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RCR Picks the Bowls, Which is Itself a Commentary on the Absurdity of Bowl Season

There are 40 bowls this year, most of which are silly cash grabs by bowl sponsors and television networks. We know this, and we're all going to watch them anyway.

By The Ghost of Jay Cutler
IDAHO POTATOES Y'ALL
IDAHO POTATOES Y'ALL
Brian Losness-USA TODAY Sports

All year, we've picked seven college football games a week against the spread. These games have been an interesting mix of important and not important, with the generally crucial distinction that they be interesting for gambling purposes. This isn't a gambling site, and we don't advocate gambling, but Vegas sports books do a very good job of getting a general sense of which teams are going to do what on any given Saturday. Their point spreads, even for games whose outcomes are pretty obvious, are designed to be pretty difficult for the average fan to wager against. We're not average fans around here (we're bloggers, which is way worse), but even we had difficulty picking against the spread with any sort of consistency.

So we're going to do that now for 39 bowl games, a huge chunk of which are overwhelming mistmatches between two teams that we haven't seen play all year! This is a very important and serious exercise.

Before we look at the bowls, an update on the standings for the RCR pick 'em on the year:

  1. Juco (51-40)
  2. Jeff (50-41)
  3. Ghost (48-43)
  4. Borkey (47-44)
  5. Wiskey Wednesday (46-45)
  6. Smeargle and Gray (42-49)
  7. Berry (40-51)

On the year, our overall average record is 45.75-45.25, which is a very good case for Vegas being damn good at drawing up these lines. That a group of eight college football fans can be only about .500 in picking against the spread over the course of a season is exactly what bookies want. There's just enough winning to keep people interested, and just enough losing to keep them employed. Because we're all so close to .500 on the year, it may seem like anybody can win thing (except for Berry lol), and that's true because there are 39* bowl games we are picking from. That's definitely not too many. These bowls are all necessary and exciting. You'll watch them because they take place in exotic locales like El Paso, Montgomery, and Boise, and boast such sponsorships as a synthetic motor oil, a Canadian clothing company, and a tuber. Our picks across these fun, thrilling contests are:

Because a lot of these games are obscenely mismatched, we do agree on a lot. Arizona's gonna beat New Mexico, we think; Utah State ain't losin' to Akron (not in Boise, no sir, no way); and UCLA is certainly much better than a Nebraska team that finished 5-7 on the year.

Oh, yeah, that's right, there are also a lot of teams who finished 5-7 and got bowl invites anyway because there are too many bowls. Several teams, like Mizzou, literally turned down the opportunity to play in a bowl game despite the invite because even they know they didn't deserve it. One bowl in particular, the Cure Bowl, will feature Georgia State and San Jose State, a team whose combined record is 11-13. Yes, I will be watching that game.

So get excited, y'all. Bowl season is here and it starts today. Let's all enjoy our time off of work/school/whatever, prop our pajama-clothed legs up on the couch, and watch bad football games that serve no purpose other than enhancing someone else's #brand.

*In keeping with the practice of this year's pick 'em contest, we are not picking the Sugar Bowl, which features our Ole Miss Rebels. Don't worry y'all, they're gonna win.