Well, it's official: the St. Louis Cardinals suck this year. I mean I can't bring myself to watch them anymore. Last night, after a particularly weak Jason Marquis failed to get his sinker working for the two thousandth time in his career (guaranteeing himself a bronze bust at the You Suck Hall of Fame), I gave up on the Cardinals and switched to the movie “Seven”, before passing out on my couch around nine. (I woke up with a Heineken flavored stain on my shirt just in time to hear Kevin Spacey deliver that famous diatribe about just how slimy and worthless the human race has become. And I realized that if you take away lust, I ain't guilty of one deadly sin?I think that means I get a passing grade from God, right? Right? I mean, six for seven is pretty good. Quit laughing).
Anyway, baseball is essentially dead for me until the post-season (I mean, when you can't watch the home team, there just ain't much left for the fan, which is a shame because I dropped $160 on the baseball package and I'm more interested in watching the Detroit Tigers than my own team, which is what I imagine it's like to prefer one of your son's friends over your own son, i.e. I feel like crap). So, it's time to focus all of my energy on football and, specifically, the gambling. I'm gonna do a few things differently this year. And in no particular order, here are the new changes to my gambling philosophy.
No More Telling you People how Much I Bet
I'll let you know what games I wager on, but that's it. The amount of money I put down is my business. And quite frankly, I think the Gambling Gods don't like people telling other people how much they bet. It's like showing someone your pay stub after a relatively good (or bad) month. When you do that, either way (win or lose), you elicit an unwanted feeling from the person who sees how much (or how little) you made. And that's not what gambling is about. Gambling is about spreading joy. And if you believe that, I want to go to Vegas with you.
More Money Line Bets
I looked over all of my gambling from last year and saw that I lost a ton of bets when the team I bet on won but did not cover. I'm playing the odds more this year. And if you don't know what money line bets are, they basically entail taking the odds instead of the point spread. So, instead of betting on New England to win by seven and make one hundred percent, I'll just bet on them to win and make like fifty to eighty percent (depending on the odds). Aren't you glad I'm here to teach you this stuff?
No More Gambling Drunk
This one is kind of self explanatory.
As far as the football posts go, you can expect pretty much the same thing as last year. I'll be picking winners (against the spread) for every game. I'll usually post on Friday, but I reserve the right to occasionally post on Saturday, depending on my schedule (i.e. how much I've had to drink on Friday after work). I'll probably end up posting seven days a week during that awesome post-season baseball/beginning of football stretch in October (hopefully with some help from Points in Case Legend, Justin Rebello and Fantasy Football Freak, Dan Opp). And during the first week, because the first game of the week is always on a Thursday night, my football picks will probably get posted on that Wednesday, but again, due to scheduling conflicts (read: beer consumption), I may just ignore the Miami at Pittsburgh game that kicks off the season. Though I think picking Pittsburgh with the money line might be the first no-brainer of the season. We'll see.
Also, I just want to apologize to those of you who hate football. Please understand that the football picks are in addition to my regular output. So you can completely ignore the Friday posts or you can learn a little bit about football. Either way, I don't care. I love this game.
Thirteen days until the season kicks off, people. And if you think I'm not excited about that, you just don't know me very well.