Tuesdays are usually a melancholy time for football fans. The weekend festivities that begin on Thursday night with college and NFL football and last until Monday night NFL football finally draw to a close, leaving fans no choice but to resume their day-to-day lives. However, in Talge Hall, Tuesdays mean the start of a favorite pastime: predicting the winners of the next week’s college football and NFL picks.
Over one hundred men and women in the school compete by circling the teams who they think will win during the next week. Each correct prediction is worth one point, a wrong prediction is worth zero points, and in the case of ranked sports like college football, an upset (when a lower ranked team beats a higher ranked team) is worth 2 points.
Each week, participants compete to win the grand prize: a free jersey of his or her choice and a 25-dollar Taco Bell gift card. The competitors range from football fanatics who carefully research and analyze their pick before submitting, to non-sports fans who fill their sheets with seemingly random but sometimes lucky guesses.
As of Oct. 28, 2018, the leader for the NCAA Football Picks is Xavier Snyder, freshman business administration major, with 161 points followed by David Runnels II, junior archeology major, with 159 points and Matthew L. with 155 points. On the NFL side, the current leader is also Snyder with 68 points followed by Felipe Rocha, freshman chemistry major, with 67 points and Jacob Bradshaw, freshman biology major, with 66 points.
One of the reasons making picks is so fun is that it is often unpredictable. The 36-16 thrashing of #2 Georgia by #13 LSU shows that victory is not necessarily guaranteed to the higher seed. While there are no rankings in the NFL, upsets occur there as well. One of the main examples of this is the usually pedestrian Detroit Lions’ 26-10 win over the defending AFC champion New England Patriots.
Another exciting part about making the picks is that they can be affected by a single play. An example of this in the NCAA realm was the 24-21 upset of #6 Wisconsin by an unranked BYU team on the road. The game was close, with a failed last second field goal attempt sealing the deal for BYU. On the NFL side, a touchdown throw by Tennessee Titans’ quarterback Marcus Mariota in overtime secured the win against the defending Super Bowl champion and heavily favored Philadelphia Eagles.
The unpredictability of the game of football levels the playing field between seasoned pickers and casual guessers. While the pickers who watch and study the game often make better choices, the pickers who guess can also do fairly well. So, no matter what your level of experience is in watching football, come on down to Talge Hall and make your picks. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Image credit: Southern Adventist University