If you are like us here on the aging PiRate ship, you probably grew up in the 1950’s, 1960’s, or 1970’s watching Wile E. Coyote chase the Roadrunner every Saturday morning. He always had a great plan, and of course, he was Acme Products’ best customer. Every plan came “this close” to working. But, in the end, he fell hundreds of feet to the canyon floor and made a splat.
That’s how last week’s episode of the PiRate Picks turned out to be. We chose the best games we saw at Acme Handicapping. We came “this close” to having an incredibly successful week. Two of the long shot parlays won and returned big payouts. With less than five minutes to go in three other selections, we were on the winning side. Alas, at the last second the Roadrunners of the gridiron made their Beep Beep sounds and ran off to safety, leaving our three selections to make a splat at the bottom of the canyon.
Ah, but here’s the rub. Just like Wile E. Coyote, who has endless funds to continue obtaining more great Acme products, our imaginary bank account is just as endless with funds. Just like Wile E., we can go splat on the canyon floor and get right back up and go at it again, because any financial losses are just as fake as the images drawn on a cartoon.
Thus, we have six more Money Line picks this week after suffering a minute net loss last week. For the year, our return on imaginary investment is -1%. It’s not a big negative, but comically, this feature usually returns a small profit every year. However, we would never play these picks, because we prefer to sleep at night. We encourage you to follow our lead. Read it for a laugh, just like you make when you see Wile E. falling off the cliff yet again.
We hope you have read numerous times on this site that we do not wager real money on the selections you see here in this weekly feature. We always encourage you to do the same. It is for this reason that we were able to sleep peacefully this week after the incredibly unlucky fortunes that destroyed what could have been a second incredibly successful weekend.
The weekend started out with a nice parlay win as Kansas State beat Nevada and Troy beat Southern Miss. to return a nice $282 on our imaginary $100 wager. The combo parlay with one college game and one pro game was next. Mississippi State had to beat Memphis, and they should have done so. The officials in the game admitted to making a major mistake in the game, and there was a blatant oversight on the same play. Memphis scored the decisive touchdown returning a punt that had already been signaled as dead by the back judge. At the same time, the punt returner wore number four. Nothing wrong with that, but he was not the only number four in the game for the Tigers. Had the mistake not been made, Mississippi State wins the game, and when Denver won the next day, that parlay would have been a winner of $226.42 on the imaginary $100 wagered to guarantee a winning weekend.
On Sunday, Seattle led Tennessee by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, and Kansas City led Baltimore by 11 in the fourth quarter. The other parts of the final two parlays had already won. Tennessee scored twice to tie the Seahawks where they went on to win in overtime to kill one parlay, and Baltimore pulled off a minor miracle to beat Kansas City by a point to kill the other one.
Even with the three heartbreakers losing, we are out nothing. No stress means we can return to picking games this week with the same imaginary bank account that never runs out of $100 investment opportunities.
When the opening lines came out, we immediately spotted a huge mistake in one college game. It was the spread in the Georgia-Vanderbilt game, as it opened at 30 1/2 or 31 depending on the books in question. The bookmakers made a big mistake, and within five minutes, that spread had moved to 35. The mistake they made was assuming that Vanderbilt would get about three points for home field advantage. SEC fans and bettors know that Georgia fans will make Vanderbilt Stadium a sea of red. Somewhere either side of 90% will be rooting for the Bulldogs, making this a home game on their opponent’s field. Vanderbilt’s quarterbacks will have to use hand signals on their home field. Georgia is really the home team, and poof, the line may still be low at 35. We don’t issue straight wagers against the line these days. But, we came oh so close to issuing a special bulletin Sunday night when we saw that incredibly low number.
We spent a couple hours looking over the money lines this week looking for certain in-house data to come up with the games we wanted to play. This was a difficult week, because we didn’t particularly like the schedule in either college or pro football. In the end, in order to get our parlays up above +120, we had to go with multiple very long shot combinations at very large odds.
We are going with five selections this week, one of which is not a parlay, but just one single upset pick. Three of our parlays include three games each; we prefer to play two-game parlays, especially when using NFL teams, where it is hard to pick the winners of three games all that often. So, when you look at these picks below, realize they are long shots. Please don’t wager real money on these games unless you have other research data that our selections merely verify.
This Week’s Parlays
Date:
Sept 23-27
Odds:
+205
Must Win
Opponent
Kansas St.
Oklahoma St.
Odds:
+259.50
Must Win
Opponent
Eastern Michigan
Texas St.
Michigan St.
Nebraska
Memphis
UTSA
Odds:
+217.69
Must Win
Opponent
Michigan St.
Nebraska
Boston College
Missouri
Odds:
+157.86
Must Win
Opponent
Carolina
Houston
Kansas City
LA Chargers
Las Vegas
Miami
Odds:
+208.86
Must Win
Opponent
Arizona
Jacksonville
Buffalo
Washington
Seattle
Minnesota
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