Paul Prattles On

Welcome Back! It's been a few weeks since I last posted.  Today is the day when I am supposed to start revealing my top 130 FBS teams, counting down from #130 to #1.  I give a brief preview of each team, covering things like non-conference games, returning starters, how warm the coach's hot seat is, interesting stats from last year, etc.  This takes 3 weeks, as I do 10 teams a day for 11 days, and then 5 a day for the last 4 days.  I then take 2 weeks previewing each conference giving my picks for who will win every division.  Just so you know, I was more accurate than any of the 4 major magazines (Phil Steele, Lindy's, Athlon, and Street & Smith's) for the 2018 season, and was 2nd (behind Phil Steele) last year.   All this takes me up to the first game week, where I do my usual Monday through Thursday blogs: Mondays- TWIF Notes- observations and impressions on every game played the previous week. Tuesdays- Power Rankings- updated to include all games played, highl

These are certainly interesting times that we are living through!  Sports cancelled, a pandemic raging, and now nationwide protests.  My state, Georgia, has relaxed restrictions quite a bit, but leaders are still asking us to wear masks and to social distance.  However, when my wife and I went to Home Depot on Friday, she and I were two of only five people wearing a mask, and that includes only one employee!  Our local Walmart has much better mask participation, and employees are monitoring how many customers enter and exit the store. Some sports look like they will be starting soon: the NBA, the NHL, and MLS, but MLB is too busy trying to win negotiations to focus on doing what's best for all involved.  Many college sports teams have been cleared to return to school for workouts, and even the high schools here in Georgia may have athletes and band members work out at school, as long as certain guidelines are met.  It looks like the NFL and College Football plan to start on time

Welcome back! I know it's been a while since my last post (about 4 months!), but it seems that I now have the time to do so, what with everyone staying home.  I've been meaning to do this for a long time, but teaching and other things kept pushing this project off, and then it got to where my thought was, "What's the point?"  The season has been LOOOOONG gone, and no one really cares.  But I care, so now I'm finally getting around to it. In an earlier post (Odds and Ends 12/18/19), I pointed out that I finished 2nd to Phil Steele in my conference predictions (using the formula outlined in his magazine).  I think that's pretty good, considering he's touted as the best in the business.  Just as a reminder, I beat him (and all the others) for the 2018 season.  In this post, I'm going to review my bowl prediction record, my overall prediction record, and my predictions for each individual team. For the bowls, I went 28-12, a 70% rate.  I was righ

Welcome back! So far in my bowl predictions, I am 6-4.  That's not too bad, considering how notoriously difficult it is to pick bowl winners, but not anywhere near where I expect to be.  My dumbest pick was Boise State to beat Washington (they lost 38-7!), but picking SMU to beat FAU wasn't too bright, either.  I should have allowed myself to be convinced as I was writing up my picks from last week.  But that won't stop me from giving you another round of picks!  These will cover From today (12/26) through January 6, so this will be my last post of 2019.  I will do my National Championship Game pick probably on January 9, my normal Thursday for picks. Before I get into this next group of bowl games, let's examine how each conference has done.  So far, the bowls have only featured one P5 team- the aforementioned Washington.  But here are the standings so far: Pac 12 1-0 1.000 MAC 2-1 .667 SBC 2-1 .667 MWC 2-2 .500 AAC 1-1 .500 Ind 1-1 .500 CUSA 1-4 ..200 S

Welcome back! Last week was my best yet! I went 1-0 for a 1.000 win percentage!  Overall, I am 649-199, which is still 76.5%.  I've done pretty well this year. Bowl week has arrived, and so have my picks.  However, please be aware that the bowls are notoriously difficult to predict.  Players sitting out, interim coaches, coaching staff changes, differing motivation levels for the 2 teams, and player suspensions all make the bowl games pretty much a coin flip.  But I'm going to try anyway! On to the predictions! Friday, December 20 Buffalo vs Charlotte (Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl- Nassau, NP)- The 49ers are playing in their 1st ever bowl game in just their 5th season in FBS, and are coming in on a 5-game winning streak, but only one of those wins- Marshall- was against a team

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. Today, I will examine how my preseason conference predictions panned out, and how they compare to what I consider the 4 major magazines:  Phil Steele, Lindy's, Athlon, and Street and Smith's. On pages 6 and 7 of his preseason magazine, Phil Steele outlines a method of comparing preseason predictions, one that was developed by Chris Stassen.  Using this method, I outperformed all 4 of the magazines listed above for the 2018 season!  Did I do it again? Unfortunately, the answer is no, but I did outperform 3 of the 4, and I was closer to 1st place than I was to 3rd.  Here is how the scores came out after I computed them (low score is best!): Phil Steele- 116 points Paul Anderson- 121 Athlon- 129 Lindy's- 131 Street and Smith's