NFL Week 2, College Football Picks

Avoiding pitfalls may have been the best thing I did last week with my picks. Penn State survived a game at home against Bowling Green. Notre Dame scored 14 points and lost – lost – to Northern Illinois at home. That’s just a joke. Instead of fearing losing head coach James Franklin to another program like they were a couple years ago, PSU fans ought to be offering to pack his bags. And, at this point, it’s fair to wonder if ND will ever again be relevant in the National Championship picture.

I’ll take my 4-2 record for +$27.60 to start the season and be happy. The total is a bit underwhelming, but it’s early in the season. I was 2-1 in both college and pro football. Maryland was just a bad pick. I’ll live with the Packers loss in a tight game with the Eagles. And I got lucky with a Detroit Lions cover in overtime. (I had to correct a typo on the potential payout on the Detroit game – it was $9.20 not $9.10. The odds of -110 and the amount of $10 wagered were the same as the Tennessee Volunteers pick, so I simply fixed the obvious typo.) Tennessee over NC State and Nebraska over Colorado were pretty easy wins, and I already discussed the close call with the Kansas City Chiefs over Baltimore in the NFL opener. Taking Colorado opponents might become a thing – they’re completely over hyped because of head coach Deion Sanders.

It’s still early in the season and I don’t love anything this week. I want to be disciplined with my strategy this year – stay small early and limit parlays and teasers all season. Here are my picks:

Georgia -22 (-110) @ Kentucky for $10 to win $9.10

Texas -35.5 (-109) @ UTSA for $10 to win $9.20

Ole Miss -21.5 (-109) @ Wake Forest for $10 to win $9.20

Notre Dame -9.5 (+100) @ Purdue for $10 to win $10

Eagles -6.5 (-110) vs. Falcons for $15 to win $13.65

Cowboys -6 (-110) vs. Saints for $20 to win $18.20

I realize the first three games have what I would call “sucker spreads” – numbers just above a typical football number of 21 and 35. I just didn’t want to get into teasers or “buying down the number” at this point in the season. Obviously, I’m looking for blow outs, and counting on ND to do their usual of winning games right after they prove they don’t belong with the big boys. Despite what I said about the Eagles traveling to Brazil and back, I took them because I watched the Falcons lose to a Steelers team that didn’t score a touchdown. And I went with Dallas because they looked dominant against the Browns, which may or may not mean much.

As I mentioned last week, if I add picks, they’ll be in a new post during the weekend at least by noon; posts will be much earlier for 12 or 1 PM games. The links to weekend posts won’t be sent out to subscribers, but I will try to tweet them out or put them in the comments of the Facebook post with the link for this blog post.

Your picks are still welcome and encouraged in the comments below!