Bettin’ or Braggin: Losers on parade

Last week’s Bettin’ or Braggin’ grid is stained with red marks, not to mention a whole lot of big numbers. After a collective 6-12 week, SFBay’s team of pigskin prognosticators doesn’t have much to brag about.

But with five weeks left in the season, all three of us still have a chance to take home the top spot. Or end up broke.

At this stage of the pro football campaign, many teams can’t say the same thing. Not only have teams like Oakland and Philadelphia had awful seasons on the field, they’ve also been terrible against the spread. Oakland is 3-9 against the spread this season, with Philly at 2-9-1.

Most of the league’s top teams, predictably, fare well against the number. Tied with eight wins against the spread this year are Houston, Indianapolis and Seattle, but also Tampa Bay and St. Louis.

Having said that, we don’t pick the six games each week that will necessarily be the easiest to choose a winner. We try to mix it up and keep things challenging. Sometimes too much so.

Enjoy the games and pick wisely.

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	-4,100
Ali	9,300	-500
Chelena	8,800	-400

Week 13

Game	Ali	Chelena	Jesse
Miami at San Francisco (-10)	SF 3000	MIA 100	SF 2500
Houston at New England (-3 1/2)	NE 500	NE 100	HOU 1000
Tennessee at Indianapolis (-5 1/2)	IND 1000	IND 100	IND 4000
Atlanta (-3 1/2) at Carolina	ATL 1000	ATL 200	CAR 500
Dallas at Cincinnati (-3)	DAL 500	CIN 100	CIN 500
Chicago (-3) at Minnesota	CHI 500	CHI 100	MIN 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 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.