Two years ago I participated in the Lafayette County Bowl Pick. I didn’t last year, but I’m back in it again this year. To play, you pay $20 and pick a winner for each of the 34 bowl games. The score of the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma serves as the tie breaker. The winner gets 80% of the pot, second place gets 15%, and third place gets 5%. There were 576 entrants this year, so that means the winner will get $9,216, second place $1,728, and third place $576. Yes, I realize I’m not likely to win, but it’s fun, and it makes watching even the mediocre bowl games more interesting.
My research primarily consisted of reading some bowl picks on ESPN.com and looking at schedules. I spent a total of an hour and a half making my picks, so I’m not going to be able to claim much skill in the case that I do well.
So far I’ve picked 8 of the 11 bowl games correctly, putting me in top 54 or the top 9%. No one has picked all 11 correctly, only 1 person has picked 10 correctly, and only 8 people have picked 9 correctly, so making these picks is a little harder than you might think.
A couple of my picks that went the wrong way have been very close. Troy lost to Southern Miss in overtime by having a relatively short field goal blocked in the New Orleans Bowl. North Carolina lost 30-31 to West Virginia in the Meineke Bowl.
Because someone will ask, I’ll go ahead and tell you that I did pick Texas Tech to beat Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl. I’ll be cheering for Ole Miss, but the reality of the situation is that we’re unlikely to win. It could happen, but the odds are against it.
As I mentioned, the score of the championship game serves as the tiebreaker, and I picked Florida to beat Oklahoma 34-27. It could really go either way, but I picked Florida to win because I want them to win. I noticed that some people played twice, turning in identical sheets with the exception of the championship game pick and score. That’s a good strategy, but I’m too cheap.
I’ll post a couple of updates as the bowl season progresses.