From The Archives Vol. #2

Posted: November 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Last Decade | No Comments »

USC Trojans -3 -109 over Arizona St (4x) - 11/22/07

I have been deciding what to do with this USC line all week. Even though it is mighty USC, we still have a lower ranked team laying a FG to a higher ranked team on the road. Consider the fact that Arizona St has been a more publicly backed team than USC so far this year, and I think it is a strange line. This has me more than willing to take a large shot on the much better defense.

Admittedly though, this is a bit of a force. I am at my worst as a player when my profits start to whittle away. If this hits, great, I will take some momentum into the weekend. If it loses, then it will be time for me to cover up and protect my remaining profits until bowl season. There certainly won’t be any chasing.

This was terri-bad on a number of levels:

• Chasing – Check.
• Rationalizing – Check.
• Turning a weak lean into a huge play* – Check.
• Laying road chalk with a national power for no real reason – Check.

But hey, at least I was getting the better defense…..

Nonsense like this is the reason why I ignore results when evaluating the merits of other gamblers. Numbers take a while to converge. Logic, or a lack thereof, is usually visible immediately.

This play wound up hitting, and shortly thereafter I went on a nice run to close out the 2007 CFB season. It was an extremely fortunate break because had the “better defense” not shown up that night, there’s a non zero chance that I’d be out of the business already.

* – A 4x play back then was about 2.5 times larger than average.