When it comes to plopping down the SFBay bucks against the spread, your guess is usually as good as ours.
Our standard disclaimer at Bettin’ or Braggin’ appears in every post. You can scroll down and read it yourself, or simply accept this abridged version: We have no idea what we’re doing.
We’re all life-long football fans, mind you, but newbie “gamblers.” We can plop down on our couch with the best of ’em, but when it comes to plopping down the SFBay bucks against the spread, well, your guess is usually as good as ours.
All this to backtrack and explain away my first “lock” pick of the season last week — Indianapolis over New England — a pick that looked decent for the first half, then combusted in the second half as New England powered to a 35-point win. Ouch.
But all was not lost, since big bets on San Francisco, New Orleans and Pittsburgh all paid for me. The Pittsburgh win came against picks for Baltimore from Ali T. and Chelena G.
Despite the big loss on the, ahem, “lock,” I managed to finish up 900 SFBay bucks. Ali pulled within 100 bucks of Chelena with a +500 buck week, while Chelena suffered a flesh-wound loss of just 100 bucks. SFBay reader ParksideGreg finished the week at 5900 SFBay bucks, his depleted stack suffering just a 200 buck loss.
This week, other than Oakland-Cincinnati, the lines are small and the games fairly tricky. I’ll let my bets speak for themselves this week. Enjoy the football!
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.
| Name | Bankroll | Last week |
| Jesse | 13,500 | +900 |
| Chelena | 9,400 | -100 |
| Ali | 9,300 | +500 |
| Game | Ali | Chelena | Jesse |
| San Francisco (-1) at New Orleans |
NO 200 |
NO 200 |
SF 1200 |
| Oakland at Cincinnati (-8) |
CIN 200 |
CIN 100 |
CIN 400 |
| Buffalo at Indianapolis (-3) |
IND 500 |
IND 100 |
IND 2000 |
| Green Bay at New York (N) (-3) |
NY 200 |
GB 100 |
GB 300 |
| Seattle (-3) at Miami |
SEA 200 |
SEA 100 |
SEA 1000 |
| St. Louis at Arizona (-1 1/2) |
STL 200 |
ARI 100 |
STL 2000 |
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.
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:
* – 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.
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.
Jesse Garnier is the editor and founder of SFBay. A Mission District native, he also teaches journalism as associate professor at San Francisco State University.
hope to stop the slide…
NO – $ 500
Cinn- $1000
Buff- $500
NY- $500
Seahawks $500
St. Louis $1000
Good luck to all, PS.G