BTBS Week 1 Picks!

Not that I'm encouraging gambling or anything, but I want to start measuring the effectiveness of the rough S&P+ projections I've come up with for 2009, so I'm going to try to look at how it does picking winners and ATS this year.  With that in mind, below are the projections for every Week One FBS game.  You can find spreads for the 1-AA games if you really want to, and I have included my picks for those games too, but...well, I think "Betting on 1-AA games" is Sign #6 that you're a degenerative gambler.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Big 12 picks here.  All other games after the jump.

Now's another good time to mention that I actually tamped down Mizzou's projection a little bit to account for the unique talent lost.  The BTBS numbers still think underdog Mizzou wins outright, and the 17-point difference between spread and projection is about as big as there is this week.  What's more impressive than that, to me, is how many of these projections are dead on with the spread.  Don't know if that says good or bad things about these projections...we'll see.

Everything else after the jump.

Of the five seemingly "sure thing" games, one has a major question mark, and that is, of course, Michigan-WMU.  The projections have nothing to say about the drama going on there right now, and there's absolutely no telling how Michigan's players and coaches will handle the soap opera.  Of the other locks, I like Maryland quite a bit, but that's a really long road trip and there's at least a slight possibility that Cal is really, really good.  Consider that much less locky than the others.