to getting fired, Iowa lost so now we can stop pretending they are good, Penn St lost so now the Big 11 is as mediocre record-wise as the ACC, Michigan lost at home to Purdue, Oregon lost so we can go back to ignoring that worthless conference, Alabama won so the SEC championship should be two undefeated teams, and Boise, Cincinnati, and TCU all won so we could finally have a BCS buster (which is good because the BCS is unholy, it is literally against God’s will).

I mention all of those great games last week because this week there are really only two (Utah @ TCU and Iowa @ OSU, which isn’t that good a game if Iowa’s starting QB can’t play).

Last week’s scores: Derrick 43 (9-1), Jim 37 (7-3), Trey 37 (7-3), Shuler 33 (8-2), Spears 31 (8-2), Jeff 29 (7-3), Mao 27 (6-4), Jared 25 (7-3)

Totals:

Mao 294

Jeff 282

Trey 272

Spears 254 (same top four as last week but everyone gained on Mao)

Derrick 250 (huge weekend for D-rock in his picks and with Ohio St winning)

Jared 240 (making a slow decent)

Shuler 238

Jim 185

Bryan 144 (has now missed two weeks) 

 

This week’s slate of games:

Our Teams

Georgia Tech (7) @ Duke – oh, the humanity

Tennessee @ Ole Miss – Ole Miss imploded this year after ESPN overhyped them

Clemson @ NC St – the Textile Bowl

Northwestern @ Illinois – a game so uninteresting I fell asleep just typing it

Virginia Tech (21) @ Maryland

Iowa (10) @ Ohio St (11) – Big 11 title on the line

Boston College @ Virginia

College GameDay Game

Utah (16) @ TCU (4) – best game of the day and all the money grubbers at the BCS will be praying for an unholy Mormon upset against the righteous Christians of Texas

Fillers

Florida (1) @ South Carolina – what’s wrong with Florida? They’ve got talent, why do they continual barely scrape by teams?

Miami (14) @ unc-chapel hill – the evildoers have a crazy good defense. Duke couldn’t block their d-line (our o-line is assembled by just taking the 5 fattest people who go to Duke and putting them on the field) and their secondary and linebackers swamped our receivers. But at least this year I felt like Duke was in the game. Sure we lost, but last year it felt like we didn’t have a chance, like they were on a different level from us. This year we still lost, but were in the same ballpark as them. Nevertheless, it still hurts.

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week 10

Let’s just say it’s a good thing I didn’t bet on any games. Also, I fucked up the scores last week. I figured out the amount of points people got and just put that as their score without subtracting the points they missed. I’ve redone last week’s stuff and here’s what the scores should’ve been:

Weekly: Spears 47, Jeff 45, Shuler 45, Mao 41, Trey 41, Derrick 39, Bryan 37, Jim 33, Jared 33

The affect of this on the overall scores is that everything is much closer. I apologize for the screw up. Here is where the scores as of last week actually stood:

Totals from last week:

Mao 236

Jeff 220

Jared 206

Trey 204

Spears 202

Derrick 184

Shuler 178

Jim 123

Bryan 115

As for this week, there’s a Thursday game again this week so get your picks in before that. Everyone’s teams are in the mix this week and the slate of games is actually really good and very difficult to rank. We’ve got a total of 6 rivalry games (ok only three of them are actual rivalry games, but the other ones are close). Here are the weekly scores from last week and this week’s CORRECT totals.

Weekly scores: Jeff 33 (8-2), Trey 31 (8-2), Mao 31 (7-3), Bryan 29 (8-2), Shuler 27 (7-3), Jim 25 (6-4), Derrick 23 (6-4), Spears 21 (7-3), Jared 9 (4-6)

Totals:

Mao 267

Jeff 253

Trey 235

Spears 223

Jared 215

Derrick 207

Shuler 205

Jim 148

Bryan 144

This week’s games to pick:

Our Teams

Virginia Tech (23) @ East Carolina – Thursday game, I give credit to VT for playing at ECU

Florida St @ Clemson – rivalry #1 despite the fact that it can’t be called ‘the Bowden Bowl’ anymore

Northwestern @ Iowa (4) – two teams that make absolutely no sense

Virginia @ Miami (17) – the student bodies of these schools couldn’t be more different

Wake Forest @ Georgia Tech (10) – Wake coming off a nice upset and GT played a horrific 1rst half against Vandy

Ohio St (16) @ Penn St (11) – rivalry #2; I don’t know if this is an actual rivalry, but it should be

Duke @ unc – rivalry #3, the Battle for the Victory Bell, features my Duke team who haven’t beaten the tarholes in football since 2003 and Duke has lost 18 of the last 19 times in this rivalry. That is not a typo, they’ve lost 18 of the past 19. Needless to say, I WANT THAT FUCKING BELL!

Memphis @ Tennessee – rivalry #4 in as much as they are in the same state

College GameDay

Army @ Air Force – rivalry #5 and even though Air Force will probably win, we all know that army guys are way tougher than Air Force guys

Filler

LSU (9) @ Alabama (3) - rivalry #6 and by far the best game of a pretty solid week of football

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week 9

Sorry for the lateness of this post, especially since we have a Thursday game to pick. Also, note that I’ve made two changes to this week’s picks. There is this new trend for teams to schedule a cupcake game in the middle of the season. The thinking, I guess, is that rather than having two cupcake games to start the season you have one at the beginning to break in your team and then one in the middle of the season to give your team a break from playing all the conference foes. I don’t like this trend and as a result we will not be picking Ohio State’s game this week (at home against New Mexico St) nor will we be picking ClemPson’s game (at home against Coastal Carolina) because good teams should schedule other good nonconference teams.

As for last week everyone did extremely well. And hey, Duke is 4-2!

Weekly Scores: Spears 51pts (9-1), Jeff 50 (9-1), Shuler 50 (8-2), Mao 48 (8-2), Trey 48 (8-2), Derrick 47 (8-2), Bryan 46 (8-2), Jim 44 (7-3), Jared 44 (7-3)

Totals:

Mao – 243

Jeff – 225

Jared – 217

Trey – 211

Spears – 206

Derrick – 192

Shuler – 183

Jim – 134

Bryan – 124

 

Our Teams

Unc @ Virgina Tech (13)

Duke @ UVA

Penn St (12) @ Northwestern

Georgia Tech (11) @ Vanderbilt

South Carolina @ Tennessee

 

Gameday Game

USC (5) @ Oregon (10)

 

Fillers

Georgia v Florida (1)

Texas (3) @ Oklahoma St (10)

Central Michigan @ BC

Miss St @ Kentucky

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week Ocho (Cinco)

Chad (Johnson) Ochocinco and the Motorola Company bought up unsold tickets for last Sunday’s Bengals game so as to prevent the game from being blackedout on local TV. Well done sir, well done.

Meanwhile I continued to prove the effectiveness of my reverse jinx (you’re welcome GT) and should have won both my upset picks were it not for Bradford getting hurt on their second possession and Wisconsin choking at home in the second half. Speaking of choking, what the hell Ohio State. Everyone had them as their 10 point pick and that kept the scores low. To sum up the week, three people missed only their 10 and 1 point picks and got everything else, the two ladies only missed their 10 and 4 point picks, and of course Bryan and I sucked while Jim forgot to pick.

Quick note, I’m not including the Thursday game (FSU @ unc) this week for two reasons: 1) I think the Thursday game throws people off and they forget to pick (ie Jim didn’t pick last week) so I only want to include it if it’s a really great looking game and 2) basketball season has started and unc can “go to hell Carolina go to hell!”

Weekly Scores: Mao 33pts (8-2), Jeff 33 (8-2), Jared 33 (8-2), Spears 27 (8-2), Shuler 27 (8-2), Derrick 27 (8-2), Trey 17 (6-4), Bryan -1 (5-5)

Totals:

Mao – 195

Jeff – 175

Jared – 173

Trey – 163

Spears – 155

Derrick – 145

Shuler – 133

Jim – 90

Bryan – 78

 

Our teams (VT has a bye)

Georgia Tech (12) @ Virginia – oddly, this is the second best game of the weekend

Minnesota @ Ohio St (19) – OSU screwed everybody out of 10pts last week

Indiana @ Northwestern – no comment

Maryland @ Duke – to reverse jinx or not, that is the question

Tennessee @ Alabama (2) – hello 10pt pick

Clem(p)son @ Miami (10) – oddly, this is the third best game of the weekend

 

College GameDay Game

TCU (8) @ BYU (16) – far and away, the best game of the weekend

 

Fillers

BC @ Notre Dame – Catholics battling against each other

Auburn @ LSU (9) – can LSU start a new home night game win streak?

South Florida @ Pittsburgh (20) – I debated for a while about what the final game should be and this is the best one even if it doesn’t look like it. USF is 5-1, Pitt is 6-1. And beside, the other game to include would’ve been USC at home against Oregon St or Arkansas at Ole Miss. So of three stinkers, this is the least smelly.

Total Consciousness College Football Picks, Week 7

I proudly reverse jinxed the hell out of UT and Duke. Until Saturday, Duke had lost to NC State 11 straight times and hadn’t won an ACC road game in nearly 6 years. So I’m proud to have reverse jinxed my beloved Blue Devils even if it meant losing points in TCCFP. Oh, and Tim Tebow proved once again to be the Son of God.

Last week Jeff only missed one game at it was valued at 2, so he wound up with 51pts. This is the second week in a row that he was the weekly scoring leader and he’s now in third overall. But the larger point is that everyone is pretty much bunched together. Also, important note: THERE IS A THURSDAY NIGHT GAME SO GET YOUR PICKS IN BEFORE THEN

Weekly Scores: Jeff 51pts (9-1), Jared 45 (8-2), Shuler 41 (8-2), Spears 39 (8-2), Mao 39 (8-2), Derrick 31 (7-3), Trey 29 (8-2), Jim 13 (5-5), Bryan 7 (5-5)

Totals (now we have a game on our hands)

Mao – 162

Trey – 146

Jeff – 142

Jared – 140

Spears – 128

Derrick – 118

Shuler – 106

Jim – 90

Bryan – 79

 

Our teams (Duke and UT have byes so they can celebrate their wins)

Ohio St (7) @ Purdue

Northwestern @ Michigan St – Bryan, I’m starting to hate that we have to pick NW games

Wake Forest @ Clem(p)son

Virginia @ Maryland

Virginia Tech (4) @ Georgia Tech (19) – instant classic

 

College GameDay Game

Oklahoma (20) v Texas (3) – the Red River Shoot Out is played in Dallas, TX

 

Filler

Cincinnati (8)@ South Florida (21) – Thursday night game

South Carolina (22) @ Alabama (2) – SC might be sneakily good

USC (6) @ Notre Dame (25) - Two pretenders to the throne

Iowa (7) @ Wisconsin – the Big 11 has a lot of teams with fraudulently good records (but they’re still better than the ACC)

The Procrastinator

Real quickly, I just want to mention that Michael Orr (Mao), Betsy Neely, Brad Wright, Jim Hunt, myself and an assortment of others do a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter that gets emailed out to people. The newsletter is called The Procrastinator and it’s full of articles about culture, travel, politics (don’t be alarmed), and sports as well as occasional works of fiction and funny Onion-esque satire articles.  The bottom line is that it comes out on Friday (once or twice a month) and you then read it at work while waiting for the week to end. Hence, it helps you procrastinate at work until the weekend (get it?).

Then if you want, you can steal our written ideas and present them as your own when you are at a weekend social engagement and people will think you’re both funny and insightful. So, there is one coming out this Friday and if you want to read it (or comment on it in this box after you’ve read it or even write something for it next time) let me know so we can add you to the mailing list.

Now go to the post below and make your week 6 picks.