Bettin’ or Braggin’: Hump Week 9

Just like Wednesday is hump-day — the day we get over the “hump” of the week and start cruising toward the weekend — Week 9 of the pro football season is hump-week, right at the crown of the campaign.

We have a lot of fun with Bettin’ or Braggin’ here at SFBay, but we also realize it’s not the most realistic of betting environs.

Understand that most sports books take at least a ten percent vig on point spread bets, and you’ll see that anything less than ten percent return on amounts bet is actually a loss.

Which leads me to do just a little bit braggin’. At a bankroll of 12,700 SFBay bucks, I’ve cleared the vig and am into the green.

But really only by a negligible amount, and only after sweating out some large, nail-biting-inducing bets — and getting lots of luck along the way.

There’s no question having action on a pro football game changes the way you watch and enjoy. But nobody should ever gamble money they can’t stand to lose. If SFBay bucks were real bucks, I’m sure the ups and downs would be even greater, though I’m not sure I’d take the same risks.

That 12,700 bankroll, incidentally, was reached by largely hitting big on New England laying points against home dog St. Louis. Dog was right, especially after a 45-7 thrashing by the visiting New Englanders. This pick had to be one of the locks of the year — which completely explains Ali and Chelena’s pick of St. Louis.

Ali’s bankroll drooped to 9,300 after Green Bay failed to cover its monster number against Jacksonville, while Chelena inched up to 9,800, in part by figuring out the Seattle-Detroit game that fooled Ali and me.

As we offer up this week’s pick, remember San Francisco had the week off with a bye. I mean, do you really think Jim Harbaugh would have taken time out of a practice week to drive Brandon Belt around The City?

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	12,700	+1,200
Chelena	9,800	+300
Ali	9,300	-500

Week Nine

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
Tampa Bay at Oakland (-1 1/2)	TB 100	OAK 100	OAK 200
Pittsburgh at NY (N) (-3)	NY 300	PIT 100	NY 200
Denver (-4) at Cincinnati	DEN 100	CIN 100	DEN 200
Miami (-2 1/2) at Indianapolis	IND 200	IND 100	IND 600
Baltimore (-3 1/2) at Cleveland	BAL 100	BAL 100	CLE 200
Minnesota at Seattle (-4 1/2)	SEA 100	SEA 100	SEA 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.