Week 16 — 3 Jan 2005

From: Jeff
To: mnf@fat.doobie.com
Subject: It's Monday...

...and welcome to the post-season.

Here are the teams that are still playing:

AFC: Pittsburgh (15-1) New England (14-2) Indianapolis (12-4) San diego (12-4) Denver (10-6) NY Jets (10-6)

NFC: Philadelphia (13-3) Atlanta (11-5) Green Bay (10-6) Seattle (9-7) Minnesota (8-8) St Louis (8-8)

Yes... There are TWO 8-8 teams there.

This coming weekend (2 games Saturday, 2 games Sunday) the bottom four teams of each conference will play. Hurray!

Tonight, it's monday, and despite the ending of the NFL season, there's still football on TV and beer to be consumed. In fact, tonight the kickoff's an hour earlier, and the beer is free...

The Game:

Live, from the Louisiana Superdome, it's the Nokia Sugar Bowl!

Tonight, The 12-0 Auburn Tigers and the 10-2 Virginia Tech Hokies[1] go to New Orleans to play on the newly installed Sportexe Momentum artificial turf, in front of about 72,000 people... including 168 hungover members of the band(s), and 11 season ticket holders who mistakenly showed up yesterday for a Saints game.

Auburn, in a move that sounds more Texan than Alabaman, has been complaining that it's too good to be playing tonight. While its 12-0 record would give it a spot in the National Championship game in a normal season, this year we've got three 12-0 teams, and the other two (USC and Oklahoma) are playing tomorrow night for the championship.

If the usual assortment of sports writers are any indication, it appears that the players and coaches of Auburn are the only people in the world that believe that they're the best NCAA football team in the country.

But could they beat the Dolphins?

The Line:

Auburn is favored by 6. This line has moved quite a bit, and has been as low as 4.5 in the last 72 hours. The over/under is 44.5

The smart money finished the NFL season 10-7. At $22 per bet, it would've netted $46 on a total potential risk of $374. That's a 12% ROI.

Tonight, the smart money takes Virginia Tech. Between the Hokie's underestimated defense, the stupidity of Auburn's making Texas-like statements (see also: Cal), and the movement of the line, this one seems like a fairly easy pick.... which is why I'm so unsure about it.

The smart money also takes the over. 44.5 is too low for a nationally-televised college game.

The Bar:

It seems that MNF regular Matt and his roommates have a strangely familiar problem: there's a keg of Pabst that isn't yet empty sitting on their porch.

So tonight, we're going to help them solve that beer problem, as the Hokies help the Auburn Tigers get over themeselves.

Kickoff is at 5:00. Say that again, because it's different today. Kickoff is at FIVE.

See you there?

[1] Apparently, depending on who you believe, a hokie is either a meaningless word that used to be popular in cheers ("Rah Rah Rah"), or some sort of turkey.

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