Get On With It

It's the middle of September and I've not posted for two months, despite all my favourite games starting. OK, I went on holiday for a couple of weeks but this is pathetic.

So let's jump in straight away with some headlines.

Congratulations to the Los Angeles Angels for winning the American League West. I've made a stunning 16p profit on that for a £2 bet on B*tfair. Well done me.

Not doing so well is my pick for the National League West, the Arizona Diamondbacks who are now 4.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, I had bets on the two Chicago clubs, who are both leading their respective divisions although the Cubs eight game lead over the Brewers is a little more comfortable than the slim lead the White Sox have over the Twins.

All the football seasons are now underway and I shall be nipping down to Ashton Gate in about an hour's time for the game against Birmingham City. We're fifth, they're second, we've not lost at home and they've not won away...so it's a big game. Don't want to make any predictions, so I won't. Well, maybe a little one. It won't finish scoreless. I could lay that outcome on B*tfair, but knowing my luck...

College Football has been running since the end of August and thanks to B*tfair I can download my results in a handy spreadsheet format to see exactly how crap I am at predicting winners.

Starting with Week 1, Clemson to beat Alabama, Michigan to beat Utah, Pittsburgh to beat Bowling Green, Virginia Tech to beat...ah well, you get the picture and I'm sure you're tired of bad beat stories already but there's only one that can really be put down to overwhelming stupidity. In an incident comparable to backing Florida State to win the ACC last season, I pressed the wrong button and backed UTEP to beat Texas a couple of weeks ago. I'm trying to think of a suitable Association Football parallel but the only thing I can come up with is something like Chelsea playing Luton, Chelsea being given a two goal start and me still backing Luton to win. Hey, did anyone notice that Luton fails the blogger.com spellchecker?

Professional Football is approaching Week 3 and the main regular season story is that Tom Brady is out for the season*. This does not mean the Patriots have suddenly become fallible: far from it. There are ten 2-0 teams right now and they're amongst them.

The others are Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Denver, the Giants, Dallas, Green Bay, Carolina and Arizona. Including the Patriots, six of those teams made the playoffs last season - Buffalo, Denver, Carolina and Arizona didn't.

Thanks to the research by the good people at Football Outsiders (in particular the win expectancy charts published in Football Prospectus 2008), these ten teams currently have a 65.2% chance of making the playoffs, which can reach 79.5% if any of them win on Sunday. I'm pushed for time now, but as part of my selection process for my Sunday picks I'll be thinking out loud later in the week on the games the teams above are involved in.

But right now, I'm off to be a fan.

* As opposed to the main pre-season story, which was the Brett Favre saga.