Bettin’ or Braggin’: Let there be blood

As sports fans, as a nation, and as three lowly writer-bettors, we all need to move on from the dreadful national debacle that was Week three in pro football.

The horrifying end of the Green Bay-Seattle game was only part of it. Sure, that one massive blunder by a Bank of America vice president posing as a side judge flipped the outcome of up to a billion dollars worth of bets.

But it also sealed a blood-red shutout for SFBay sportswriters Ali Thanawalla and Chelena Goldman. Both went 0-6 last week, losing a combined 1,900 SFBay Bucks. Ouch.

Bagels, donuts, oh-fers, whatever you want to call it. That much red on the results table has got to hurt.

And then there are people like me. I’m not proud of it — and I sure as hell didn’t agree with the call — but that one moment of myopic mayhem turned my losing bet into a winning one. And yes, I’ll take it.

Week four provides a chance to turn red to green, to make winners out of losers. It’s also another chance for our faces to be rubbed raw by staph-infested patch of phony turf.

But hey, at least the real refs are back!

Just three pro football teams are winless against the spread so far this season: Philadelphia, New Orleans and Detroit. None of these teams may be as good as they think they are, and all have slipped from last season.

On the flip side, Tampa Bay —4-12 against the number in 2011 — Houston, Arizona and Atlanta have cashed in every week so far. You’ve been warned.

Fair warning: We’re not touts, sharks or bookies. We don’t splash action around the web or line up bets in back alleys. We’re just a few local writers picking games without much of a clue. So using these picks for your own gambling is probably a very bad idea.

Leaderboard

Name	Bankroll	Last week
Jesse	11,000	-100
Chelena	9,400	-900
Ali	8,100	-1,000

Week Three

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
San Francisco (-4)  at New York (A)	SF 100	SF 100	SF 200
Oakland at Denver (-6 1/2)	DEN 200	OAK 100	OAK 200
New England (-4) at Buffalo	NE 200	NE 100	NE 600
New Orleans at Green Bay (-7 1/2)	NO 100	GB 100	NO 100
New York (N) at Philadelphia (-2)	NY 100	PHI 100	NY 400
Chicago at Dallas (-3 1/2)	DAL 100	CHI 100	CHI 200

To refresh anyone’s memory on how point spreads function, the team with the “minus points” is the favored team, and has the “point spread” deducted from their score at the end of the game. The final score adjusted by the point spread determines the winner of the bet.

If a team is favored by three points, they must win by more than three points to win a point spread bet.

You Can Win!

Of course you can play along with Bettin’ or Braggin! What kind of pro football picking game would Bettin’ or Braggin’ be if you couldn’t play?

You can win prizes! (We can’t. All SFBay staff can win are bragging rights over each other. In other words, priceless.)

But first, some rules:

• You’ll need to to pick at least six of the 17 weeks of the pro football season to be eligible to win a prize.
• We will pick all San Francisco and Oakland games in the regular season. All other games selected are at the sole discretion of SFBay.
• You play the game by posting your picks to the pre-selected pro football games in the comment thread of the SFBay Bettin’ or Braggin’ post each week. Your pick should consist of a city and a dollar amount for all six games. All your picks must be posted in a single comment.
• The deadline for entering Bettin’ or Braggin’ is Sunday, September 30 at 11:59 p.m. The deadline for submitting your picks is 10 a.m. Sunday (Pacific Time) each week. We won’t be picking Thursday games because Thursday pro football is bullshit.*
• The winner is the player who ends up with the most SFBay Bucks at the end of the pro football regular season. Sorry, SFBay Bucks have absolutely no cash value or equivalent.

* – Actually, we will be picking two Thursday games, the Seattle-San Francisco game Oct. 26 and the Denver-Oakland game Dec. 6. On those weeks, the deadline for weekly picks will be Thursday at 5 p.m. See why we don’t like Thursday games? Too complicated.

Fabulous Prizes

Third-place: SFBay black fleece hoodie, high quality. Nice stuff. $50 value.

Second-place: Limited-edition, authentic SFBay Golden Gate FC soccer shirt, customized with your name. $120 value.

First place: A green Joe Montana Notre Dame Adidas jersey, “True School Authentics,” Size 56. Very high quality retro-authentic heavy mesh. Brand-new, never-worn condition. All tags attached. Very collectible. $250 value.