NFL Week 4/NCAA Week 5 -- Picking Up the Pieces: Don't Let This Happen to You

Here is a photo of some folks who are not Cleveland Frowns readers. They are depicted in the stands of The University of Georgia's Sanford Stadium, looking very sad watching last Saturday night's football game between Georgia and Alabama. We know these folks aren't Cleveland Frowns readers because knowledge is power, and Georgia fans or not, nobody who knew going in to that game that 'Bama was the Lock of the Year could have possibly looked so sad. The lesson here should be obvious. We will only add that one nice thing about Locks of the Year is that they often happen more than once a year.

As for some less obvious lessons: Tough one with the Steelers last night. We believe that our biggest failure was in assuming that folks didn't know going in just how bad the Browns and Bengals were. It was probably quite easy for folks to see a rookie quarterback going up against a highly-touted Steelers team that hadn't covered the spread in two weeks, and think, "hey, who've the Ravens beaten anyway?" In retrospect, a lot of people probably thought that. One thing that was probably not so easy for folks to see before last night was just how solid Ravens rookie QB Joe Flacco is. He was generally Joe Cool in the pocket last night, engineering a couple of impressive touchdown drives against one of the NFL's best defenses, including one to tie the score with 4 minutes left in the game. We're also going to start officially wondering about the Steelers, who lost two more starters for the season due to injuries in last night's game. Perhaps they might learn a few lessons from Alabama's offensive line?

Our other loss was the Raiders +7.5 against the Chargers. This one was an especially big bummer because the Raiders went into the fourth quarter with a 15-3 lead before giving up 25 points in the fourth to lose 28-18. We're not going to argue that this was an especially savvy pick--in fact, we had much better reasons for picking our two Sunday winners than we did for taking the Raiders--but we will note our admiration of now former Raiders' Coach Kiffin's decision to attempt a 76-yard field goal that not only would have made NFL history, but also would have given us the cover.

That's enough about the spilled milk. Let's look ahead to next weekend's action. Who do YOU like this weekend? Games of interest include: Stanford +7.5 at Notre Dame, Illinois +2 at Michigan, Akron -4 at Kent, Ohio State -2.5 at Wisconsin, Titans -3 at Ravens, Redskins +6 at Eagles, and Steelers +4 at Jags.

Commenter of the week for two weeks ago goes to "d" for asking, "how about Arizona only laying 3 on the road against an awful UCLA team?" Great question, d, and thanks for reminding us about the Evil Neuheisel.

Please let us know your thoughts on the weekend's action, for the benefit of the entire Cleveland Frowns community. Thanks.

Monday Night Football: Three Good Reasons to Back The Steelers

Tonight the Baltimore Ravens (+5) visit the Pittsburgh Steelers for some Monday Night Football. We think the Steelers are the play here, for three primary reasons.

1) Yes, the Ravens are 2-0, and folks are talking about their stellar defense and strong running game. But the Ravens have only beaten two of the worst teams in football, the Browns and the Bengals. Your local high school JV team would appear to have a stellar defense and strong running game if they only played the Browns and Bengals every week. We see value here because we think that folks still don’t understand just how bad the Browns and Bengals really are.

2) Ravens rookie running back Ray Rice sold out his pal, Steelers rookie running back Rashard Mendenhall, for some cheap bulletin board material. Mendenhall sent a personal text message to Rice, saying he was going to have a big game against the Ravens defense. Rice told his teammates, who have since done some huffing and puffing about it. "He said later that he was just joking, but it's too late,'' Ravens linebacker Bart Scott said. " Thanks for the bulletin-board material, rookie." Whatever, Bart. Whatever it takes to get yourself fired up. Loser. It is super dumb that the Ravens have to pretend that they are mad about a joke that a rookie texted to his rookie friend. If anything, they should be scolding Rice for selling his homeboy out. Edge to the Steelers here. (We'll also note here that it doesn't bother us that Steelers' starting RB Willie Parker is out tonight. First-round pick Mendenhall was one of the best running backs in college football last season. And another fantastic draft pick by the Steelers. "Parker goes down? Well lookee here. It's Rashard Mendenhall on the bench." Geez do the Browns suck compared to them. Makes us sick.)

3) Speaking of sell-outs, Ray Lewis sold out the Ravens front office, and half of his teammates on ESPN’s Sunday Conversation that aired last night and this morning. He told the interviewer that he hadn’t played his best football yet, because he won’t be able to play his best football until the Ravens have a good offense. We’re not sure exactly how that works, but we wonder if Lewis has considered that the Ravens front office might not have been able to surround him with so much talent on the defensive side of the ball if they’d used those resources on offense. Would he be able to play as well on defense if he wasn’t surrounded by Pro-bowlers? Also, would he have the motivation to play as well on D if the offense was racking up the points? We don’t know. And we suspect that Lewis doesn’t either. We think that Ray should save the self-serving speculation for his own private thoughts instead of embarrassing his teammates and managers with it on national television. His misplaced indignation gives us one more reason to take the Steelers tonight.

And that makes three reasons why The Pick is the Steelers -5 over the Ravens. Good luck with the week’s last pick, and enjoy the game.

NFL Week 4: Back on Board with the Brownies, and Two More

Three picks for this NFL Sunday:

1) Cleveland Browns +3.5 over the Cincinnati Bengals: We wrote last week that there is no better play in the NFL these days than a play against Romeo Crennel, Derek Anderson, and Co. in a must-win game. That was proven correct when the Ravens crushed them. Now the Browns are 0-3, and with their schedule, only the most relentless of optimists would say that their season isn't well on its way down the tubes. Now that we believe that the Browns are comfortably out of "must win" territory, we can feel comfortable backing them again. And we're especially comfortable backing them this week, because they're up against perhaps the only franchise that might be in worse shape than they are. The Bengals are a disaster. (You might enjoy reading this semi-thorough accounting of the wreckage.) That either of these train wrecks would be favored by more than a field goal against the other seems ridiculous. Coach Crennel should be encouraged by the fact that its the first game this season in which he might not be the worst head coach in the stadium. We'll play the odds that the Browns have at least a shred of pride left, and that Cinci's impressive showing against the Giants last week was an aberration that was especially for the Bad Action Bros. If the Browns don't beat the Bengals this week, they might not win a game all year.

2) New York Jets -1 over the Arizona Cardinals: This pick is based mostly on the fact that "the Cardinals drew added attention to [last week's] game at Washington and today's game at the New York Jets by spending a week in the East between games. The reason: to get acclimated to the three-hour time change and avoid a cross-country trip on the back end." This strategy sounds awfully JV to us, and sounds like something Butch Davis might do if he were still allowed to coach an NFL team. Aren't these guys adults? Is it really worth keeping them away from their families for an extra week to avoid potential "jet lag" from a three hour trip? Do the Cardinals mean to suggest that Dorothy was wrong when she said that there's no place like home? That seems like brazen idiocy to us, and seems consistent with Rick Reilly's bold yet seemingly supportable proclamation that the Cardinals are run by the "worst [owners] in the history of owning things." Plus, aren't the Jets due?

3) Oakland Raiders +7.5 over the San Diego Chargers: We're swayed by the way the action is going here. 90% at sportsbook is on the Chargers, which suprises us because the Raiders look like an attractive play on the surface. We don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for the Raiders that Child Ballcoach Kiffin has been on the hot seat this week. They have some exciting young talent on their roster, and despite their 1-2 start, appear to be on the upswing from the previous two seasons. And the Chargers appear to be moving in the opposite direction. It seems likely that Oakland can get a decent running game going against the Chargers' thus-far porous defense. If their talented secondary and the rest of the defense can slow down the Chargers offense, 7.5 is too many points to give the Raiders at home in this matchup of local rivals.

We might be back later with a pick for tonight's Eagles/Bears clash. Either way, enjoy the action, folks. Only 14 short weeks left until the playoffs.

NCAA LOCK OF THE YEAR: Roll Tide

This week's game of the week in American College Football is a clash between SEC titans; the Georgia Bulldogs (3) square off against the Alabama Crimson Tide (8) tonight in Georgia at 7:45. Georgia is favored by 6.5 points.

Rarely is it so easy for us to choose a side in such a high profile matchup. But we read in USA Today this morning that Alabama's apparent resurgence this season is due to largely to their offensive line that is no ordinary offensive line; but rather, an offensive line "that did yoga and pilates in the offseason to increase flexibility."

And who could think of a better way for offensive linemen to spend an offseason? We've written repeatedly and at length about a woefully inept athletic training culture here in America that grossly overemphasizes a build-up of the muscular system at the expense of the rest -- skeletal, circulatory, nervous, all of them. The athletic training of football teams in America is focused almost entirely on lifting weights and running, with little to no attention paid to the underlying structure that the muscles that move these bodies are built upon. It's something like building a skyscraper on a structure of toothpicks. Yet still, it's "hit the weights, kid," even if kid can't touch his toes. And, again, this is why there's more snap, crackle and pop in American football training camps than there is in a bowl of Rice Krispies.

And this season, no top ranked NCAA program has snapped, crackled, and popped as loudly and painfully as the Georgia Bulldogs, who've lost two surefire NFL first-rounders for the season due to ligament injuries; Offensive tackle Trinton Sturdivant in a pre-season scrimmage, and defensive tackle Jeff Owens in the season opener against Georgia Southern. Bulldog fans might be asking the same question that we Browns fans so often ask: "Who the f*ck is training these guys?"

As frustrated as we are with continually being forced to ask this question, it's a no-brainer when we see a squad like Alabama that at leasts purports to pay attention to the human body's underlying structure go up against a team like Georgia that appears to have fallen victim to the same old "snap, crackle, and pop" muscle-headed retardedness that Cleveland Browns fans know all too well. And it's more than a no-brainer. It's our lock of the year. Roooolllllllll TIDE.

As a secondary matter, we're supporters of oft-criticized Coach Nick Saban of Alabama. Folks might remember that Saban was widely excoriated for breaching his much ballyhood contract to coach the NFL's Miami Dolphins after two short seasons to take an unprecedentedly lucrative deal to return to the college ranks to coach the Tide. It's more than the immutable principles of "free markets/free people" and "Doowhatchalike," that make Saban a sympathetic character to us. It's that a person who chooses to coach football for a living has to do a helluva lot more dirt to reach the top of his profession than one who chooses just about any other career. It's not like a ballcoach can come out of college and get a entry-level position that pays six figures, like an i-banker. These guys have a hard enough time finding a job that pays in the low five figures. In most cases, they have to work for free for years to even have a chance. Even Belichick did this. We think that Saban's worked too hard to not be free to coach whereever he likes. We think that the Football Gods understand this, despite all the noise made by angry Dolphin fans and college football fans who are always looking for an excuse to hate.

The Lock of the Year: Alabama Crimson Tide +6.5 over the Georgia Bulldogs.

Update -- 9/28/08, 9:14 AM: Q: When is a LOCK OF THE YEAR, the LOCK OF THE YEAR? A: When it's the LOCK OF THE YEAR. Tide rolls, 41-30. We enjoyed Coach Saban's post-game press conference: "I'm happy," said Saban, who spent much of his post-game news conference berating the Tide's second-half performance. "I know I don't look happy, but I am." Sounds like something that the resident of our resident orange bowl might say.

Funky Friday Footy: Australian National Rugby League Finals Series

Today, the Big Dood is back with a preview of this weekend's Australian National Rugby League Finals Series against an interesting backdrop of the history of the sport. Take it away, Big Dood:

This weekend marks the preliminary final contests for Australia’s National Rugby League Championship. (In the US we would call these games semi-finals, but for some reason, Australian sports have semi-finals, followed by preliminary finals, and finally… the final. Which is not entirely nonsense given the relative pliability of the adjective “semi.”)

Of course I recently missed with the All Blacks falling short by one point on the cover over the Wallabies. But that friends, was Rugby Union. This is Rugby League – a very different game.

If you’re like me and have not long understood the difference between League and Union rules, it’s worth taking a quick look back in time. This is, after all, the centennial season of Australia’s NRL. So let’s go back, shall we? To mother England…

For a deep dive, you can check out an old article from god knows where called The “Rugby” Game by Sean Fagan. If you like Rugby, which you must at least a little bit to have gotten this far, this article is a pretty good read, but if you’re pressed for time, I’ll sum up.

The short version is that the first Rugby Union in England firmly intended to play an “amateur” game - that is to say, no one could be paid to play. They did this to keep out the riff raff. The gentry of southern England and London could afford to devote a lot of spare time to their clubs, but this was more difficult for miners and factory workers in the north. Any time spent playing rugby was time not spent working and earning money. The Union was strident in its resistance to playing alongside the soot-covered hordes of northerners from the likes of Leeds and Halifax, so they fought tooth and nail to keep club owners from offering compensation to players. It seems completely counterintuitive to me that Rugby, of all sports, began as a sport for the upper crust. Golf, polo, croquet . . . seemingly understandable. But why not leave the masses to tackle each other in the mud whilst you sip sloe gin fizz and tally-ho after the foxes?

But the rich wanted their game, clean and pure, and so there was hemming, hawing, rule- breaking, and punishment for those who hired muscle from the north to play for their teams. Eventually, a split occurred that changed the game dramatically. A new rugby league, played primarily by clubs in northern, working-class towns, wholly embraced payment to players and also instituted a number of rule changes. For example, the new rules de-emphasized the scrum, a cornerstone of the Union game. League rules also did away with line out throws and reduced the sides to 13 players apiece. The intention was to make the game, lighter, quicker and less injurious, as working class players would stand to lose a good deal more from a broken leg than would a banker or a barrister down south. There was also another underlying incentive to increase the pace of the sport - to attract more paying customers to games (paid attendance was, of course, what made player compensation possible in the first place).

So then, roughly 110 years after these disputes were hashed out in rainy English shires, I found myself taking the football temperature of the land down under. Australia surely enjoys their international competitions played under Union rules, but, in my impression, it is before the National Rugby League where the die-hards come to kneel -- the blue collar, dyed in the wool version of the sport.

Luckily for me, on my first day in Sydney, having already secured two weekends of Televised NRL beneath my belt, I headed to Sydney Football Stadium to see the Roosters do battle with a storied rival, the Parramatta Eeels. I noticed that while the crowd was small (perhaps 15,000 in a stadium built for 4 times that capacity) everyone in attendance was deeply vested in the outcome of the contest. Well almost everyone. The cheers were raucous and there was a strong presence from visiting supporters. A nice sense of rivalry without any real hostility between fans with opposing rooting interests. And… the game was quick. My lovely goylefriend and I were in and out in roughly 90 minutes. Non-stop action with no lazy breaks for TV commercials.

I don’t think I’ve had a better day since.

Now to the Action.

Cronulla Sharks +6 vs. Melbourne Storm

Much of the debate leading up to this one has been a league wide analysis of which sides play fair, which sides play dirty. Melbourne is being chastised for their use of “grapple tackles” and for spawning the use of grappling by other teams.

I guess grabbing people around the head and neck while in the ruck is technically within the rules, though generally frowned upon. I don’t completely understand the beef, so I am going to continue to make my Aussie sporting plays based on what little footholds I can find for my conscience. For that reason I’m going against Cronulla here. Even though I spent a lovely afternoon in Cronulla during my trip, I think the area’s best shot at any American’s recollection is probably the fact that in 2005, a series of racially motivated violent events and widespread unrest kept the suburb itself in a bit of a grapple-hold. Angry throngs yelled things like “no more Lebs (Lebanese immigrants)” and “We grew here, you flew here” and other such nonsense.

It’s no doubt a complicated story that I don’t fully understand, but race riots in the year 2005? That’s just un-Australian. Surely the place hasn’t yet lived this down so as to have such a big win coming its way.

The pick: Melbourne Storm -6 over Cronulla Sharks.

(Ed.’s note: Sadly, this game has already been played. We couldn’t get the post up in time. And the Big Dood was right. Melbourne crushed Cronulla, 28-0. The Big Dood also sent us an “analysis of the other preliminary final match, between the Manly Sea Eagles (-8) and New Zealand Warriors. He likes the Sea Eagles, but his pick was entirely based on a moment of “profound beauty” that he enjoyed at the Sydney Harbor on the way back “from an afternoon of quiet on Manly’s shimmering shore.” That must have been terrific for him, but there is no way we are picking based on that. We never said that Big Dood wasn’t crazy. And he’ll be back later with a preview of the Aussie Rules Football “Grand Final.” It will be grand. And of course we’ll be back tomorrow with NCAA American football picks.)

Akron Hoops Legend Sam Serves (1921-2008)

Akron lost a great one this week when Sam Serves passed away Sunday at the age of 86. As written in Tuesday’s Beacon Journal, Mr. Serves was a basketball standout at the University of Akron (he left the school as its second all-time leading scorer), who later became a successful area businessman. We met Mr. Serves as youngsters on the local hoops scene, and got to know him as something more than that; that is, a friend, coach, mentor, and role model, who wanted to see everyone succeed and, until his health would no longer allow for it, played an active role in helping those around him do just that.

Our favorite Sam Serves story comes from a piece that we read years ago in the Beacon Journal on Mr. Serves’ induction into the University of Akron Hall of Fame. This story is a testimony to Mr. Serves’ greatness, and aptly demonstrates that it’s true what his daughter Susan said to the Beacon Journal; Nothing was handed to Sam Serves.

The story goes like this: As a high school freshman at Akron’s East High, Sam went out for the varsity wrestling team. As it goes on wrestling teams, teammates at each weight class wrestle one another at practice to determine who wrestles at that weight class in the varsity slot. In Sam’s weight class (which was somewhere around 112 or 119 as we recall), was the defending Ohio State Champion. Freshman Sam beat him. Coach, not wanting to believe that he had to start a freshman over his defending State Champ, called the match too close, and had them wrestle again. Again, Sam won. We don’t exactly recall whether they repeated the song-and-dance a third or fourth time, but the upshot is that coach still wouldn’t give Sam the varsity slot. Understandably frustrated, Sam walked away from the wrestling mat, right onto the basketball court. Of course, the rest is history.

This story to us represents a lot of what made Sam such a success. When he found one door closed to him, he went through another door to find success, as frustrating as it might have been to do so. And its important to remember that fewer doors were open for folks like Sam in those days than they are today. This was the late 1930’s and early 40’s. Sam was the son of Greek immigrants, and the country was suffering and recovering from the effects of the Great Depression. Whether from Greece, Ireland, Italy, or somewhere else, it is an understatement to say that many Americans at that time didn’t take kindly to folks who came off boats, no matter the color of their skin. Maybe that explains Sam’s treatment by his former wrestling coach, and maybe not (it probably does). But the point is that thanks to the efforts of folks like Mr. Serves, America is a place where the best wrestler at each weight class is more likely to wrestle in the varsity slot than he was before folks like Mr. Serves paved the way. And of course we’re not just talking about wrestling. Sam struggled to make this world a better place for his kids and grandkids. His memory will help us do the same for ours. Rest in peace, Sam, and thank you.

NFL Week 3: Beware of The Bad Action Bros.

We have three picks today. One for each time slot.

At 4:00, it’s the Ravens -2.5 over the Browns: There is simply no better value in the NFL these days than in betting against Romeo Crennel and Derek Anderson in a "must-win" game. Today might be our last chance to do this, because as the 2008 Browns season continues to slide down the tubes it becomes increasingly difficult to call any game a "must-win." The Browns were only able to cover last weekend for two reasons, neither having to do with them being a competent football team. First, was Crennel's inexplicable decision to play into the Steelers' hands by kicking a field goal with just 3 minutes left in the game and the Browns needing the touchdown to tie. Even if the Browns were able to get the ball right back, a quick drive down the field was something that they had not done all game, and did not appear at all capable of doing, especially in the monsoon-like conditions at Cleveland Browns Stadium on Sunday night. And of course they didn't, losing 10-6, but covering the 6.5 point spread, thanks to the field goal.

This Kotite-ian decision to kick the field goal is tied to the larger reason why the Browns were able to cover. That is, the basic sportsbook karma that comes due for anyone who “chases his losses.” We weren't alone last week in believing that the Browns didn't belong on the same field with the Steelers. Roughly 97% of the action at Sportsbook.com was on the Steelers, as was seemingly 100% of the action at the Mandalay Bay sportsbook. Important here is that the game was played at 8:00 PM. If you were having a bad day with your picks and were inclined to chase your losses, you were going to go with the Steelers. A play like that almost never wins. And we saw it coming. We were at the sportsbook at Mandalay with our buddy who was wearing a Steelers jersey. Our pal was continually approached by desparate crazy-eyed strangers offering Steeler love, who must have believed that seeing a Steelers jersey in the sportsbook on a night when the Steelers were playing football was some kind of amazing coincidence and a sign that their miserable day at the sportsbook would be saved. The eyes of these folks were glazed with the unmistakable look of a bad day at the book, and these folks all said things like "yeah, go Steelers, I'm huge on them tonight...I really need them to come through." "Great. Thanks, pal. Really appreciate you wrapping up the karma of my squad with that of your sorry a$$. You know, actually, I have some inside information that tells me that the Browns are a good play tonight."

These crazy-eyed strangers were what we call Bad Action Brothers. We first met Bad Action Brothers when we lived out of town and had to go to the local sports bar on Sundays to watch the Browns. While inconvenient, it became a ritual that we enjoyed. We'd set up shop at for the 1:00 games at about noon, and would usually stay for the 4:00 games. This sports bar was a busy place on NFL Sundays, and there were a lot of regulars with whom we'd discuss the day's action. Two of these regulars were the original Bad Action Bros. These physically sturdy and inexplicably tan fellows would stumble in for the action circa 12:55, and weren't half done with their first beer before beginning to noisily rehash the previous evening's exploits. The discussion was focused mostly on how many b*tches wanted to "bang" them, how much "e" they had taken, and whose a$$ they were going to kick if he ever tried to talk to Lisa or Angela again. Money was apparently not a concern for the Bad Action Bros. At least not until it began to slide away with their 1:00 action. These guys played to win, after all. But win they did not when they began to chase their bad 1:00 action by doubling up on the 4’s. The point here is, that with all else on their minds (e-pills, Lisa, Angela, and the rest of the b*tches) there wasn’t much time (or space) to think of anything but winning. We know well here at Cleveland Frowns that winning is far from everything. One who chases his losses, by definition becomes unmoored from this principle, as well as the principle that one “can’t win ‘em all.” To increase one’s enthusiasm for a pick based on his need to win is sports wagering inertia at its worst, and is something that the Sports Wagering Gods punish severely. This is why, no matter the merits of the underlying pick, when the Bad Action Bros. begin to pile on, its time to move your own piles. The Steelers pick last week was done in by these brothers of bad action.

And if anything this week, the Bad Action Bros. will be taking the Browns. The Browns are no less a mess today than they were last week. There is something fundamentally wrong with the franchise. It starts at the top, with an owner who cares more about European football than the American kind. If there were ever a case for eminent domain -- to establish city ownership of the team Green Bay-style -- this is it. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that last season’s “success” was more the product of a weak schedule than anything else. The decision to offer Coach Crennel a lucrative extension after last year’s non-Playoff “success” shows how quickly this organization is to cling to any kind of success, as superficial as it might be. Yet this team doesn’t even know how to care for its primary assets. Today, starting left guard Eric Steinbach is out. All teams suffer injuries, but does every team have as many starters laid up on a yearly basis as the Browns? Again, we will ask, who the f*ck is training these guys? It will get worse before it gets better for the Browns. We’re taking the Ravens.

At 1:00, we like the Vikings at home, -3 over the Panthers. Much has been made of Vikings Coach Childress’s decision to bench Tarvaris Jackson for the rest of the season after only two games. Childress has been subject to much criticism for making Jackson the scapegoat for his own bad play-calling. Folks are saying that Jackson never had a chance. But we read something this week that suggests to us that there might be a good reason that Jackson didn’t “have a chance” in the games. That is, that Jackson never earned the confidence of Childress. There’s something to be said for going into a battle with the weapons that one trusts. As “Commander-in-Chief” of the Vikings, Childress is entitled to go to battle with whichever weapons he chooses, including Gus Frerotte. The success of any organization depends on an executive who is unafraid to wield his executive powers. Unlike many Americans, we’re not uncomfortable with that, so we’ll trust Childress here. Plus, it seems that many Panthers backers are following the rationale that: “the Panthers are 2-0 without Steve Smith, and now he’s back.” This sounds like something a fantasy football-head would say. A fantasy-football head might also be overly deterred from backing the Vikes by the news that Adrian Peterson might not play. But Chester Taylor is an adequate substitute.

Finally, the night game. We’ll take the Packers +3 at home over the Cowboys. These look like two of the best teams in the NFL to us. Aaron Rogers has impressed us (the roll-out touchdown pass against the Lions last week, that first one, was sweet). And the Cowboys are coming off a short week in which their defense looked like a sieve. For some reason, 78% of the action is on the Cowboys at Sportsbook.com. We’re glad to take the points with the better-rested home team today.

Enjoy the games, folks. And don’t be a Bad Action Bro.

And Somewhere in the Darkness: NCAA Week 4

We really need to keep the Sabbath holy this weekend. Not only are we drained after last weekend, but Sunday’s NFL action is a bonanza of intrigue that we’d like to be particularly fresh for. Worth noting here is that the best line in “The Gambler” is when Kenny’s soul cries: “and somewhere in the darkness, the gambler he broke even.” So into the darkness is where we crawl. Maybe we don’t know exactly when to fold ‘em, but we’re going to take it easy tomorrow with only one pick for the day. Arizona -3 over UCLA. Yes, Mike Stoops hasn’t had a very good run as head coach at ‘Zona, and might just have a job as a Pac-10 head coach because his brother is a good coach, but he’s no Rick Neuheisel. And, in desperation to find action to balance our Buckeyes play last Saturday at the sportsbook, we went with the New Mexico Lobos over Arizona for a nice win and cover. Those Lobos didn’t look bad at all. And yes, we’re trying to salvage something, anything from our trip. So we’ll look to run up our score on Neuheisel to 2-1 and watch the rest of the action from a safe distance. We’ll see ya’ Sunday morning for the NFL action. Don't forget to weigh in with your picks.

The Pick: Arizona -3 over UCLA

Picking Up The Pieces . . . Slowly

Sadly, we are having to work extra hard at our money-paying job this week to make up for consequences of certain of our actions in Nevada last weekend. Please forgive us for being slower than usual this week in picking up the pieces. Thankfully, despite all the pieces, we are sure that our spirits were refreshed, and minds enlightened by the trip -- one way or another. And not a moment too soon. The autumn equinox is in three days. We are drivers. We are winners. Things are gonna change. We can feel it. We will be here this weekend with picks, and back next week to a more regular posting pace.

In the meantime, please help pick us up by having a look at this weekend's action. Some games of interest are: LSU -2 over Auburn, Michigan St.-9 over Notre Dame, Akron -10.5 over Army, Ohio State -20.5 over Troy. On Sunday there's: Eagles -3 over Steelers, Cowboys -3 over Packers, Vikings -3.5 over Panthers, and the most intriguing game on the board to us, the Ravens -2 over the Browns. Yes. The Ravens are favored to send our Browns to an 0-3 start. Fascinating.

We'd love to read your thoughts about this action in the comments. Remember, such efforts on your part benefit the entire Cleveland Frowns community.

For example, comment of the week for last week goes to "paula," who offered us a winning pick with Notre Dame over Michigan, and sound reasoning to back it up. "Surely the football gods will be satisfied by ND's sacrificial offering (the Lou Holtz statue) and will grant the Fighting Irish a win over Michigan."

Runner-up is "bj," who said, "whether you agree or not, good times with the comments." True.

Also, if you missed it, Rick Reilly talked about us last week in ESPN Magazine in a piece on which sports franchise "rules" each of a number of American cities. He's surely correct that the Browns "rule" Cleveland. And we like his supporting argument: "Name one other city that lost a team and had the league give it back! Name, uniforms, everything!" But we're really not sure about the "everything" part.

NFL Week 2 Picks

Jets -1 over the Pats -- Pats continue to suffer karmic retribution for cheating. Favre defies haters, stepping up this weekend where the Buckeyes failed miserably.

Titans +1.5 over the Bengals -- The Bengals are unraveling. We’re shocked that they are favored to win this game. Folks who pay too much attention to fantasy football are so taken with Carson Palmer and his star receivers that they are likely to overlook important things about real football. The Titans have no fantasy football stars, but should crush in this real football game. It might be that folks caught up in fantasy have driven this line away from reality.

Vikings +2 over the Colts -- Over 90% of the action is on the Colts here. We think these Colts backers are stuck in the past. The Colts are on the downswing, and the Vikings on the up. The biggest factor for us here is that Colts hall of fame center Jeff Saturday is hurt. We think that folks underestimate what a center like Saturday can do for a team. We also think that folks will tend to believe that the Colts can’t start the season 0-2. But of course, they can.

Steelers -6 over the Browns -- A must-win game for the Browns that they just can’t win. The success of any organization starts at the top. This principle could not be more clearly illustrated than by the contrasting examples of Randy Lerner’s Browns and the Rooney family’s Steelers. Aside from the off-season additions to the defensive line, nearly everything we’ve seen from our Browns since last December has disturbed us deeply. The Browns are moving backwards. There is nothing that suggests to us that they can play with a Steelers team that they couldn’t play with even when they appeared to be making progress. We hate what we’ve seen from our Browns, and hope that another shellacking by the Steelers will help make what we hate go away.

We'll be back later this week to pick up the pieces. So ... many ... pieces.

Blind Hate and the NCAA Game of the Year -- Ohio State (5) v. USC (2)

There’s not much to be said about how important today’s OSU/USC match-up is for both teams, for each of their conferences, and for the BCS Championship picture.

But there is LOADS to be said about why USC is favored by so many points in this game, and what we, as wagering Americans, ought to do about that. This match-up gives us two of the small handful of programs expected to contend for the BCS Championship this season, each with rosters packed with NFL talent, each led by two of the best coaches in the game today (aren’t they both certain Hall-of-Famers?). Shouldn’t this be a great game? An instant classic, even?

So why in the name of Jim Heacock are the Trojans favored by a whopping 11.5 points in this game?

We can hear the words coming out of your mouth as we type: BECAUSE OSU SUCKS. That’s what ex-Trojan and current Tennessee Titan Lendale White brazenly declared last week. And that’s what we’ve been hearing in the national media for nearly two years now. OSU SUCKS. Moreover, THE WHOLE BIG TEN SUCKS. One of the nation’s most prominent sportswriters, ESPN.com’s Pat Forde, went so far as to suggest that the Buckeyes be banned from ever again playing for the BCS Title. A leisurely surf on the internet confirms that there is no shortage of folks who purport to agree with this hyperbolic nonsense. As resident Ohioans, we are shocked by how many of our fellow resident Ohioans, upon hearing that we were heading to Mecca this weekend, asked us if we’d place a wager on USC for them while we are here (Don’t these people have computers? Why can’t they just log on to sportsbook.com?). So what ever could be behind such strong feelings?

Hate. Piles, heaps, and loads of hate.

And there’s nothing like college football to bring out the hater in all of us. Because it’s normal to form associations with where we’re from, and for so many of us, where we went to college is a big part of that. And we even care about the schools in the area where we’re from, whether or not we went to these schools. The formula is simple: I feel better when my school wins at football, or when the school from my state wins, because that means that people from my school, or my state, are better than people from your school or your state. This means that I am better than you. And I hate you when my team loses, because while I’m perfectly happy to interpret my team’s success as evidence that I am superior to you, I hate you for trying to judge me based on the results of a football game. It’s a vicious cycle.

For better or worse, the viciousness of this cycle is amplified here in Ohio, where we tend to take these associations at least a little bit more seriously than folks in other places. But we don’t cling to our football (and our guns, and our religion,) just because we’re struggling as a state to find our place in our nation’s new service economy after our role as a hub of America’s former manufacturing economy was rendered so suddenly obsolete. Our football is so important here in Ohio because here in Ohio is where football was born. Folks don’t hate the Buckeyes just because a winner always has a bulls-eye on his back, they hate us even more because, rightly or wrongly, we make so much more of our victories than the average college football winner, certainly a heck of a lot more than a college football winner from Los Angeles. Who cares about football in L.A.?

As if the hate piled on the Buckeyes for their own success (and Buckeye Nation’s unique view of the meaning of that success) weren’t enough, additional loads of hate are dumped on OSU as a result of the failures of someone, or rather, something else. That thing is the organized crime syndicate that is the BCS. Folks who rightly hate the BCS are inclined to direct their frustration at the Buckeyes, whose performance in the last two national title games represent, to them, exactly what’s wrong with the system. We understand why people would believe that if they can prove that the Buckeyes suck, then they can prove that the BCS sucks. But even if this is the case, that the BCS is a failed system, the Buckeyes’ performance in the last two title games could only be a symptom of that failure, not a cause. The Buckeyes can hardly be blamed for doing so well within the BCS. And while the BCS’s suckiness cannot change, the Buckeyes can (and surely did) get better. That the BCS sucks, doesn’t mean the Buckeyes do. Yet the hatred for the injustice of the BCS is so strong that we’re sure that folks tend to overlook the fact that the BCS is not the Buckeyes’ fault, and that the BCS’s awfulness is not determinative of the quality of this, or any Buckeye team. It seems to us that folks are misconstruing their hatred of the BCS for hatred of our innocent Buckeyes.

This profoundly irrational Buckeye hate is both a cause and effect of a fundamental misunderstanding of the Buckeyes’ losses in the last two national title games. First, as much as folks like to speak of how OSU was “thrashed” by LSU in January, the fact remains that they only lost the game by 14 points. While certainly not a barnburner, the game was not out of reach for the Buckeyes until late in the fourth quarter. We must also remember that the Buckeyes weren’t supposed to so much as sniff the championship game. It was a rebuilding year for them. As bad as the BCS might be, it’s hard to see how a program that reaches the title game in a rebuilding year could possibly be deemed to “suck” due to its performance in that game.

As for the game two years ago against Florida, thinking folk ought to recall the effect of the “Game of the Century” against Michigan that was played more than a full month earlier. That game against Michigan might have been the most hyped regular season match-up in college football history. After the Buckeyes won, they popped champagne and smoked cigars. Troy Smith won the Heisman, and he and the rest of the Buckeye stars hit the awards banquet circuit for a full month, still aglow from winning the epic Game of the Century. One who questions why the Buckeyes were so thoroughly whipped by Florida might ask, if you spend an entire month all ‘getting off’ as the Buckeyes did during their Bacchanalian December, how, how are you going to ‘get it up’ for another big go-round at the end of that month? And how are you going to get it up stronger than the guys who lived that very same month without getting off at all, and knowing that beating you would be their only chance at getting off? The Game of the Century and what followed presented remarkable circumstances that provide a much more reasonable explanation for the loss to Florida than any notion that the Buckeyes were a fundamentally unworthy BCS contender.

In addition to all of the hate that’s driven up the point spread for this game, we’re certain that folks are reading too much into last week’s win over Ohio University that did not look as easy as many expected it to. We’ve pointed out that a school like OU is likely to be underrated in today’s rapidly changing college football landscape. More importantly, we think that Tressel and the Buckeyes rightly played the game close to the (sweater) vest. Different teams require different amounts of effort to beat. Teams can’t be on full blast all season. It’s a long road, and there is something to be said for a strategy of conservation. The looks of the Buckeyes’ performance against OU suggests that conservation is exactly what was going on. To that end, we think it’s more than likely that Tressel was overly conservative with his play-calling on both sides of the ball. This suggests that last week’s performance was no harbinger of doom, but rather, a smartly-played tune up.

We understand that the loss of Beanie Wells is a blow to the Buckeyes, but this line was too high even before Wells was injured. This line has been inflated by a substantial amount of hate. There are fewer things that we stand stronger against here at Cleveland Frowns than a world where haters win.

The Pick has to be the Buckeyes, +11.5 over USC.

We’re also picking Akron +7 over Ball State, Notre Dame +2 over Michigan, and BYU -7.5 over UCLA.

We understand that Ball State is one of the best teams in the MAC, and a better team than the Syracuse team that Akron beat last week. But the Zips are well-poised to build on last week’s big win. Other than Syracuse, Akron has only ever beaten one BCS team, NC State, in 2006. That Akron team lost to Central Michigan the very next week. We think that this memory will serve this year’s seniors well, as will the Rubber Bowl crowd, many of whom purchased season tickets in anticipation of the opening of Infocision Stadium in 2009. These folks ought to be especially fired up to greet the Zips in their first home game of 2008 on their triumphant return from the East Coast, and we’re happy to join them by taking the points.

As for Notre Dame, Lou Holtz gives them the edge today.

And, as astute Cleveland Frowns commenter 'paula' pointed out to us, when we first played against the Rick Neuheisel era at UCLA, we neglected to account for the effect of Coach Fulmer’s reign of error at Tennessee. We don’t see any similar concerns with BYU today, so we’ll go against UCLA once again today.

That’s all for today, folks. Enjoy the games. We’ll be back tomorrow for the NFL action.

How do you do, Kangaroo! -- Rugby Championship Special: The New Zealand All Blacks and a Curse like Wahoo's Down Under

Today, we have a special report from our friend, The Big Dood, who just returned from a trip Down Under, and offers us some insight into the kind of football that they play here. Tomorrow morning, the New Zealand National Rugby Team, The All Blacks, plays the Australian team, The Wallabies, in a contest to settle not one but two (two!) championships. The Big Dood offers us some sound reasoning in support of a play on The All Blacks:

It is death! It is death!
It is life! It is life!
This is the hairy person
Who caused the sun to shine
Keep abreast! Keep abreast
The rank! Hold fast!
Into the sun that shines!

--The Haka (Maori Tribal Dance)

Fresh off a two and a half week trip down under, I’ve returned home with a deep sense of longing in my heart. Australia is a truly wonderful country. Listing its many charms here would be overkill. I will simply say that while there I became profoundly fond of Australian sport, particularly football in its various incarnations.

As Bill Bryson wrote in a fantastic book called “Down Under”, Australia is truly the most sporting nation on earth. When I first arrived in Sydney at around 8:00am on a Sunday morning, I found what seemed like the entire city pouring out onto the streets in jogging shorts for the annual City to Surf 14k run to Bondi beach. It wasn’t warm either but they turned out in droves to jog to the shore and jump into the water.

The Beijing Olympics were the ongoing backdrop during my stay and the country was collectively swooning. When the dust settled, (as much as dust can ever settle in China) Australia finished fifth in the total medal count, behind China, US, Russia and Great Britain. Amazing stuff for nation of less than 21 million people (just a bit more populous than the Greater NY area). The US, by contrast, a country nearly 15 times the size of Australia, brought home just over twice as much hardware (and China was far worse per capita).

But never mind the Olympics. Those are over. Let’s get to the meat of the Australian sports calendar. It’s footy finals time.

While the decisive series of the National Rugby League and Australian Football league are both worth attention of their own, their championship games are both on the horizon. Tomorrow, at around 6:00am our time, the New Zealand All Blacks will invade Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane to bang heads with the Wallabies for the third test match of the season. Find a bar carrying the Setanta network in your area and you can probably catch a tape delay replay at around 2:15 Eastern. In a winner take all contest to decide both the Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup, the All Blacks are favored by 5 points. I suggest to Frowns Nation to give up the points and take the Kiwi side this time around. I’d also like to subject my logic to the Frownie Faithful for a thorough vetting.

The Tri Nations football tournament is of unusual relevance to this page. The Rugby Union championship series of the Southern Hemisphere pits the national sides of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand against one another, a total of nine times per season.

What do these Tri Nations have in common? Well, for starters, a pretty awful record of treatment regarding the indigenous populations of those countries. Black South Africans, Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maoris have all had a pretty rough go at the hands of white settlers.

The above strangely phrased lyrics at the beginning of this post are an English translation of a part of the Haka. For those unfamiliar, the Haka is a traditional Maori tribal dance that the All Blacks perform at the beginning of international test matches.

There are a number of variations to the Haka, this one below, reserved exclusively for the Wallabies (Australia’s National Team) is called Tena Koe Kangaroo (translation at right).

Tena koe, Kangaroo (How do you do, Kangaroo!)
Tupoto koe, Kangaroo! (You look out, Kangaroo!)
Niu Tireni tenei haere nei (New Zealand is invading you)
Au Au Aue a! (Woe woe woe to you!)

Woe woe woe indeed. And the point is that as bad as the policies of the Dutch and English settlers turned out to be for Black South Africans, it’s hard to argue that anyone, in the world of f*cked over groups of indigenous people have had it quite as bad as the Aborigines. I really can’t do the subject justice here, but as deeply as I fell in love with Australia as a country, I was equally abhorred by their greatest social failing as a people - that being the destruction of Aboriginal culture. I will admit that I was completely ignorant with regard to the plight of Aborigines before visiting.

In fact, I was ignorant about virtually every aspect of Australian life. That is what happens to a country that is impossibly far away from virtually every other country in the world. Nobody knows anything about it.

Here are a few quick facts:

Aborigines are the oldest culture on earth. Their appearance on the Australian continent (a strange and improbably event in its own right) can be traced back over 60,000 years. That is a long goddamn time.

Aboriginal languages have no words for ‘yesterday’ or ‘tomorrow’. They traditionally regard time in a completely different way. Maybe 60,000 years isn’t so long afterall.

As recently as 1970 the Australian Government was sponsoring the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their parents (this is known as the ‘Stolen Generation’), placing them in the care of white Australian families for the purpose of cultural assimilation. This is 1970 we’re talking about.

Aborigines, on average, have life expectancies that are over 20 years shorter than White Australians.

It was, at one point, a law in Australia that any group of Aborigines, greater in number than six, was to be immediately fired upon, no matter if the group consisted of women or children.

The list goes on and on, and it’s quite depressing, so I’ll stop here and say, sadly as well, that my assumptions about the state of Aussie/Aboriginal relations were formed by the friendly Aboriginal characters that jokingly sneak up on Crocodile Dundee while he was out camped in the bush. I assumed Aussies were perfectly nice people and that things were probably peaches for the Aborigines – they slept outside, ate yams, wore their makeup, and poked fun at tourists who tried to take their picture with the lens cap still on their camera.

Woe woe woe to me.

The back-story of white New Zealanders and indigenous Maoris is quite different as my poor understanding goes. Though the Maoris have hardly enjoyed a picnic either with the arrival of white settlers, they were at least given land ownership rights at a certain point and can safely be said to have a stake in the identity of the nation of New Zealand – the Aborigines are somehow virtually invisible within Australia.

My questions are these: does the New Zealand rugby team, by continuing to embrace Maori culture, by including Maori players on its side, by continuing to perform the Haka, enjoy some sort of karmic advantage as a result? Is this at least part of the reason New Zealand has enjoyed such success against Australia (Played 154 - New Zealand 104, Australia 45, Drawn 5)?

Is this not an indication that deference and respect shown to one’s indigenous population is a worthy ideal, a distinction which at times manifests itself in contests of strength and sport?

I suppose I already know the answers, but perhaps we shall learn more tomorrow. And while I will be singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and drinking my Coopers Sparkling tomorrow afternoon, pulling for the Green and Gold, I will do so with the suspicion that I am on the wrong side of justice and honor.

We’ve seen a lot of uneven contests in the Tri-Nations so far this year. 5 points is not a lot to give up.

Bet the Blacks.

Ed's note: Sounds good to us. We especially like this idea that "deference and respect shown to one’s indigenous population is a worthy ideal, a distinction which at times manifests itself in contests of strength and sport." The Pick: New Zealand All Blacks -5 over the Australian Wallabies.

We'll be back tomorrow with college football picks, including a preview of THE BIG GAME between Ohio State and USC.

9/11 Memorial Sportsbook Special

Today’s date compels us to take a break from our regular programming to briefly explain why we think that we'd do best to vote for John McCain in November. Folks who prefer that we write only about ballgames might excuse us today by remembering that the ballgames were cancelled on 9/11/01.

First, we should note that we're sure the Democratic Party would serve us better than the Republicans on a number of issues, if those issues could be placed in a vacuum. For instance, we think that people should generally be allowed to eat or inhale whatever substance they might get their hands on; marry and/or have consensual sex with whichever adults they want, however they want; and should be free to decide whether they want to grow a fetus into a person. But the average American has a relatively easy time with eating, inhaling, marrying, and consensually sexing what they want. And whether or not abortions will ever be outlawed in this country (they won’t), the government will never be able to stop a woman from being able to kill a fetus that’s growing in her own body (it would be as impossible as outlawing suicide). This is relevant to 9/11/o1 because on that day it was made more clear to us than ever that sexing, inhaling, aborting, and the like are parochial concerns in comparison to decisions regarding America’s role in the world. We've since seen how our leaders' conceptions of that role directly impact our foreign policy and thus our susceptibility to another tragedy like the one that was visited upon us seven years ago today. Ideas about the nature of the responsibility that comes with America’s power are especially important this year, because the candidates' positions on what to do with this power are starkly different.

As Professor Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University writes in today’s Wall Street Journal,

"the Obama candidacy can be reckoned as the sharpest break yet with the national consensus over American foreign policy after World War II. This is not only a matter of Sen. Obama's own sensibility; the break with the consensus over American exceptionalism and America's claims and burdens abroad is the choice of the activists and elites of the Democratic Party who propelled Mr. Obama's rise. . . . Mr. Obama proceeds from the notion of American guilt: We called up the furies, he believes. Our war on terror and our war in Iraq triggered more animus. He proposes to repair for that, and offers himself as a bridge to the world."

But there’s another way to look at America’s claims and burdens abroad, and this view is far more likely to be seen through by John McCain than by Barack Obama. The reasons behind this view are the ones that caused us, and likely Mr. McCain, to support the Iraq War from the beginning. What America is up against was aptly described in 2006 by Shelby Steele, who explains 9/11 as a result of conditions that made terrorism, or menace, the most viable means to power in the Middle East:

"When the world was clearly divided between the free West and the communist East, Third World countries could play the ingénue by offering their alignment to the most generous suitor. At the center of a market in alignment, they could extract financial support and enjoy a sense of importance.

"But after the Cold War, these countries suddenly became crones without appeal or leverage in the West. And it was out of this sense of invisibility, this feeling of having fallen out of history, that certain Middle Eastern countries found a way to play the ingénue once again. They would not compete with or seduce the West [indeed, such despotic regimes could never compete with the West]; they would menace it.

"Islamic extremism is an ideology of menace. It empowers those who, but for menace, would languish in the world's disregard. The dark achievement of bin Laden, Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad, names we know only because of their association to menace, is that they have used menace to make their people visible in the world, to bring them back into the scheme of history. And they are greatly loved for this. If their achievements follow from evil rather than from good, this is a small thing. Worse than evil is invisibility.

"So, in the Middle East, America has gone to war not against Islam but against menace as a formula for power--menace as the force that brings the First World in tow to the Third, and that makes bargaining between the two inevitable. Whether the issue is an obsession with nuclear weapons or terrorism in London or assaults against Israel, menace is the power that draws the West backwards into engagement with otherwise forgotten parts of the world. Iran cannot produce a digital camera or a Ferrari but, through menace, it can affect the balance of power in the world. We in the West, and especially America, then, are at war with menace--the indulgence of evil for strategic advantage--because today it is the power that most compromises us.

While Mr. Obama could never say that this menace must not be confronted, he would like us to believe that the wars in the Middle East are entirely different -- that the War in Iraq is unrelated to 9/11 and the War in Afghanistan. But this can't be true. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein employed the same basic formula as those directly behind the 9/11 attacks -- menace as a means to power. Saddam's rule of Iraq -- his control over billions of dollars of oil revenue -- locked up a substantial portion of the resources of the entire Middle East which, in addition to Saddam’s frequent terrorism, torture, and murder of hundreds of thousands of his own people, had to contribute to the creation of an environment where menace was the only means to power -- an environment where a life (and death) of Islamic terrorism was a reasonable choice. And this is to say nothing of the sound evidence that Saddam intentionally and directly supported terrorism of the same kind that brought down the Twin Towers.

The seemingly obvious impact of Saddam's misappropriation of so much of the region's resources should be a strong enough connection between Saddam and Islamic terrorism to prove that Obama is dead wrong in his attempt to separate Iraq from 9/11, even aside from Saddam's more direct support for the 9/11 terrorists. But there other details that Obama would seemingly like us to forget; for instance, that, in addition to murdering hundreds of thousands of his own people, and terrorizing countless others, Saddam flagrantly violated UN resolutions, willfully obstructed the mission of UN weapons inspectors, invaded Kuwait and Iran, plotted to kill an American President, retained at least the infrastructure and desire for making WMD, bribed the leaders of France, Russia, and other countries with UN subsidies designated to feed his people, and harbored a grudge against the United States that could have played out in any of a number of disastrous ways. Further, Saddam's rule served as a powerful symbol througout the region -- one that made the formula of menace to power (and murder in the name of allah) an easier sell for anyone who was trying to sell it.

But, thanks to American leadership, menace as a means to power in the Middle East is not such an easy sell today, because now there's a real alternative. And the prospect of Iraq's vast natural resources returned to the hands of its people make it a fertile field from which democracy can take hold and spread. Yet Obama expects us to ignore the potential impact of this change -- the potential that the Middle East might become populated with governments that serve their people instead of at their peoples' expense. Instead, he wants us look through a microscope at (for?) Osama Bin Laden, as though that would change any of the fundamental conditions that make Islamic terrorism a viable choice for those who live in the Middle East. Free people generally do not commit suicide. The 9/11 attacks were celebrated not only in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, but also in Iraq, and throughout the Middle East. Whether or not he was directly responsible, Saddam celebrated 9/11 because he understood the connection between it and the source of his own power. How could we elect a leader who wants to convince us that this connection is insignificant, or does not exist?

Even if one insists, as Obama does, on denying that the Iraq War was an effective way to attack the global menace of Islamic terrorism, the lack of nuance and good faith demonstrated by Obama and his party in addressing, or failing to address, the issue is startling. Whether or not democracy eventually takes hold in the Middle East -- and we are seeing real progress there -- America’s strategy to rid the Middle East of menace as a viable means to power by planting the seed of democracy in Iraq must be seen as one of the greatest feats of social engineering that any nation has ever undertaken; one that will take years to play out. And it is playing out right now. Yet Mr. Obama incredibly claims about this complex issue that he was “right about Iraq from the beginning.” But, sadly, Obama has to say this, because he and his party's power structure made their choice long ago. This explains why Obama voted twice against a bill that granted immunity to telecom companies who were sued for allowing taps on overseas terrorists, and explains why he vehemently opposed the overwhelmingly successful troop surge in Iraq. Even if one is torn as to the nature of the threat presented to the free world by Islamic terrorism, and the appropriate way to combat that threat (and we’re not), the Democrats’ approach must also be taken into account. This is summed up well by Cleveland native Daniel Henninger in today's Wall Street Journal: “To vote for Sen. Obama is to also vote for a Democratic Party that consumed most of the political system's available oxygen for seven years fighting a U.S. president harder than they did the perpetrators of September 11.”

This scares us more than anything that we suppose the nuts on the right could pull off: The Pick: John McCain +120 over Barack Obama.

Thanks to Power Hour for the photos.

Picking up the Pieces: NFL Week 1/NCAA Week 2 -- Fishy Brownies and Ohio's Fertile Fields of Football

Below are our thoughts on last weekend’s football action, expressed with next weekend's action in mind.

First, the pros: We said that we were willing to go down with the ship with the Browns on Sunday in the spirit of home town solidarity, and go down with the ship we did. We will excuse ourselves for this because it was opening day, and there’s nothing like the Muni Lot on opening day, but that’s all over now, and we refuse to continue being enablers for this squad. So back to reality. In picking the Browns on Sunday we willfully contradicted our belief the importance of several factors that we’ve written frequently about here that negatively impact the franchise's health: 1) The team’s apparent willingness to rest on last season’s laurels and be blinded by the prime-time lights; 2) Braylon’s own special brand of misplaced focus; 3) Coach Crennel’s apparent incompetence as an NFL head coach; and, 4) the team’s apparent misunderstanding of the value of a certain lucky quarterback. Of course, eventually the worm will turn when enough folks eventually become wise to these factors that they are factored into the lines, but our team is such a mess that we’re not sure that this is possible by next week’s game against the Steelers. It’s as close to a must-win game for the Browns as a Week 2 match-up can be, and it will certainly be interesting to see what unfolds

Given the absence of local considerations in the Jets/Dolphins game, our failure to avoid making the same error here is less excusable. Once again, we ignored an important principle that we’ve recently written about here -- that is, our disdain for the concept of retirement and our consequent support for Brett Favre’s tenure with the Jets. Yes, we still like the Dolphins, and still love Ricky Williams, but the Favre issue is likely more metaphysically important -- and was certainly more important in the minds of those who picked this game -- than our pet issues relating to Ricky, thus more relevant to the game’s outcome, which was, actually close (the Jets intercepted Pennington in the end zone as time expired). Had we remembered this, we’d have laid off this game, or even gone the other way.

A look back at Saturday’s slate provides a nice contrast to Sunday’s action, and reminds us of the benefits of sticking to our guns. Our theory was that folks have overlooked the benefits to the smaller local college football programs that have come from the Buckeyes’ much criticized scheduling of these schools in recent years. We had the chance to test that theory on Saturday with four of these schools matching up against relatively big time programs. These picks were 3-1 against the spread. Our one loss was Cincinnati, who’d been hyped as an upset special by ESPN.com in an apparent effort to convince viewers to spend a sunny September Saturday indoors to tune in to what is likely the least exciting schedule of match-ups that we will see all season. This advice was made in obvious conflict of interest, and we will keep our eyes open for such desperate (and evil) ploys by ESPN in the future. In closing, we think Saturday’s success bodes well for the Buckeyes chances of covering the (ridiculously huge) spread (+10.5!) in next week’s monster match-up against the USC Trojans. Who, oh, who won’t stay tuned for that? We will be blogging and picking on location in Mecca, aka Las Vegas, Nevada during the OSU/USC game, and the rest of Saturday and Sunday’s football action so you might expect us to be blogging with extra fervor come the weekend. Please excuse a slow week here in the meantime as we prepare.

Also worth noting is that we’ve added the following quote to our statement of the fundamental principles of sports wagering (now linked in the upper right corner of our homepage for easy reference):

"If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise." -- William Blake

Finally, and in that spirit, please leave your thoughts on next week’s games in the comments here. Some games of interest include OSU/USC, Notre Dame/Michigan, Browns/Steelers, and Jets/Patriots. Such efforts on your part can only benefit the entire Cleveland Frowns community. Thank you. We hope you're looking forward to this weekend as much as we are.

. . .

Tuesday. . . . We'll pick up the pieces on Tuesday.

What Does This Bird Have To Do With Our NFL Week 1 Picks?

That’s easy! Everything. The wise and distinguished looking creature pictured above is called a Brown Fish-owl. The Brown Fish-owl is indigenous to tropical South Asia, which is too bad, because it would be cool if we had one of these guys perched on our shoulder today while we rooted up for the Browns and the Fish -- our two picks of the day. Not only is the bird's name perfect, but look again at how wise it looks. Surely it would have some insight into the late games, or even next week's action. Plus, the Brown Fish-owl has some interesting and potentially useful eating habits: "From three to thirteen hours after consuming a meal, the owl's muscular stomach will compress the undigestible hair, bones, feathers, exoskeletons etc... into a compact pellet which is regurgitated." Think of what we could do with these pellets! They seem like much safer things to use than beer bottles if we need to send a message to folks like rude Cowboys fans or incompetent referees. And not only would these be safer, but undigestible hair, bones, feathers, and exoskeltons would surely send a stronger message than your run-of-the mill plastic beer bottle. And we wouldn't have to waste a drop of beer.

But enough ruminating on what cannot be. Let's pick the ballgames. We’ll start with the Brownies first because a brown fish is way better than a fishy brownie.

The Browns are 6 point underdogs today at home against the Dallas Cowboys. The honeymoon was short for our guys in brown and orange. They’ve gone from upstart darlings of the NFL schedule to everybody’s popular pick to bust this season. Bill Simmons and Gene Wojciechowski are in on this act over at ESPN. Wojo has the Brownies down for one of his “AFC Flops,”
and one of Simmons’ 12 bold NFL predictions for this season is that “Cleveland will stink.” The folks at Covers.com are in on it too, along with Peter King at SI, and the overwhelming percentage of players at sportsbook.com. Even with Dallas moving from a 3 point favorite, all the way up to 6, 87% of the action is on the Cowboys.

We’re the first to admit that the Browns didn’t look so good during the pre-season, and we’re nothing if not skeptical of Player’s Coach Crennel, but something about the way everyone is ganging up on our guys is a little too much for us. So we’ll start a new trend here, by taking the Browns to cover today at home. First, and again, it’s hard to read much into the pre-season -- no matter what they tell the media, we simply don’t know what the Browns’ agenda was. And we do know that a number of our starters were resting injuries, and will be back today. Another thing is that, while the Browns might not live up to expectations this season, they’re not going to be an NFL doormat. The Browns have a solid roster, and 6 points is a lot to give such a team at home in the NFL. Finally, while the Cowboys do appear to be loaded, the team is also affiliated with a series of legitimate crazies. Anything can happen when the karma of folks like Jerry Jones, Jessica Simpson, and Terrell Owens is so closely tied to the outcome of your ballgames. So we’re not going to get swept up in the anti-Browns hype just yet. Not to start the season, anyway. Not with what’s going on in the Muni Lot right now. No way. We’ll take the points and go down with the ship if we must. The Pick: Browns +6 over the Cowboys.

As for the fish +3 over the Jets, a whopping 93% of the action at Sportsbook has been on the Jets all week, yet the line hasn’t budged from 3. Something is up here. In addition to the Jets being a popular "sleeper" pick for this season, we think folks are overemphasizing the Dolphins misfortunate 2007 season when they went 1-15. But that team played a number of close games against tough opponents, including the Giants, Redskins, and Steelers. And this year’s Dolphins should be vastly improved. In addition to adding new coach, Tony Sparano, they’ve strengthened their offensive line with first-round pick Jake Long. Ex-Jet Chad Pennington takes over at quarterback for the much-maligned Cleo Lemon (and must know something about the Jets), and the Dolphins’ young defense, anchored by linebacker Channing Crowder, made some waves in the pre-season and looks like it might be tough. Finally, Ricky Williams is back for the Dolphins after serving a one-year suspension for marijuana use. Given that Ricky is so often criticized in the media for this, we expect that the severe injustice of depriving a man of his livelihood for a full year, just because he ingested a plant (a plant, that God made, that grows out of the ground), is lost on a number of the folks who will wager on this game today. These folks will dismiss Ricky’s importance to this team, and to this game. Also, Ricky practices yoga. The importance of this will be dismissed as well. But not by us. Ricky knows what’s up. We love Ricky. We love the Dolphins today. The Pick: Dolphins +3 over the Jets.

Enjoy the games today, everyone. We’ll be back soon with a breakdown of the weekend’s college and pro action -- and maybe a Monday Night pick.

NCAA Week 2: Why Oh, Why Oh, Why Oh, Would We Ever Leave Ohio?

Last weekend, we wrote about how Jim Tressel's often-criticized practice of scheduling local schools to play the Buckeyes early in the season strengthens those programs, and Ohio high school programs in addition, which serves to strengthen the Buckeyes' recruiting pool. Today looks like a perfect day for us to back these locals.

Folks aren't thrilled with today's slate of college football games that has no ranked teams squaring off, and only a handful of games featuring 1-A teams with a spread lower than a touchdown. ESPN's Reece Davis has conjured up the moniker of "Sneaky Saturday," to help his bosses keep us pinned to our couches despite today's underwhelming schedule. What's keeping us interested is that four local teams who have been on the Buckeyes schedule in recent years play against relatively high profile programs. With not much else going on, we'll back all four of them today in recognition and support of Tressel's irrigation of Ohio's fertile football fields. We think that folks who criticize the Buckeyes for playing these schools miss what he is doing here, and might be missing an opportunity to cash in on these strengthened programs.

The Picks:

Ohio University Bobcats +33 over the Ohio State Buckeyes (Folks might overemphasize the impact of Wells being out, but we think Tressel is prone to keeping the scores of these local matchups somewhat under control.)

Akron Zips +4.5 over the Syracuse Orangemen (This line went down from 5.5 at Sportsbook.com, despite over 70% of the action being on Syracuse. Looks like somebody knows something here. Sneaky.)

Cincinnati Bearcats +22.5 over the Oklahoma Sooners (Folks are excited about these Bearcats. We'll see.)

Miami of Ohio Red Hawks +14.5 over the Michigan Wolverines (How bad is Michigan? 83% of Sportsbook.com action expects them to bounce back against Miami).

Enjoy Sneaky Saturday, folks. We'll be back tomorrow with NFL action.

(Thanks again to Natalie Dee for the artwork).

Picking up the Pieces: Giants 16, Redskins 7

In line with certain principles recently announced here, we hereby adopt a new policy of making a follow-up post on each pick we make here, win or lose. The purpose of these follow up posts is to note things that we think we learned from the result of the game that we picked.

Tonight we wish we hadn't overlooked three key points about the Giants/Skins game:

First, for the third pick in a row that we've made here, a line looked funny to us. Just as we wondered why Tennessee was favored by so few, and Illinois was expected to lose by so many, we wondered why the Giants remained 4.5 point favorites, even after the loss of two of their stars. It looked weird. Hard to quantify this gut feeling, but we know we had it, and we know that this feeling often indicates that there is something out there that the experts know that we don't. We will try to be in better tune to this feeling in the future.

The second thing we overlooked, and we're really embarrassed about this, is the rock-solidness of inveterate non-player's coach Tom Coughlin. This is especially embarrassing because we posted in appreciation of him just last week. We didn't even consider the Coughlin v. Jim Zorn (Jim WHO?) angle. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Finally, and this is a new one for us: Props go out to Mr. Eli Manning. He looked fantastic tonight. He looked like a leader. He looked like his brother. And we suspect that the strength of the Manning family is something that folks tend to overlook, like we did tonight. Nobody is predisposed to love you more than your family (See, e.g., blood (milk?) thicker than water, and related post here), and the Mannings certainly appear to take advantage of this love. And we've recently been thinking that certain changes in American family life, for instance those caused by the fact that children need to have resumes that look like those of Fortune 500 execs by the time they are 17 if they want to go to a decent college, have really hurt places like Cleveland. When we don't take the time to so much as have a regular meal with our family, we tend to lose this infinitely valuable connection. Consequences of this include masses of good Northeast Ohio kids moving to places like a certain city that was built on a godforsaken swamp in Illinois just because there is more young "tail" to take home from the bars there. Gross. The Mannings are less susceptible to this depravity than other families, so can draw on this powerful bond. This showed in Young Eli's performance tonight.

In closing, we will note that we do not regret our opening day offeratory in support of the Skins, and our benefactors at Sportsbook.com. Had we not made that play, we might not have received the gift of insight about the strength of Manning's family ties, or the other aforementioned errors of our ways.

We are going to go hug our mom, drunk-dial our stupid cousin who just moved to Chicago, and get back to thinking about this weekend's action. Talk soon.

NFL Opening Offeratory: One Time with the Skins for the Sportsbook

Tonight, the New York Giants and Washington Redskins kick of the 2008 NFL Season by renewing their rivalry in New York. After setting forth the guiding principles behind our picks earlier today, and thinking more about them, we think we might stand to be more selective about the games we pick, but we can’t not pick the opener. And tonight we think we have good reason to go along with the experts.

We'll explain:

From time to time, the fine folks at Sportsbook.com send us an email telling us about their “Game of the Day.” In these emails, they give us a short narrative about the game, and recommend a pick. Below we’ve pasted a copy of the text one of these emails that we received yesterday, about tonight’s Giants/Skins game:

"Here's Sportsbook.com's Game of the Day:

In their last 39 games where they were underdogs between 3.5 to 7 points, the Redskins were a money making 28-11 against the spread (ATS). Additionally, in their last five games versus an NFC opponent, the Redskins were 4-1 ATS. Late in the season last year, Washington won in New York convincingly by the score of 22-10. It remains to be seen what the impact will be on the Giants' defense with the losses of defensive ends Michael Strahan (9 sacks) and Osi Umenyiora (13 sacks). Given the intel above, it is interesting that only 13% of the early bettors see value in the Redskins (+4.5).

Regards,

The Sportsbook.com Team"

We’ve been skeptical of messages like this from Sportsbook.com in the past, but we think we’re coming around on this point (hopefully, this is progress). First, we’ve found that when we pay attention to these messages, more often than not we noticed that the Sportsbook.com team offers us a winning pick. On consideration, this makes a lot of sense. These people don’t want to be passing on stinkers to their customers. That would only breed mistrust and frustration. And by handing out winners, the Sportsbook folks get their hooks in to their customers, who think, “gosh, lookit how easy this is.” Of course, once these folks have to make picks without Sportsbook’s expert wisdom, the going is likely to get rougher for them.

And we harbor no illusions that the folks at Sportsbook.com are not experts. These folks must do heavy math over there, or at least know people who do, and if there were ever a night to share some of this wisdom with the masses, it would be opening night -- to get all of their customers and potential customers excited at the outset for just how easy this picking business is. (Har-dee, har, har, har…) Note, we don’t think that the trends above are anything special. We don’t see how what the Skins did “in their last five games versus an NFC opponent” has much to do with what they’ll do in their next one, for example, but we don’t expect the Sportsbook wizards to reveal the secrets behind their recommendations to the masses. And we think we have a secret of our own that corroborates the Sportsbook recommendation.
We’re thankful for Sportsbook.com, and the work that we do there. They are as fine an internet Sportsbook as we could possibly imagine. Up to date lines, useful website, action on almost everything, and customer service agents who respond promptly, and with impeccable manners. We want things to go well for them, especially tonight, on this holiday of sorts.

Not only is it important for their recommendation to pan out from a credibility standpoint, it also appears that they have unbalanced action on this game. Too much is on the Giants, so they’d like more of us to take the Skins so that they can get closer to their guaranteed 10% juice from the losers. And we’re happy to oblige. It’s not just that we think that the value of a defending Superbowl winner is inflated on opening night (especially in New York). It’s also not just that we’re concerned that Eli Manning was more lucky than good last season (too much bad karma going against the Patriots for them to win, that Manning and the Giants were beneficiaries of, perhaps?). It’s not the seemingly devastating losses of Michael Strahan and Usi Umeniyora either (aren’t defensive lines really important?). And it’s not just that we think the Skins looked pretty damn solid in the pre-season, and that the Curse of Daniel Snyder (more on that another day, to be sure) is wearing off at least a little bit. It’s that we think it’s only appropriate to make an opening offering to the folks at Sportsbook.com, in gratitude and appreciation for what they do for us.

Not insignificantly, we are sure that the world's greatest living yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar would agree with this pick. In the Iyengar tradition, it is customary for students, before beginning a class, to say the “Invocation to Patanjali,” a short verse in tribute to the Indian sage Patanjali from whom much of modern yogic philosophy is said to originate, as a tribute not only to Patanjali, but also to all who have given of themselves to teach yoga. We pick the Redskins tonight, in the same spirit of tribute and gratitude for our friends at Sportsbook.com, who make so much of what we do possible. Namaste.

Ooooooooooooooooooommmmmgooooooooooooskiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnzzzzzzzzzzz….

The Pick: Washington Redskins +4 over the New York Football Giants.

How and Why We Wager on Sports: Three Basic Principles

UPDATE, 6/16/09: THIS POST HAS BEEN SUPERCEDED BY VERSION 2.0.

"If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise." -- William Blake

We spend a not-insignificant amount of effort predicting the success of wagers on sporting events and writing about those predictions here at Cleveland Frowns. Because this is not insignificant to us, we think it useful to set forth here three basic principles that underlie these efforts -- three basic principles that explain how and why we do this. We offer this piece in hopes that: (1) it will enhance your overall reading experience here at Cleveland Frowns; (2) making these principles explicit here will, in combination with your feedback, help us continue to develop them and apply them to increasingly successful ends; and, (3) developing these principles will help us better enjoy sporting events, and life, at least a little bit more. We can think of no more appropriate day to offer this up than NFL Opening Day in this lucky year of 2008, so without further ado, below is our explanation of three principles that we believe must be kept in mind for one to enjoy any consistent success in sports wagering:

Principle 1: You can win. Unlike blackjack, craps, and other forms of “gambling” that sports wagering is commonly associated with, when you play any given game against the spread, your odds against “the house” are not stacked against you. Unlike these casino games, your odds of winning are as good as the house’s. You just have to pick the right side. On any given game, people will wager on the losing side for the wrong reasons. If you can identify these reasons, you can play and win on the other side. If you can do this 56% of the time, you will earn a profit. And you shouldn’t feel bad about it. If some people want to put their money on the wrong side, other people should be allowed to have that money for picking the right side. Not only is that only fair, it’s probably better for society to have more money in the hands of people who, all else held equal, make better decisions when they risk their money on the outcomes of sporting events. As for potentially taking the money of someone who can’t afford to lose it, remember, if you didn’t take it, some wiseguy would. And you are more inclined than that wiseguy to donate your winnings to other unfortunates . . . whichever unfortunates you desire. And you might know unfortunates who are more worthy than, say, Joe from Metuchen who blew all of the “fun-money” that his wife allotted him for the entire fall on the Jets in the second week of the pre-season on an August weekend with “the Bros” in Vegas. If not, and you don’t know how to get in touch with Joe from Metuchen, you could make a donation to Gamblers Anonymous that is earmarked specifically for sports-wagering addicts. Think of all of the good you might do.

It is worth noting at the outset that this is all driven by a healthy human instinct to take risks. If our ancestors didn’t act on this instinct they would not have left their caves to kill saber-toothed tigers and wooly mammoths, and thus would not have had steak, coats, blankets, tools, and other essential things. The human race would have died out long ago.

*TECHNICAL NOTE 1 OF 2: Most sportsbooks take an extra 10% for losing plays. Importantly, this does not affect the probability of winning any given game, or even a series of games. That a line for a given game ends up at a certain number does not mean that each side has a 50% chance of winning, rather, it reflects the sportsbook’s attempt to attract equal amounts of action on each side of the play; sportsbooks move lines to get more folks to play the less popular side. When a sportsbook does this successfully, the 10% from the losers is its profit margin. Unlike games like blackjack and craps, where the rules of the game affect the average of how many times you can win, the rules of sports wagering do not -- the only catch is that you must win 56% of the time to win over the long term. No house rules can stop you from winning with that, or any amount of frequency.

Principle 2: You can’t win ‘em all. So don’t try. No matter how good a given play might look, you can never count on a winner. All that we really know about the mysterious forces that decide how the balls bounce and who is allowed to have money at any given time is that these forces are infinitely complicated things that we can only begin to approach an understanding of. Plato said, “never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” This is what we are after: Progress. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Also consider that if the ‘sucker plays’ didn’t win sometimes, the ‘suckers’ would never play, the games would be no fun to watch, and the universe would collapse on itself. In these parts, “2 out of 3 ain’t bad” is an understatement. Winning 6 out of 10 is a reasonable and profitable goal.

Principle 3: Winning isn’t everything. Win or lose, we pick because we think picking makes us a better person. Because we believe in the existence of some kind of metaphysical order to the universe, we must also believe that there must be some order to how this entire sports wagering business goes down. So we pick, pay attention to the results, and get closer to our God* in the process. You might suggest that there are better ways to understand the order of the universe -- better things to pay attention to. We concede that this might be so at any given time, but we will not concede that every man is not entitled to his diversions. And we choose this as one of ours. Digital Underground said, “Doowhutchalike,” and this is what we like. Moreover, this is what we love. And it’s not just us. Our species in general pays a considerable, even remarkable, amount of attention to sporting events. Whether or not this attention would be better spent elsewhere, it is not so spent. As such, there must be something to be gained from better understanding how the market for wagering on these events reflects human ideas about their eventual outcomes. This must be a path to a better understanding of the mysteries of the universe, through a better understanding of our fellow man.

It is crucial, here, to note that we understand that this market is greatly influenced by experts -- people who spend a lot more time analyzing this market than we do, like MIT grads who get $500K entry level salaries at the sportsbooks, and the more dangerous ones who don’t work for the books, but make plays of their own. We realize that these experts might make decisions that influence lines in ways that we scarcely comprehend. But we want to understand how the ideas of these experts fit into all of this too. (Mustn’t these ideas see the light of day, if mankind is to evolve as a species?) Thankfully, there are two ways in which we believe we can do this -- two ways in which we might, by process of elimination, understand how the experts do influence the lines for these games by understanding how they do not. First, if the books are to succeed in attracting equal amounts of action on each side of a game, they must, at least sometimes, account for us average joes. Especially for the big games, when there’s heavy traffic in the sportsbooks. In games like this, the experts might all agree about an outcome within a certain range, but one bad (or irrelevant) idea held by the masses can drive a line outside that range -- say, for example, the idea, commonly held in January of 2008, that Tom Brady is the best quarterback in NFL history. So even if this “voice of the masses” is relatively insignificant, if it influences these lines even just a little bit, we can do a little bit better by understanding just how. And that’s progress.

But more importantly, and more interestingly to us, we’re sure that there is an order to these outcomes that the experts can never account for. And here we rely on Rule 2, above, which provides that nobody -- not even the most expert of experts -- will ever be able to fully predict exactly what’s going to happen in these games, or explain exactly why these things happen when they do. And where science fails, man has two choices: submit to chaos, or find religion. We gladly choose the latter course here, and accept our responsibility to attempt to bridge the gap between man and God by wagering on sports. We do this by making our picks based on what we think we want the world to be like, because at Cleveland Frowns, we believe in a God that wants us to be happy. And if we pick the Mets in Pittsburgh one weekend because we think that God wants to reward bold New Yorkers who visit Pittsburgh to see a ballgame and help to overcome anti-Heartland bias in the process, and the Mets end up winning, nobody is going to be able to tell us that it wasn’t so. And if the Mets don’t end up winning that game? Well, God has other things to worry about too. If our pick loses, we’ll at least be a step closer to understanding what those other things are. And we will enjoy ourselves, immensely. And if one day we find that we do not enjoy this, we will stop. In the meantime, we hope you will enjoy yourselves along with us as we watch these games together.

Excelsior.

*TECHNICAL NOTE 2 of 2: This philosophy does not require that one believe in any particular God. Any God, or team of Gods will do. Atheists might usefully substitute the word "chaos" for "God," above.

NCAA Labor Day Special: The Moral High Ground

Today is Labor Day, so we’re not going to put too much work into explaining why we like the Tennessee football Volunteers today against the UCLA football Bruins tonight at the Rose Bowl, or even putting too much thought into the pick at all. In fact, the rules of Labor Day forbid us from doing so. But, as this is, after all, America, G*ddamit, and there is a big time college football game on today, the rules of Labor Day also mandate that we choose a side. This is one of the few opportunities where the Sports Wagering Gods permit us to shoot from the hip with a pick.

So we see this 7.5 point spread in favor of Tennessee and think, by all visible objective criteria, this line looks too low. Tennessee is one of the best teams in the Nation’s best conference. They return all five of their offensive linemen, and will be playing against UCLA’s third string quarterback. UCLA is a decent team in a much weaker conference that has been getting killed in the recruiting wars in recent years by cross-town rival USC. Moreover, UCLA will be testing a new system tonight run by their new coach and offensive coordinator. Tennessee -7.5 looks so easy (90% of the sportsbook.com players agree) that we’re inclined to call this a sucker bet and go the other way by taking UCLA and the points.

But we can’t, and won’t take UCLA today, because we will not do anything to support the Rick Neuheisel era at UCLA (which kicks off today), and will not support any Rick Neuheisel era anywhere until we believe that justice is meted out for what went down on his watch at the University of Washington. (The remarkable, bone chilling, Seattle Times report linked here is a must-read.) What is UCLA thinking? This guy shouldn’t have a job there, or anywhere except maybe the commissary or library in a penitentiary somewhere. We’re even further irritated by UCLA’s huffing and puffing about their new hire, as evidenced by the above full page ad in the LA Times (how about winning something first?) So we’ll risk walking into a potential sucker bet-buzzsaw to take the moral high ground this Labor Day by supporting the Tennesee Volunteers in opposition to the beginning of the Rick Neuheisel era at UCLA. The moral high ground: What could be more American than that? The Pick: Tennessee -7.5 over UCLA.

Update: UCLA wins by 3 in overtime. Apparently God hates rape victims. Now that we have a better idea of just what a cold, cold world it is, we will redouble our efforts and try to get back on the winning track next weekend. Consider last weekend to be the first pancake that gets thrown out.