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Our First Poll of the Pre-season?
By: the512 Staff Writer
Guys are funny. Pick any historically-masculine pursuit and you’ll find countless fops extolling their virtues in the sack, at the tables, along the bar, on the links and, more often than not, at the Sportsbook window. No one cares about your bad beat or how you exacted your revenge by night’s end. No one cares about that chip-in for bird on the mowed-as-often-as-a-nun’s-twat par 3 muny down the street from you. No one cares how you got “sooo drunk that one night and totally banged that slump-buster.” And most of all, just because you picked Northwestern State over Iowa in the 2006 basketball tournament doesn’t make you God’s gift to sports soothsaying. Seriously guy, your shit smells as bad as the rest of ours.
There are a few people to whom I DO lend credence when it comes to parlays and prognostication: these guys. No, this isn’t the Dungeons & Dragons Hall of Fame. It’s Team Las Vegas Sports Consultants, and they know more than you about sports. They are right more than you about sports. And those betting lines you mull over and wonder aloud after most every game ‘How do these guys get these lines so close?’? These guys set them. So save your ‘Back in ’98, I got 28 of the 32 first round games right!’ story for someone who’s heavily sedated. Why, you sullen misanthrope, are you bringing this up now, you may ask. Well that’s because the LVSC has spoken: the initial odds are now published, and if you’re a betting man (which means if your balls have descended), the early money is (shockingly!) on Alabama to repeat. Yes the Red Elephants start the year at the official unofficial first pre-season poll. Yes, one could argue that THIS is the first pre-season poll (and probably a more accurate reflection of the merits of all the teams than the AP or coaches polls – yet not TBDPTIL), and it’s something of substance to discuss as we sit idly by here in the post-recruiting/pre-spring practice wasteland.
According to bodog.com’s published odds, a correct Alabama pre-season pick will net you 7/2 odds. Hard to argue with that, as they return a majority of their National Championship squad from 2009. But a look at their Top 10 raises some eyebrows.
10. TCU (18/1)
Ohio State earned their right to a #2 ranking with their pasting of the then-the-shit Oregon Ducks, who check in at LVSC #4. Terrelle Pryor finally showed up, in the Rose Bowl nonetheless, as the legions of Scarlet and Grey fans have visions of Vince Young-as-a-junior prancing around their collective Buckeye. Oregon will undoubtedly put up points like mad again this year, but will they be able to stop people when it counts? Will anyone go all MMA on an opponent? Does Jeremiah Masoli have the world’s biggest calf muscles? Oh the subplots…it’s why we give a shit about teams to which we have zero allegiance and who are thousands of miles and several time zones away from us.
Texas checks in at #5. Hard to argue with that, as the Big XII is abhorrent yet again, and they bring back an experienced group and add to it stud freshmen and sophomores all over the place. But the big question revolves around the team checking in at #6. Anyone else surprised to see Nebraska that high? Ahead of teams like VA Tech and TCU, who bring back a ton of talent on both sides of the ball? Certainly their schedule stacks up favorably, as they get Texas and Missouri at home and avoid Oklahoma altogether. But ahead of VA Tech? TCU? Interesting. Interesting because VA Tech schedule stacks up as favorably as Nebraska’s. But I guess since They have Boise ahead of los Hokies, they’re picking the Fightin’ Kellen Moores (or is it Moops?) to win their week 1 match-up in Landover, MD (where the field is green if I’m not mistaken). But aside from that game, they really don’t have too many tough tests for a team returning so much production from 2009. And TCU, if it can ever get its out-of-conference figured out, returns most of a team that barely lost to Boise State, yet finds itself quite far down the list from their fellow non-BCS brethren.
And only USC can finish one year on the cusp of not being in the Top 25, lose its all-everything coach, lose a shit-ton of talent, walk an NCAA investigation tight rope, and bring in a pre-pubescent coach, yet wind up as the 7th most-likely team to win the National Title the next year. Good for them.
Hopefully this will give us all something to chew on for the next, oh, SEVEN months. Because God knows we don’t want to hear about your drunken golf exploits ad nauseam from now until Labor Day.