NFL Picks of a Thoughtful Fool, Week 13

Jay Feely: I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burnt to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and I want to piss on his ashes!

Excuse me for channeling Robert DeNiro there for a moment.

I should be overjoyed with my results last week, but damned if I was not in Vegas and damned if I didn't fly by the seat of my pants instead of paying attention to what I have devoted all these hours doing over the past weeks — trying to make thoughtful football picks. The fact is, although I was absolutely perfect in my spread picks here on Blogcritics, I came off The Strip no better than even.

I really only made one truly stupid bet, which I'll get to in a minute, but by straying from my intention of just coming here and blindly betting my spread picks, I ended up not taking advantage of the best possible outcome I could expect. If your picks are going to be 100% correct, you'd want that to happen the week you were in Vegas, right? It seems Vegas is similar to military combat. Your strategy doesn't survive your first encounter with The Strip.

I'll start at the beginning.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my only Thursday pick was the Broncos -1.5 over Dallas. By the time I scoured the sports books, the best I could do was -2. No problem, still a good bet in my book. So why didn't I just stop there?

Instead I was perusing the big board MGM Grand and I spotted an NBA game that looked out of whack. I don't usually start paying close attention to basketball until the football season ends, but I saw that the Trailblazers were getting 10.5 points in Miami. The Heat are without Shaq, and the 'Blazers are a scrappy team that took the Pistons to the limit recently. So I took Portland and the 10.5 and they promptly proceed to lose by 20. A bad start, but I still think it was a decent bet.

It gets worse. I swore I wouldn't have anything to do with the Lions this week. I told myself on the plane the whole way there: "I will not bet the Lions game. I will not bet the Lions game. I will not bet the Lions game." So what do I do? I bet on the Lions.

Article Author: David Mazzotta

David Mazzotta is author of the comic novels Apple Pie and Business as Usual.

Visit David Mazzotta's author page — David Mazzotta's Blog