Board 8 > College Football Ladder Contest Week 6

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'd say that I was only handicapping myself by putting this up as late as I did, but people actually tried their hands at lower-conference games willingly last week so maybe not. I put in the qualifiers for the new level in advance, but I expect this to only be an issue in Conference Championship Game week.

Rules
- State which level you're on when you make your pick. Usually it should be obvious, but say it anyway.
- Deadline for making a pick is the start of the earliest game that you're picking. This means that if you are on a level that involves picking multiple teams, ALL of your teams are locked as soon as one of your teams has kicked off. If you don't have a pick in by the start of the early games, you can just pick later games, but if you can't make an eligible pick out of the games that haven't started yet, you can't advance that week.
- Conferences featured in games may be imposed at certain levels, but unless otherwise stated, any game(s) featuring two FBS teams are eligible.
- I'll list some marquee games each week, but you're not restricted to these. If you pick other games, make sure that your lines can be verified.

Level 1: Pick one game against the spread.

Level 2: Down goes Goliath. Pick a ranked team to lose, using the official Selection Committee Rankings if you're still at this level by the time they start coming out and the AP Poll prior to that. The ranked team must not be an underdog of at least 7 points (generally only happens when the favorite is also a ranked team). Alternatively, if you think that no ranked teams will lose (or the only ones that will lose are underdogs of at least 7 points), you can use "no valid option" as your pick and will advance if this comes to pass; this option must be chosen before any valid pick has kicked off.

Level 3: Pick three over/unders; 2 wins or 1 win and 2 pushes passes.

Level 4: Three-team teaser. Tease the lines six points in your favor, two wins and a push or three wins needed to pass.

Level 5: Pleaser. Choose one team and move the line seven points to your detriment.

Level 6: Something fishy in Vegas. Choose one game and please both sides of the spread by 15 points and both sides of the O/U by 25 points. This will give you four total picks consisting of two sets of mutually exclusive outcomes. If any of these four outcomes is a winner, you move on to the next level.

Level 7: Pick one team from each of the ten FBS conferences to win straight-up. You may pick no more than two teams that are double-digit favorites and no more than one of those teams can be favored by at least 20 points. If adhering to this rule would force you to take at least one double-digit underdog, those underdogs need only to cover the spread rather than win straight-up.

Level 7:
TsunamiXXVIII

Level 6:
kevwaffles

Level 5:

Level 4:
5tarscream
Paratroopa1

Level 3:
jcgamer107
KCF0107

Level 2:
bwburke94
Eddv
Jakyl25

Level 1:
Shaduln
SmartMuffin

Marquee games:
Louisville (-3.5) @ NC State (O/U 65.5) (Thursday Night)
West Virginia (+13.5) @ TCU (O/U 68)
Miami (FL) (-3) @ Florida State (O/U 46)
Alabama (-26.5) @ Texas A&M (O/U 54)
Washington State (-2.5) @ Oregon (O/U 61.5)

It kills me to put a 1-2 team in the "marquee games", but they are technically higher up in the "also receiving votes" than A&M or Maryland and besides that tOSU-Maryland game had a spread of over 30 points.
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Ooh. I was considering allowing 3 double-digit favorites instead of 2, and looking at this week's slate, this may have been more unforgiving than I thought! I made my picks by combing through all games, picking out single-digit favorites that I liked, then looking at which conferences lacked picks and highlighting all games with single-digit spreads...and in three out of the four conferences where I hadn't made a pick, there was only one option! In the end, it came down to whether I trusted a 4.5-point road favorite in a Group of Five conference (same number of wins but in more games played) or a 3.5-point home favorite in a Power 5 (worse raw record by one full game, but seemingly stronger SoS). Ah, well, at least I'm not taking any Thursday or Friday games so I can drop my least comfortable pick if by some miracle Michigan drops to a 9.5-point favorite by Saturday (currently favored by 10.5). Or, um...Middle Tennessee State, currently a 10-point favorite over a team with a record 1.5 games better than theirs? ...Well, at least that makes the decision on which low-confidence team to take a bit easier.

Level 7:

American: Navy
ACC: Miami-FL
Big Ten: Ohio State (30.5-point favorite)
Big 12: Texas Tech (17-point favorite)
C-USA: Florida Atlantic
MAC: Akron
MWC: Hawaii
Pac-12: Colorado
SEC: Kentucky
Sun Belt: Idaho

...Huh. My gut instinct once I'd decided on the conferences for my two big favorites was to go with Oklahoma (28-point favorite), but then that left me with my most comfortable Big Ten team as...Michigan, which is barely even a double-digit favorite and feels like a waste of a "big favorite" pick as a result. I mean, yes, Iowa feels rather safe as well, but...TTU over Kansas, even on the road, feels safer than either of them.
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Huh. Well, at least I can say that I probably didn't hurt myself by putting this up too late for the Arkansas State-Georgia Southern game--Arkansas State was a 9-point favorite, which would make them an awfully tempting pick, but locking myself in yesterday would've kept me from being allowed to pick Kentucky, which didn't drop to 9.5 points until this morning. Glad to see that that's the direction it'd been heading; I'd hate for either the MTSU or Michigan pick to open up only for me to be unable to pick it without switching my SEC pick to either LSU-Florida or South Carolina-Arkansas. (Remember, it's what the lines are at the time you make the picks that counts. So if one of your single-digit favorites moves to double-digits or your double-digit-but-less-than-20-point favorite moves to 20+, you're still allowed to keep it as long as you don't change your picks.)

(By the way, the other conference where I was uncertain about a single-digit favorite was the MAC. I feel good enough about the Akron pick after looking at the teams a bit closer, but it wasn't one that jumped out at me.)
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Level 4:
Miami (+3)
Notre Dame (-8.5)
Utah (+11.5)
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I don't see a specific win condition for level 7. Does that mean it's 100% correct over 10 picks? Eesh.
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I will probably do this tomorrow
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Still doing this tonight
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Level 4

Utah +9.5
Colorado -1
Texas Tech -9

I also like Georgia -11, Florida +5, Florida State +9, and Michigan -4, but these will do!

Level 3:
Central Michigan/Ohio Under 54.5
Maryland/Ohio St. over 60.5
California/Washington over 52
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Level 3:
West Virginia (+13.5) @ TCU UNDER 68
Washington State (-2.5) @ Oregon OVER 61.5
Michigan vs Michigan St OVER 40
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Ah, much better.

And yes, it's 10 out of 10. Big difficulty jump, I know.

Level 7:

American: Navy
ACC: Miami-FL
Big Ten: Ohio State (30.5-point favorite)
Big 12: Texas Tech (15.5-point favorite)
C-USA: Middle Tennessee State
MAC: Akron
MWC: San Diego State
Pac-12: Colorado
SEC: Kentucky
Sun Belt: Idaho
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Level 6:
Duke (-1) @ Virginia (O/U 52.5)

I'm having trouble finding individual teams I like right now, but I look at this one and I can't imagine it will end close for some reason.
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Iowa State is pulling it's annual upset scare on a high ranked Big 12 team
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I done fucked up
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Meow1000 posted...

Iowa State is pulling it's annual upset scare on a high ranked Big 12 team

Wow. Even if I don't actually advance this week, I still feel like I dodged a bullet. Chances are that if Michigan had dropped below a 10-point favorite, Oklahoma would've become my choice of heavy favorites. I'd have to look at the ACC options because Miami would definitely be the slight favorite that I'd be dropping, but I said before that if there hadn't been so few good Big Ten options, I wanted the Sooners.
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goddam it West Virginia/TCU you had 10 total points at half time don't you dare go over
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AUGH.

I felt like something was odd about that Navy-Air Force line. It seemed like an absolute gift to get that as a sub-10. But seriously, what is this collapse?
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I can't win. Air Force came out of nowhere when I saw Miami threatening to retake the lead, and when I go to Navy-Air Force? FSU comes right back with the quick-strike. But they struck quickly enough to give Miami a chance, and the Canes can tie it with a field goal.
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...I don't even care that my Idaho pick is losing, and that the ULM pick that I deemed acceptable before noticing the Idaho possibility would've already gotten me a winner. This is what Saturdays are all about. Navy and Miami both coming up with touchdown drives after falling behind inside of two minutes... this is great.
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So glad I took Akron instead of Western Michigan. The Broncos haven't lost yet... but they just sent it into sextuple-overtime.
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...Ah well. I knew this level was sadistic when I made it, and I had a chance at the end on the Vandals as well.

End of the sixth overtime in Buffalo, still no winner.
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...Damnit I was hoping that would work. I saw that ULL's win probability was only listed at 99.1% even after that first down and figured that the Vandals must have had enough timeouts remaining to potentially get the ball back, or at least force the Ragin' Cajuns to run plays. I complained about Navy and Miami losses before they were final and they turned to wins, but alas, the Vandals couldn't hold on 3rd and 3.
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Finally passed level 3
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Colorado letting me down

Okay, maybe next week I should say that I really want to take, like, Alabama or something, but just can't justify it, just to jinx them. Seriously, Wolverines? I swear, if Michigan had dropped to 9.5, I would've taken them and possibly also Oklahoma (with VaTech taking over as the pick for the 10-19.5 range, though I feel like I might've stuck with TTU and taken Clemson). And I'd be 5-4 right now instead of 7-2, not that it matters because like I said, this level's brutal and requires 10-0. (And I officially have no regrets, because unlike the Sun Belt pick where I had multiple options that I was considering and one of them would've been a winner, I never considered not taking the Buffs.)

Except the funny thing is...I had been expressing some kind-of-maybe wishes that I didn't have any noon games to give the Michigan-Michigan State game some extra time to drop? It didn't do that at all. It was 10 flat for most of the morning, rose to 10.5 late morning, was up to 11 by noon, dropped back down to 10.5 again early in the afternoon, and yet by the time the game kicked off, it had shot all the way up to 13 points.

In fact, it went from 10.5 points to 13 points in the final two hours before kickoff. There was apparently that type of drastic late action, basically a Hail Mary by Vegas begging for more people to bet on Michigan State.
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when the ducks and harbaugh both lose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LZpgVsVi5A
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jcgamer107 posted...

Michigan vs Michigan St OVER 40

i probably should have checked ahead of time to see that half the game was gonna be played in a monsoon
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oh man Gary Anderson just bailed on the Beavs <_<

Not that he was doing that great, but walking away in the middle of a season is kind of a dick move. And he randomly bailed on Wisconsin too. Who is gonna hire him at this point?

Also the whispers are already starting that Nebraska is unhappy with Riley.... oh god no :(
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Keep alive.
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