2015 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 8

The coalition returns for another week of NFL picks against the spread!

We were all pretty bunched together in Week 7, with one game separating each picker, and it has resulted in a three-way tie for second place (because bear in mind, I accidentally had the wrong pick on ESPN back in like Week 2 so I'm behind a game) amongst our group. Adam remains in the lead despite my taking three of our five disputed games last week.

In terms of the hypothetical money line, Adam had a slightly down week last week and is now only up about $200 for the year starting from Week 2. I think I stayed around even for the week, but I'm still down over $1400. The lesson again: gambling is bad.

This week, Adam and I differ on seven games out of the 14. Let's take a look at the slate.

2015 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 9

We're onto yet another week of college football, and hopefully after this weekend I can start building a mock bracket for the Death to the BCS Playoffs.

Conference play has done a pretty good job of weeding out a lot of the remaining undefeated teams, and it will continue to do so as we get down the home stretch, but there are still a fair number of non-conference games left on the docket. Last week only had a couple games that really impacted any of the numbers, but a couple weeks are coming that will really throw a monkey wrench into the rankings.

After the jump I will rank each conference based on its cumulative Non Conference Schedule Strength average, including this week's score and a comparison to where they stood last week.

2015 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 8

Sweet, sweet chaos.

Two more undefeated teams fell out of that realm, leaving us with 12 for the nation eight weeks in. I was hoping that this week would be when I could start doing mock brackets, but with the way the 12 are distributed, I would still be forced to leave an undefeated team out. Unfortunate.

Instead, I'll stick with updating Playoff Points and leave it at that and NCSS rankings for now. I'd have to assume next week I can start looking a little deeper.

If you need a refresher on how Playoff Points work, you can refer back to my Week 1 post. With a little bit over a month to go, here is where each conference stands.

Waiting Till Next Year

It's a common refrain we hear on the North Side of Chicago: "Wait 'till next year." It's, sadly, a refrain that we've heard for 107 years and counting. And now, we have to hear it for another year.

Late in 2011, the Cubs made sweeping changes to their administration, bringing in Theo Epstein from Boston to be the president of baseball operations, and begin a full fledged rebuild. I knew then that the next few years would be painful, but like Theo said, "There's a day coming." To a degree, that day is here.

Two incredibly painful years followed a year of some guarded optimism as the pieces began to fall into place. The prospects were lining up, and 2015 was beginning to see projections for the beginning of contention, even though Theo himself said that he was expecting 2016 at the earliest to be contention time. Instead, the Cubs arrived a year ahead of schedule. I correctly had them third in the NL Central behind St. Louis and Pittsburgh, but even I underestimated just how quickly this team would come together and make a run.

This was the first baseball season though that I had really looked forward to. I made it to Milwaukee to see the Cubs in early May, and got to see Kris Bryant hit his first Major League home run. Less than a week later, Kristen and I made the annual pilgrimage to Wrigley for a game, and it was a long day that turned out quite all right. Games like that set the stage for a fun summer filled with walkoffs, watching the young guys grow up before our very eyes, and see an ace turn into one of the best pitchers in baseball. It all culminated in a trip to October, earlier than expected.

As I'm sure you can imagine, I enjoyed the fact that the Cubs knocked off Pittsburgh in the Wild Card game, and even more so the elimination of the Cardinals at the Cubs' hands while the morons amongst the Cardinal fan base whined. I was all but on cloud nine. Then the NLCS started.

I don't know that I've ever been more frustrated by a baseball playoff series. Ultimately though, I have to tip my cap to the Mets. They were clearly the better team, and they've absolutely earned the right to play in the World Series. They're going to be a challenge for whoever comes out of the American League. I developed a sports hate for Daniel Murphy in the span of a week, but I can let go of it. Dude got hot at the right time; it happens.

It's depressing to see your team's season end when the hopes were so great, especially given Cubs history. I'm a veteran of the 2003 and 2008 heartbreak, so it doesn't surprise me that on all of the days the Cubs could have been eliminated, much less in a sweep, it's on the day where Marty McFly came to the future in Back to the Future II and found out the Cubs won the World Series. Of course, because he changed the future/past, he altered that timeline and probably made it so that the Cubs wouldn't win it. Time travel hurts my head.

The heartbreak has, to a degree, subsided this morning. I'm bummed, sure, but I'm still optimistic. Unlike the prior years, you can see that the foundation is in place for this summer's success to be sustained. This core will be around for years to come. Obviously, tweaks need to be made (i.e. the Cubs need more pitching), but I trust Theo to make the right moves.

2016 may not be The Year. But it has just as good a chance as any other to be, and I look forward to seeing what this team has in store.

2015 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 7

Funny how a week can change things.

I was flying high after a phenomenal Week 5... then Week 6 happened. Adam went 4-0 on hero picks because regression to the mean doesn't make any sense and he ended up taking seven of eight disputed games to rebuild a massive lead, then did a mic drop when he emailed me his picks.

There's still a lot of time left, and Adam overcame a larger deficit to make last season interesting, but he had far and away the best week out of anyone in our group to own a huge first place gap.

Money line wise, Adam was in line for more money with his contrarianism, and it earned him a huge payday. After being slightly down last week, he's now up roughly $400 since Week 2, while I lost all my gains from last week, and then some, falling to -$1200. Thankfully, no real money is being bet here other than the $20 I put down on Detroit and Minnesota for Week 1 while I was in Vegas... that was a waste.

The NFL returns to London this week for one of its 14 games, and for the first time will be broadcast only online. For this week though, Adam and I disagree on only five picks. This isn't too bad, actually. Let's take a look at the picks.

2015 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 8

I think at this point, we're officially halfway done with the regular season in college football. With the exception of Navy, everyone has played at least six games (and Navy has played five games), so we're starting to get down to the nitty gritty of the season.

Last week we finally advanced to the point where I can pretty neatly summarize every conference's out of league slate in one sentence, which makes this whole post so much cleaner. We also saw minimal changes in the numbers last week, something that will probably remain true once again this week.

So below, I will look at every conference and rerank them from last week based on their non-conference schedules for the whole season.

2015 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 7

Two more undefeated teams got knocked off on Saturday, leaving us with 14 still unblemished. However, because they are centralized in a few conferences, we still can't start setting up mock brackets. Even so, we can still update the Playoff Points rankings.

Things have probably changed a little bit from Week 6 with some crazy finishes and chaos near the top, though most of the establishment remains in clear control roughly halfway through the college football season. Of course, even though win total rankings are probably going to remain fairly constant, playoff points have been fluctuating depending on the winners each week.


If you need a refresher on how Playoff Points work, you can refer back to my Week 1 post. Now, through seven weeks of football, here is where each conference stands.