The schedule of games to pick was nearly full last week with only Ole Miss at Texas A&M and Georgia Tech at Miami postponed. With 8 games left in play, the staff went 30-18. I noticed the last 3 weeks had all been good collective records, so I ran the staff winning percentage per week. The talking heads here have gone 61%, 67%, and 63%. Picking that well against the spread is really impressive. Unfortunately, we struggled mightily early in the season and are still only at 242-266 to be at 47.6%. Individually, CDA, Tom, and I all really helped ourselves by going 6-2. Import was 5-3. VU ‘04 stalemated at 4-4. Stan’s tally was 3-5.

Auburn and Missouri were unanimously picked in their games and both delivered. Tom stepped out by himself for Mississippi State at Georgia and Tule at Tulsa with MSU coming through for him but Tulsa not covering due to winning on a pick 6 in OT. The NCAA does not have teams kick the PAT in those situations, or Tulsa would have won by 7 while giving 6.5 points. Games split 4 to 2 resulted in 2 wins for the majority and 2 wins for the minority.

Vanderbilt, aftering winning against the spread 3 weeks running, is a unananimous pick. Florida, Auburn, Ole Miss, and Notre Dame were all picked 4 to 1. It should be noted that we all had our picks set before the Saban news came out, so this is just us trusting Malzahn to keep it closer than 4 scores. LSU, Georgia, and Georgia Tech all come in as 3 to 2 favorites by us. And we are all that matter. There were a lot of big favorites with spreads of 20, 23, 24.5, and 21.5 points. The underdogs were picked more than the favorites in all but one of those games.

The Rules

1. Normally, the picks are for all SEC games with one dealer’s choice where I get to choose another game to make us pick. This year, it is going to be all SEC games, one dealer’s choice, and the Campbell Fighting Camels game! Why? Because I said so.
2. The picks will be made AGAINST THE SPREAD. Too many games are easy to pick heads up. Also, this will serve as a PSA for why you should not get into sports gambling with more states making it legal.
3. The lines will be taken from Oddshark’s consensus spread some time Monday, so they may not match what is listed at the time this article is published.

The Standings

The Picks

GAME	DotP	Stan	Tom	VU04	CDA	Import
Vanderbilt (+20) @ Missouri
Kentucky (+23) @ Florida
Auburn (+24.5) @ Alabama
Mississippi State (+9.5) @ Ole Miss
LSU (+14) @ Texas A&M
Georgia (-21.5) @ South Carolina
Duke (Even) @ Georgia Tech
Notre Dame (-4.5) @ North Carolina