I'm doubting too many people are at the Rose Bowl right now, so let's have ourselves a live thread.  Title game starts at 7:00pm CST.

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It's bowl season!!!  Checking out Dave Christensen's Wyoming Cowboys against Fresno State?  Talk about it here!

Picks are due very soon, (though there is still some time to go here and submit them) so it's time to reveal the final BTBS picks of the season.  I disagree with about ten of these picks, so we'll see how it goes...either way, it's been a semi-successful season of picks.  I'm really confident in my preseason projections system moving forward, but I've got to figure out how to not get whipped repeatedly once Vegas figures teams out by October.

* "Last 2 Wks" entails Championship Saturday two weeks ago and Army-Navy last week.

The good news is, even if I go 0-34 in bowls, I'm guaranteed to be over .500 for the season.  So I've got THAT going for me...

• The picks I disagree with the most: Wyoming-Fresno (I hope DC pulls something off, but I have the sneaking suspicion that Fresno wins easily), BYU-Oregon St. (I think OSU's built to beat a team like BYU), BC-USC (the numbers have loved BC all season, but I just don't see how they keep this one close), Air Force-Houston (I think Houston covers easily), and OSU-Ole Miss (Is Robinson healthy? And isn't he going to seem rusty as hell?).
  

He's not feeling any love nationally, but he's sure got the Heisman pose down. Did 'Nario receive any votes on Rock M Nation's ballot for the Sports Blog Heisman Trophy? (Photo: Bill Carter | Rock M Nation)

A large number of college football bloggers are combining to submit ballots for the second annual Sports Blog Heisman Trophy, hosted by The Blue Workhorse. Tim Tebow was last year's winner after edging out Sam Bradford.

To compile Rock M Nation's ballot, Bill, Beef, GHT and I submitted our top three finishers and assigned them points according to the system used for actual balloting. Rock M Nation's vote will be classified in the Midwest region.

Rock M Nation's winner is...

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It's been a fun day on RMN thus far...why not keep it going for the evening games?

Big 12 Championship: Texas vs Nebraska - 7:00pm, ABC
ACC Championship: Georgia Tech vs Clemson - 7:00pm, ESPN
South Florida vs UConn - 7:00pm, ESPN2
Wisconsin at Hawaii - 10:30pm, ESPN2
Shula Bowl: Florida Atlantic vs Florida International - ongoing, ESPN360
California at Washington - ongoing, FSNW
Appalachian State at Richmond - ongoing, ESPN360
California (Pa.) at NW Missouri State - 7:30pm, CBS College

Watching some early football in anticipation of Florida-Alabama the Mizzou-Oregon basketball game? Might as well talk about it here!

Sigh.  Let's just get this season over with already.  Vegas has found that screwing me over is a lot of fun, and I'm not appreciating it.

Last Week: As if the week before weren't bad enough, I missed 13 of last week's 49 games by 3.5 points or less.  THIRTEEN.  Just keeping up with the scores on the ticker, I thought I was doing wonderfully on Friday and Saturday.  I was not.  Needless to say, it is hampering my confidence in the abilities of the S&P+ system to be a good money maker.  Yes, my first stab at season-long projections went strikingly well, but week-to-week ATS picks?  Not so much...yet.

The offseason plan is two-fold: 1) I'll do some analysis on which type of games I was most likely to miss and by how much (the goal is to create a spreadsheet I can send to people via request to see if they can spot trends I can't), and 2) once I have 2004-06 play-by-play data entered, go back to the beginning of 2004, set up the system to pick games week-to-week from 2004-09, and tinker until I find the "system" that works the best.

Oh yeah, and I plan to do a ton of work on my preseason projections system (having 2004-09 data to look at instead of 2007-08 is going to make a world of difference, and I'm really excited about the prospects) and different ways to measure defensive success.  It is indeed possible that I'll be busier in the offseason than I have been during the season.

Anyway, here are this week's picks.  Conference title games (and de facto title games) are in bold.

• Really, Vegas?  Really?  I have Boise by 47.9, and the line is Boise -47.5?  Really?  GET OUT OF MY HEAD, VEGAS.  Ugh.
• In all, six of 17 games are projected within three points of the line (and another handful are within four or so), so depending on my luck, this could be really good or really bad.  And considering my luck's been atrocious lately, assume really bad.

WOW did Vegas violate me six ways to Sunday last week...a multitude of leads flipped at the last minute, and after fighting back from a 2-5 start to move to 13-9 mid-day, I finished on an amazing 6-24 run to end the day.  SIX AND FREAKING TWENTY-FOUR.  A freaking coin flip would have done better.  As The Beef said when I was crying to him about it, Vegas is a fickle mistress.  Come back to me, Vegas, come back to me.  Let's finish strong.

Last Week: horrid start, decent middle, so-bad-I-checked-to-see-if-I-was-bleeding finish.

As you'll see after the jump, a whopping 21 games are projected within three points of the spread, meaning there really aren't many smart bets at all at this point.  Vegas really does have a good read on most teams right now, and I'm believing more and more that Bill Simmons was basically right -- that money is won at the beginning of the season before Vegas has everything figured out.  After that, good luck.  Here's my proof:

My Projections Versus the Spread

September: 141-91-2 (60.7%)
October: 104-104-4 (50.0%)
November Thus Far: 80-79-4 (50.3%)

I had something nice early on and have been treading water ever since.  This is, again, my first stab at this, so I do think something more along the lines of 65%-55%-55% (Sept-Oct-Nov) might be attainable for next year, but ... Vegas is Vegas for a reason.  To find a successful system, I think you need to a) make really good projections, AND b) pick your spots.  I'm doubting I can do better than 60% ATS when picking all games.

• Not a lot of upset potential here.  The numbers have had a crush on OU all year, as evidenced by the fact that they're still supposed to win big (thank you, Owen Field home field adjustment) despite the rather pitiful showing against Tech last week.  Meanwhile, Texas is supposed to handle ATM easily, NU is supposed to handle CU reasonably easy (though one should never underestimate the "Playing to save the coach" factor...just ask Missouri 2006 versus Iowa State...or potentially Missouri 2009 versus Kansas...wait, did I just say that out loud?).  Baylor is expected to make it more of a game than the spread would suggest, but we'll see.
  

All games after the jump.

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