Bettin’ or Braggin: Close isn’t perfect

Eight weeks in to Bettin’ or Braggin’, we’ve all done a lot of the former, but not too much of the latter.

OK, some. But we paid the price, almost instantly. As predicted.

So this week, it’s about giving credit where credit is due.

Kudos to Ali and Chelena, who were both just one win away from perfection in Week 7. OK, so actually, two wins, but since Seattle-San Francisco pushed (we got in at 7 instead of 7-1/2 like much of the country), we all started with an unsatisfying gray square on our scoresheet.

Ali stumbled only with Oakland, who eked out a no-they-didn’t-cover three-point win over Jacksonville. Ah, Oakland. 2-4 against the spread this season. Something to sneer about as we all pick Oakland this week over Kansas City.

Chelena, meanwhile, got tripped up in Buffalo, where Tennessee had the nerve to score a last-minute touchdown to take home the game.

If shoulds-and-coulds were dids-and-dones, the world would be a different place.

As it stands, here’s another week worth of our best guesses.

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	11,500	+0
Ali	9,800	+800
Chelena	9,500	+300

Week Eight

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
San Francisco (-7) at Arizona	ARI 100	SF 100	SF 400
Oakland at Kansas City (-1 1/2)	OAK 200	OAK 100	OAK 400
New York (N) (-2) at Dallas	NY 200	NY 200	DAL 400
New England (-2) at St. Louis	STL 100	STL 100	NE 800
Seattle at Detroit (-2 1/2)	SEA 200	DET 100	SEA 200
Jacksonville at Green Bay (-14 1/2)	GB 500	GB 100	JAX 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.