Week 8 BTBS Picks!

Well...apparently I complained a little too much about consistency last week...definitely not a consistent week last time around...and there are some, uhh, interesting picks this time around.  I'm a little scared.

Last Week: Can we just pretend last week didn't happen?

UGH.  Lost a large handful of games by 0.5 or 1 point.  My redemption here is simply that it was a stupid week--I won last week's FO picks with a 5-5 record.

As always...Big 12 picks here...everything after the jump.

The disclaimers are building here.  As I've mentioned before, it does seem like NU's and MU's ratings both skewed upward a bit too much after the monsoon game, so their prowess is probably being overstated.  Meanwhile, Baylor's performance with Hot Tub Griffin III is still taken into account, and Tech's early mediocre play is probably keeping them from getting too much credit for how good they've looked in the last two weeks (and how bad ATM has looked).  Maybe ATM rebounds and makes it a game...I guess we'll see how much of an impact "two-week momentum" will make.  At the NFL level, Aaron from Football Outsiders does take into account recent momentum, and I think that's something I will have to do at some point, but I'm not going to do it arbitrarily--we're going to find out how much of an impact it truly makes (and at what increment...2 weeks? 3? 5?) and adjust for next year.

All games after the jump.

• Once again, no conference is crazier than the Pac-10, where the bottom half just continues to shuffle around and make no sense.  UCLA-Arizona is a complete mystery, as is Cal.  Thanks to gigantic eggs laid against Oregon and USC, Cal's projections aren't that hot...but they've looked really, really good against everybody else.  I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they beat Wazzu by about 85, but again, the projections take the whole season into account.  Numbers don't deal well with schizophrenia.
• The numbers have hitched their wagon to the Virginia turnaround, and so far they've been spot-on.  Still, though...beating Georgia Tech?  Huh.
• Rutgers disclaimer: why are they projected to lose to Army by 8?  Because they've played two FCS teams (not just FCS teams, god-awful ones), and it's completely wrecked their SOS.  They're not good, but they're probably not that bad.  Buyer beware on that one.

Gotta say...the iffy week last week shook me up, and I'm wary about quite a few of these picks.  Then again, if not for the closest of close misses, I'd have been right at the 60% I'm used to, so who knows...do beware of the disclaimers I missed above, and just for your own sanity, if you're betting, avoid the Pac-10 at all costs.