College football is finally upon us. It’s that crisp time of year when saturdays become even holier, Lee Corso gets more obnoxious, and sales of Keystone Light go through the roof. I wait for this time every year, and tonight it kicks off when the South Carolina Gamecocks face Southern Miss at 7:30.
I’ve always liked the Gamecocks. Maybe it’s their mascot, maybe it’s the t-shirts that just say “Cocks,” or maybe its their perennial enigmatic status in college football. USC (yes, I will always call them USC over their Southern Cal counterparts. Plus, only one is postseason eligible this year. Ha) has consistently had the coaching, the facilities, and alumni support, and the athletes (including a far more than average number of NFL picks) to field great teams, yet never have been able to. It’s always “next year” and that year never seems to come. Their last (and only) 10 win season came in 1984. They’re consistently about .500, always coming close to greatness but always dropping the ball in the second half of the season or losing a few games they shouldn’t even when they win games they also shouldn’t. They’ve been known to reach high rankings only to falter. Steve Spurrier has been at the helm for 5 years, and has put together a string of mediocre barely-bowl eligible seasons. By no means a disgrace, but also now what they Gamecock faithful had in mind when he rolled into town. But, depsite the mediocrity, his 35 wins are the best in any 5 year span in their history. And before him it was Lou Holtz and others who just couldn’t get the Cocks over the hump despite having all the tools in place.
This year looks to be no different. Once again, the tools are there, and it’s up to Spurrier and the Gamecocks to make something of it. I think the ‘ole ball coach will leave quietly if they can’t get their crap together in 2010.
To start, they have a veteran quarterback behind center in Stephen Garcia. Garcia is a screw-up off the field, getting arrested twice in his first month or so ever being on campus as a freshman, but he’s a gunslinger who loves to throw and fits well into Spurriers cock ‘n fire (or fun ‘n gun or whatever) offense. This year, he’s also throwing to a talented group of receivers and has a star recruit running back in Marcus Lattimore who should breakout to be a game changer. On defense their secondary is one of the tops in the country with senior Chris Culliver and sophmore Stephon Gilmore and defensive end Cliff Matthews is a beast who’s name you should know before too long. Their only glaring weakness is the offensive line, which allowed 39 sacks in ’08 and 37 in ’09. Without protection, Spurriers offense and Garcia’s arm are rendered useless. But they’ve brought in a new O-line coach and have 4 returning starters, so we’ll see if they can improve.
As I said, I like the Cocks, and if there was a year to be “next year” for them, its this one. Florida is finally sort-of rebuilding and Tennessee and Georgia are up in the air, so there’s never been a better time for South Carolina to make a statement in their conference. There schedules no piece of cake, with Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Auburn, and Clemson among others, but this is SEC football and the Cocks have managed to steal games before, now they just need to make sure they win all the games they’re supposed to.
I’m not sure what to predict. On paper, I think a 10 win season isn’t totally out of the cards, but then I’ve said that before and been burned by these guys. The pieces are in place, the alumni are as faithful and excited as ever, and it’s time for Spurrier to get over the hump or get out. I think realistically they win 9 games, but the season will tell us if they can finally get to the top or if the enigma will continue. I just think its about time they get another banner for Williams Brice Stadium besides the 1969 ACC Championship.
Short and sweet. I normally avoid the Yankees lkke the plague, but value presents itself. Dallas Braden is hot, so was Trevor Cahill. In any event, CC Sabathia is a raging inferno to Braden’s campfire.
And so I will bite on the Yanks -1.5 at plus money (for now, at least), and if I get burned, I won’t be calling the wambulance.
Sports betting fans today can take advantage of some seriously powerful tools to get live sports and live soccer scores, as well as using odds comparison sites to get the best odds when they place a bet on soccer, tennis, NFL, basketball, f1 and more. Long gone are the days of having to study newspapers and sports publications to gather your intel before placing a wager online. These days, technology allows application and website creators to provide users with powerful analytical tools which can analyse sports data to identify trends and display the data in useful ways to people wishing to bet on sports.
Top Sports Betting Tools
If you are serious about betting on sports online, you should invest some time to check out some of the power tools used by professional bettors. These include:
Odds Comparison – These tools let you see upcoming sporting events and get the best head to head odds on the market, by checking the odds in realtime with the top online bookmakers – saving the user a lot of logging in to different sites to check odds.
Live Soccer Scores – Live football results are essential as betting in play is available on a number of betting sites and betting exchanges (e.g. Betfair).
Other interesting tools include arbitrage tools which show punters bets which they cannot lose on (by exploiting market differentials), however these tools are not guaranteed to work due to caps placed on some bettors accounts by bookmakers (to minimise the odds for the “wiseguys”).
Isn’t it a bit strange that the game I picked before this one shapes up to be a better pitchers’ duel than Lincecum vs. Jimenez?
This is still a must-see matchup, if for no other reason than to see who busts their slump first.
It makes for tough reading to see Lincecum’s numbers over his last five starts: 0-5,7.88 ERA. Ouch.
Jimenez has been better, but he’s winless over his last four starts, going 0-3. At one point, he looked set for 25 wins. Now 20 isn’t even a sure thing.
For some reason the Rockies are favprites, when, to be frank, it should be -110 for both sides.
There’s no real reason to bite on the Giants, especially when you add in how Lincecum has pitched against Colorado this season (not well).
But at some point, the Giants have to notice that they’re still well within touching distance of the Phillies in the wild card race and that the Padres are doing their best to give them a chance to make the NL West race interesting.
Perhaps last night’s 8th inning was where the light came on. In any event, I’ll bite on the team who’s good at home vs. the team who isn’t good on the road, especially when those tasty plus odds are involved. Giants ML it is.
One good thing about games at Arizona is that, no matter who’s pitching, the total will be inflated for three reasons: 1) the hitter-friendly ballpark, 2) what the D-Backs’ strikeout-prone band of ashers can do when they connect with pitches, and 3) the fact that Arizona’s bullpen isn’t particularly good (to put it mildly).
So, when presented with this matchup and a favorable total that, were this game at Petco Park, would be at least a run lower, if not more, I will gladly oblige.
Now, it is inevitable that both Mat Latos and Barry Enright will get shelled, and with that I just jinxed myself, but I’m aware of the risk, especially in the setting.
But when you have a second-year pitcher who’s pitching well beyond his 22 years (13 straight starts in which he hasn’t allowed more than two runs) and a rookie who’s not pitching like one (nine straight starts with three runor less allowed to start his career), I have plenty of reason to feel confident.
Under 8 for the game. Under 4 first five. And as an added tip, a bit on the D-Backs on the +1.5 and for the W. Good teams don’t often get swept by bad teams, but here’s a spot where the matchup presents an opportunity, especially the effect the first part of this sentence will have on the home team’s value.
