Bettin’ or Braggin’: On a roll

After five weeks, a 22-7 record against the spread, and a 3,700-SFBay Buck-sized bulge in my leatherette bi-fold, I’m finally willing to admit: I’m kicking butt.

A perfect 6-0 record in Week 5 buoyed my confidence to the point where I can do a wee bit of chest-thumping.

But not too much. I want to show some — but not too much — respect toward my fellow SFBay pigskin pickers Ali and Chelena. They’re still scratching and clawing to get back to break-even.

They might look to ParksideGreg for some inspiration on bet size. The leader among SFBay readers, ParksideGreg has been bold with his bets. And for the most part it’s paid off, based on his 16,900 SFBay Buck balance.

For Week 6, Oakland is back in the mix, getting nine points as visitors to Atlanta. Some of us have taken chances on Oakland this year. But not now.

San Francisco, Atlanta and New England are all 4-1 against the spread this season, while St. Louis is 3-0. Just sayin’.

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	13,700	+2,800
Chelena	9,700	+200
Ali	9,000	+400

Week Six

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
New York Giants  at San Francisco (-6 1/2)	SF 100	SF 100	SF 400
Oakland at Atlanta (-9)	ATL 200	ATL 200	ATL 200
New England (-3 1/2) at Seattle	SEA 100	NE 100	NE 300
Dallas at Baltimore (-3 1/2)	BAL 200	BAL 100	BAL 2000
St. Louis at Miami (-3 1/2)	STL 200	STL 100	STL 400
Denver at San Diego (-1 1/2)	DEN 200	SD 100	DEN 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.