Paul Prattles On

Welcome Back! For the 3rd week in a row, I was subpar.  I went 31-16, or 66.0%, which is WAY below the standard I have set for myself, though it was an improvement from the week before.  Overall, I am now 150-65, or 69.8%, a drop of 1% from last week.  My goal every year is to finish at or above 80%, though I've never actually achieved that, but I almost always finish above 75%.  Last year I finished at 76.5% for the regular season, and 76.2% overall, which isn't too shabby.   I want to point out that my predictions come simply from 45+ years of watching and following college football.  I do not have the time (or staff!) to do massive research into depth charts, injuries, transfers, etc, and so, if I were you, I certainly wouldn't take my picks to Vegas (or wherever) and bet the mortgage with them!  My brothers and I have been predicting the games among ourselves off and on for many years, and I should point out that I haven't "won" in a while, but I also have

Welcome Back! Here at Odds and Ends, I plan to look at some stats, trends, storylines, etc. as they play out.  I will also give my opinion on some issues, but you can take that for what it's worth.  In the past, I have usually listed all the teams that reach bowl eligibility, and those that have been eliminated, but since the NCAA has done away with any requirements, that feature will not appear this year.   LIR Let's start with the Last Interception Race (LIR).  In this space, I will be chronicling who has the most attempts without an interception.  This is a lot harder to keep up with with teams playing so sporadically!  After week 8, here are the top 5: 1. Sam Hartman, WF- 117 2. Tyrell Pigrome, WKU- 113 3. Carson Strong, Nev- 52 4. Spencer Perkins, Iowa- 39 5. Stone Norton, FIU- 32 Skylar Thompson (Kansas St) and Lowell Narcisse (UTSA) are both out for the season, so they have been dropped from the list. I think this will be a fun race to watch!  I wonder how far we will ge

Welcome Back! I had a LOT of movement this week as we had several upsets, and I dropped 3 of the 10 factors I use for my preseason rankings.  From here on out, I will be dropping 2 factors per week until all factors have been dropped, which will be following the games on Nov 21.  This means that some teams that may have moved up because of upsets/wins actually moved down because of the dropped points, and teams that lost moved up for the same reason, and some teams that didn't even play moved a lot, so I have a few "strange" results.  This will continue to happen for the next 4 weeks. I should explain that I use a point system to come up with my preseason rankings, and as the season goes on, I will drop these off, as explained above.  Here are the teams that moved the most this week: Kansas State +7 Boise State +6 Washington State +5 Missouri +5 Wake Forest +5 Nevada +5 Appalachian State +4 San Diego State +4 Mississippi State +4 Houston +4 Indiana +4 North Carolina -12 T