I got back home late last night. It was a great trip, though eight days was a lot. I like having my things around, my routine, not living out of a suitcase. I also almost got killed getting this video:
A few seconds later a wave came up over the cliff, soaked me completely and almost knocked me off balance. (I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it was shocking how quickly it went up 12 feet over the cliff precipice.)
In any event, I still had to get up this morning and submit my five picks. Three I felt good about, the other two were coin flips. The thing about these contests is you have to pick five games every week, each with equal weight, even though you might have only two or three about which you feel strongly. I like it because it’s simple, and you don’t have to waste too much time on it, but a truer measure of betting skill might be if you had 50 picks over the year to be distributed as you see fit.
You could also just have a starting budget and the ability to make variable sized bets wherein the biggest winner over the course of the year gets the prize, but it would encourage huge all-in bets and also sitting on leads at the end, kind of like the final question on Jeopardy.
I’m fine with the five per week, though — it’s just that usually there are one or two that are total coin flips. (Also, I mistakenly said yesterday that in my picking pool I was 1-0 after having Houston +13.5. I did have Houston, only I neglected to hit “save” on the CBS site, and so it went as no pick and counted as a loss. I better not go 12-0 on the rest!
In any event, here are the picks:
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