Fortune-cookie College Bowl Season

Great Ending: Auburn vs Alabama

Now that the 2013-2014 bowl season has ended and 35 games in the NCAA football bowl schedule have been played, we have a final tally on the odds makers. On 35 games, the line was wrong at least thirteen times. On picks correctly choosing the winner, more than a dozen grossly failed to forecast the game, the scores, and the margin.

The last returns came in last night. In the BCS Bowl, Florida State was favored by two scores.

Final score: Florida State 34, Auburn 31.

This time at least the bad pickers–I mean the bad boys–picked the winner correctly. They just blew the game. Down by three is not the same as down by two touchdowns. This was another one I was not able to watch throughout. From what I was able to see, however, Auburn lost at least as much to itself as to the other team. Auburn owned the first half, except for a couple of wobbles late in the half, and FSU was never dominant. Maybe the hype won this one. After this bowl season, anyone who would cite Vegas on sports odds has to be ranked as out of touch.

Fortune

Do they believe what they read in fortune cookies? Have you ever wondered why there isn’t massive theft in fortune-cookie bakeries, where the fortunes are put out? Or why people aren’t thronging newspaper boxes and newsstands, to grab the earliest horoscope predictions for the day? Either the line isn’t what it used to be, or it never was any good, but either way his season exposed  how much those sports predictions resemble the ones in fortune cookies. Their adherents must be the same people who awarded the Heisman.