Hail WV Pick ‘Em
By alansearles
January 4, 2012; Miami Gardens, FL, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers quarterback Geno Smith (12) hoists his MVP trophy after his team defeated the Clemson Tigers 70 to 33 in the 2012 Orange Bowl at Sun Life Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brad Barr-USA TODAY Sports
“Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the bowls will start,
And the thing that will make them gay, is the parlay that you play;
Right within, your heart.”
-Lyrics by Johnny Mathis (after a pint of bourbon and the SEC Championship Game)
Tis’ the season to be Jolly, and to obsess over meaningless bowl games, of course. Don’t tell the guys over at Bleacher Report that bowl games are meaningless, because they went ahead and projected each bowl via playing NCAA ’13. As much as everyone always complains about having too many bowl games, let’s be honest, come this Saturday, we will all be watching Rich’s Wildcats teeing it up against the Wolfpack in the Gildan New Mexico Bowl. Heck, if the weather holds out, I may fire up the barbecue and head out to the porch!
Personally, I have never quite understood the constant bemoaning of too many bowl games. Seriously, what else are you going to do, watch figure skating? The more bowl games the better! The exciting part of bowl games is that you never know what is going to happen. Sure, there are a few terrible matchups, but every year there is that team that clearly doesn’t want to be there and some lowly underdog upsets a double digit favorite (here’s looking at you Northern Illinois). After that, how do you factor in the team that’s excited to make its first bowl game, the two to five week layoff teams face, seniors geared up for their last game, seniors that could care less about anything except for the draft, interim coaches, despondent teams that lost their head coach, or teams that would love to stick it to their head coaches? It may be meaningless drama, but it’s still drama and in that spirit, the staff here at HailWV is more than excited to fire up our bowl pickoff.
First and foremost, the one thing you need to know about our staff pickoff is that this is not a friendly competition. We all want to beat each other badly, err, I mean the rest of the staff wants to beat me badly, but know in their hearts that their efforts will be futile. Alas, if they somehow win a segment in the pickoff, the winner will get to write the follow up post and talk some smack against me and the rest of the staff.
As referenced above, we will be splitting the bowl season up into segments, three segments to be precise. The winner of the first segment will receive four points, the second place writer will get three, then two, and one point for the last place finisher. The second round will be worth double points and the final round will be worth triple points. Each section will have a tiebreaker, based on the point total of the segment’s last game. The total points leader at the end will be declared the world famous, HailWV 2012 Pickoff Winner. He will likely then need to hire a bodyguard just to keep all of the female suitors at bay.
To preview segment one; the bossman goes straight chalk with Brandon only mixing it up with the Toledo Mud Hens. Oops, I mean Rockets. Obviously these folks don’t know the basic rules of betting, not that I’ve ever bet, ahem, but taking straight favorites will be the demise of these Ill witted chaps. My superior intellect tells me that the MAC is going to show up huge in the bowl season, riding on the coattails of fabulously underrated regular season. Recent coaching departures at Western Kentucky (plus late season falters), San Jose State, and Cincy confirm my picks against these squads. The Dukies haven’t been in a bowl game since the New Deal, so expect Cutcliffe to have these guys ready to rumble.
Here is segment One:
Segment Two:
Segment Three:
Follow along to see how we do, previews for the next segments, and listen to the staff talk all sorts of Christmas trash talk to each other. Even better yet, post below to tell us why we are idiots and who you would pick in each game.