Board 8 > College Football Ladder Contest Week 11

(+) Yeah! (+)

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: Pick three over/unders; 2 out of three passes.

Level 3: Three-team teaser. Tease the lines six points in your favor, two wins and a push or three wins needed to pass.

Level 4: First! Pick a winless team to get their first win or an undefeated team to suffer their first loss. If you are predicting a favorite to win, they must also cover the spread (a push is sufficient). You may also select "none" if you think that every game between two winless or two undefeated teams will result in the favorite winning but failing to cover the spread and that no other teams will get their first win or suffer their first loss. Also, for this level, you may pick FCS teams to win against any Division I opponent, but in the case of FBS-FCS games, you must be taking the FCS team to win.

Level 5: Pleaser. Pick one team and move the line 7 points to your disadvantage.

Level 6: Triple points pleaser. Pick either three over/unders and move the lines on each 5 points to your disadvantage. 3 out of 3 needed to pass.

Level 6:
jcgamer107
Paratroopa1
TsunamiXXVIII
turbopuns2

Level 5:
KCF0107
ShatteredElysium
5tarscream

Level 4:

Level 3:
kevwaffles

Level 2:
Jakyl25

Level 1:
baubeta
Eddv
SmartMuffin

Marquee Games:
Ohio State (-3.5) @ Michigan State (O/U 52)
Wisconsin (+9) @ Penn State (O/U 55)
Mississippi State (+23.5) @ Alabama (O/U 53)
Auburn (+14) @ Georgia (O/U 52.5)
Clemson (-20) @ Boston College (O/U 57)
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L5:
Illinois (+10)

I was going to take Buffalo originally and second guessed it too long.
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Level 5:

Baylor (+9.5) at Iowa State

Line already teased
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Level 6:

Michigan @ Rutgers OVER 52.5
Wisconsin @ Penn State UNDER 50
South Florida @ Cincinnati OVER 60

Finally, I get to take advantage of picking "against" Rutgers. Michigan has hung some pretty big numbers on the Knights before and could easily do so again...but, the Knights have actually been playing better recently, sort of, so they might be able to avoid the shutout. Which is probably all they'll need, if even, to hit the over.

And it's clear that a shutout is considered a very realistic possibility, because despite the O/U being 47.5, Michigan is a 39-point favorite. Michigan covering and the under hitting could theoretically become mutually exclusive before the first play from scrimmage.
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Level 6

Clemson/Boston College OVER 62
Florida State/Notre Dame UNDER 46
Georgia/Auburn OVER 57.5

I don't know, I'm really just guessing at this point.

Level 5
Florida State +9.5

Level 6
Michigan @ Rutgers OVER 52.5
Temple @ Houston OVER 75
South Florida @ Cincinnati OVER 60

I didn't mean to take two of Tsunami's picks, but like he said, if Michigan covers the game's almost certainly gonna hit the over. The other two, I'm just banking on bad American defensive performances.
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Level 6

Auburn (+14) @ Georgia (under 47.5)
Clemson (-20) @ Boston College (Over 62)
South Florida @ Cincinnati (OVER 60)

Man, how nuts is it that Northwestern is on the verge of clinching a birth in the Big 10 Championship?
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Well if they win today they would be 13-1 in their last 14 conference games. It's OOC that has hurt them

this fuckin levellllllllllllllllll
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Remember that I said nobody would pass this level

Yeah, that last drive was painful. Rutgers just killing clock and killing clock and then getting picked off once Michigan wouldn't be forced to even try to score any more. Literally two third-down plays that gained exactly enough to move the chains.
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I knew FSU were bad but I figured without their starting QB that the ND offense wouldn't be very good like at the beginning of the season

If I had flipped all three of my picks I would have passed

ShatteredElysium posted...

Well if they win today they would be 13-1 in their last 14 conference games. It's OOC that has hurt them

Yeah, they're said to be the first team ever in FBS to win a division without winning a single nonconference game. Though there's already been at least one conference champion in a conference without divisions--the 2001 North Texas Mean Green, famous for being the first team to go to a bowl with a losing record (5-1 in conference, 5-6 overall, but received the newly-formed Sun Belt Conference's lone automatic bowl bid since they'd beaten the other 5-1 team in the conference.)

Since we don't really have a discussion topic, I might as well go on. Just looked at ESPN's bowl projections and they had Penn State in a New Year's Six bowl. It seemed improbable to me at first, but then I looked at who the other contenders were and it just...dried up. Assuming that Syracuse does indeed lose to Notre Dame, there will be no more than ten Power Five teams (including Notre Dame) with 2 or fewer losses--and even that would require the Oklahoma-West Virginia loser to not lose the Big 12 Championship Game, be it by winning it or by not playing in it. (West Virginia and Oklahoma are both projected into NY6 bowls.) So honestly, Penn State seems as good a candidate for the last NY6 team as any. I mean, what else could you do, take a 9-3 SEC East team? Maybe a 9-3 ACC Atlantic team? A third Big 12 team seems especially unlikely unless Texas or Iowa State actually wins the conference, since one of them will give the other a fourth loss and depending on who wins the regular season OU-WVU game, one of them could wind up in the conference championship game trying to avenge a loss. And, heck, even if Washington wins out, I think a 2-loss Wazzu would be behind a 3-loss Penn State/Florida/Syracuse/whatever.

Also, take a good look at that Alabama-Mississippi State line I had locked in on the marquee. Made the game absolutely useless for us, of course, because we're all struggling with this stupid pleaser level, but for Vegas themselves...the line actually opened all the way at 26.5. And the sharps were all betting on Bulldogs +26.5. And then once it got closer and the line had fallen, all of the casuals and parlay bettors were all over Alabama -22.5 (yes it continued to fall after I locked it in). Absolutely crushed the sportsbooks.

Anyway, I've got the post to start next week's all ready...except for the fact that the lines are hardly even up! There's no O/U at all, and many places don't even have a spread yet. Nothing that the CFP says can change which five games are on the marquee, since there are only five games that so much as have both teams receiving votes in both the AP and Coaches' Polls. It's quite the interesting slate in my opinion--the ACC has the most representatives of any conference and the SEC has fewer representatives than a certain Group of Five conference.
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New post today?
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Safety pick.

L5: Wake Forest (PUSH)
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