Well if nothing else our bad luck is getting more and more absurd and hard to believe…had I told you Wednesday that your 30 pt dog would outgain the favorite by nearly 100 yards in the 1^st half and outgain them for the game, would you feel pretty good?  How about your 3 pt dog coming 3 yards from doubling the total offense of the favorite?   We would to.

Idaho lost to Boise 63-25 (as a 31.5 pt underdog), despite somehow outgaining Boise 514-498 as a 31 pts underdog, including a 399-303 advantage at half (so it wasn’t like it was poured on late hen the game was over).  Boise benefited from 5 INT, 2 Fumbles, a 100 YD Kick Return for TD, an INT for TD, and a Fumble and INT on the 1^st two possessions that set up scoring drives of 15 and 31 yards for Boise.  I can’t even fathom how a 30 pt dog outgains a team like that and it took nearly every bad break listed above for them to lose by 38.  Take away either the 100 YD kick return (w/ 27 seconds left to go before half) or the INT returned for a TD and we cover, although this certainly should have been much closer.

North Texas outgains FIU 513-258…that is 3 yards from lapping the team they where a 3 pt underdog to, but an INT returned for a TD, a blocked punt, and a NTU fumble all in the 2^nd half allowed FIU to overcome a 28-14 halftime deficit.  And to add insult to injury, NTU had an opportunity to tie the game and send it to OT, driving to inside the FIU 10 with 2 minutes to go before a TO on downs.

We had very solid Ws with Syracuse (7pt dog) who nearly one outright (UL scored with 1:27 remaining), correctly called for the Straight up Stanford W (as a 10 pt dog), and Utah State W 24-9.  Rutgers, ULM, and Duke weren’t so good, BC could have gone either way (W or L) so was probably fair to get a Push,  and got totally jobbed on the NTU and Idaho games.

3-5-1 isn’t good, but it definitely should have been 5-3-1, no worse than 5-4 and with some luck could have been 6-3 (depending on a break or two in the BC game).  We are now a disappointing 33-36-2 and an amazing 2-17-2 in good luck/bad luck games.  We’ve been correct in our analysis in 49 of 71 games or 69% of the time (33 W – 2 Good Luck Ws + 17 Bad Luck Ls + 1 Push=49).  So in any normal year where the good breaks and bad breaks would even out we’d be doing great (69% with 50-50 split of good luck to bad luck), and even with some parity in the luck would not only have a winning record, but would be pretty close to our historic record of 62% (248-152-9).