Update: The Casual Sports Fan Experiment

I’m not an obsessive football fan, but I do enjoy the sport and probably watch about 3 games a week. “Watch” is a relative term– usually I have the games on while I’m messing around on my computer, so I’m not catching every play or anything like that. I also watch SportsCenter every morning as I get ready for work, so I catch a decent number of highlights there. I’d say that I have a moderate amount of football knowledge. For example, I know that Matt Schaub is out for the rest of this year, but I have no idea what a nickelback is.

With that being said, I thought it might be interesting to see how this “moderate” football fan might fare in picking the lines on the games each week. Moon, an avid & well researched football fan, is averaging about a .500 record on his choices. My idea for this experiment emerged from the thought that maybe having too much information was actually a bad thing, so I’ve decided to see if I can do any better.

UPDATE: After talking with Bag who just so happens to be doing the same thing as me, I've adjusted the rules a little bit. See below. 

I’ve set a couple of rules for myself during this experiment:

1. I cannot do any research beyond what I normally watch to make these picks. That means I’m making my decisions largely based on the biases of ESPN analysts and what I see in games. On the plus side, I’m pretty aware of the ESPN biases, so at least I’m forearmed on that one.

2. Update - I must pick all the games that week

3.  Moon uses lines issued by 5Dimes, but so far as I can tell, you have to register with the site to see the lines. As a casual fan, that’s way too involved for me. Instead I did a Google search that yielded this website, which I will use for the basis of my picks: http://www.footballlocks.com/nfl_lines.shtml.

4.  I’m not actually betting on these games, so don’t freak out Mom!

If all goes well and I don’t fall completely behind schedule (the most likely reason why this experiment will fail), I may try to keep this up next season, which would give me a more accurate idea of how good I am at this sort of thing. 

Here are my picks for week 11:

Really Like:

Raiders -1.5 over VIKINGS

Jets -5 over BRONCOS (sorry Tebow!)

GIANTS -4 over Eagles

Like:

BEARS -3.5 over Chargers

Seahawks +2 over RAMS

Bengals +7 over RAVENS

If Forced to Choose:

BROWNS +1 over Jaguars

49ERS -9.5 over Cardinals

Titans +6 over FALCONS

LIONS -7 over Panthers

REDSKINS +7.5 over Cowboys

Bills +2 over DOLPHINS

Chiefs +15 over PATRIOTS

PACKERS -14 over Bucs

Lock season record: 0-0

Really like season record: 0-0

Like season record: 0-0

If forced to choose season record: 0-0

All games season record: 0-0