Bettin’ or Braggin: All the marbles

By the end of every pro football season, most teams have separated themselves into winners and losers. You can say exactly the same about your SFBay Bettin’ or Braggin’ prognosticators.

First, the winners: Chelena and Ali are battling it out going into the final week. Chelena’s 1,700 SFBay Buck lead over Ali could be overcome, as Ali laid down some serious bets on this week’s slate of games.

Losers? Well, it’s singular: Me. Despite holding a significant lead most of the season, my meltdown was nearly complete last week, leaving me with just 200 SFBay Bucks to my name. Not even enough to buy a 42-inch HDTV to watch the last week of games.

No worries, though. My only remaining strategy is to bet against Ali in all of this week’s games and hope he loses them all. Then I can finish second. Not likely.

So, to the victor go the spoils. Speaking of which, our grand prize Bettin’ or Braggin’ winner this season is ParksideGreg, who takes home a magnificent Joe Montana replica authentic jersey! Congratulations, Greg!

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

Week 17

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.

Jesse Garnier

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.