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The Dean is taking it down to the wire in getting you predictions for the NFL season that kicks off tonight. You can all take a deep breath, Dean and his Scouts finally got together this past Sunday to perform the exercise of predicting how many wins each team will get this year, all playoff matchups, and finally a Super Bowl winner.

Before the info is shared, let’s define how we arrived at our predictions.

Dean is a firm believer that most bettors waste time by saturating themselves in data that does nothing but muddy the waters. Dean also attests to making fast decisions and trusting ones gut instincts. Being fast should not be confused with rushing. Lastly, we employed the wisdom of the crowd to arrive at the final predictions. The wisdom of the crowd says that the crowd is wiser than anyone one individual in the crowd.

Here is the process we followed. The group sat down and spent no more than 10 minutes determining the win totals of a division. The first 5 minutes were spent in group discussion reviewing basic information: last year’s win totals, changes to rosters, etc. The second 5 minutes was for the individual to determine each team’s win totals. In most instances the full 5 minutes was not needed for the second part. During the individual period each person could look at information they felt was relevant. This could have included bye weeks, which other divisions were on that teams schedule, etc. When each person was ready, they would give their prediction of each team’s win totals. We did this division by division until all eight divisions were fully predicted.

The average number of wins was then determined and the final standings were determined. We did not round off numbers, so if the Pittsburgh Steelers were predicted to have 11.25 wins and the Baltimore Ravens were predicted to have 11 wins, then the Steelers were the AFC North division winners. In the instance of any ties, we went through the normal tie breaking process. We first looked if those teams had any head to head matchups, and if so which team would have won that game. Once all ties were broken (there was only one) we had the playoff teams.

Each playoff game was determined and we each gave our winner and predicted score. Whichever team had the majority of votes was declared the winner. Point totals were roughly averaged. We progressed through the playoffs and voila! we have our Super Bowl winner predicted as . . .

AFC East
New England Patriots 12.75 (Dean 13, Bobby 13, TMech 13, Columbo 12)
New York Jets 11 (Dean 11, Bobby 11, TMech 12, Columbo 10)
Buffalo Bills 5 (Dean 5, Bobby 5, TMech 5, Columbo 5)
Miami Dolphins 4.75 (Dean 4, Bobby 4, TMech 5, Columbo 6)

AFC South
Indianapolis Colts 9 (Dean 7, Bobby 10, TMech 9, Columbo 10)
Jacksonville Jaguars 8.25 (Dean 8, Bobby 8, TMech 9, Columbo 8 )
Houston Texans 7.5 (Dean 9, Bobby 9, TMech 6, Columbo 6)
Tennessee Titans 6.25 (Dean 7, Bobby 6, TMech 6, Columbo 6)

AFC North
Pittsburgh Steelers 12.25 (Dean 11, Bobby 13, TMech 13, Columbo 12)
Baltimore Ravens 11.25 (Dean 11, Bobby 12, TMech 12, Columbo 10)
Cleveland Browns 7.25 (Dean 9, Bobby 8, TMech 7, Columbo 5)
Cincinnati Bengals 4 (Dean 4, Bobby 2, TMech 4, Columbo 6)

AFC West
San Diego Chargers 10 (Dean 11, Bobby 10, TMech 10, Columbo 9)
Kansas City Chiefs 7 (Dean 7, Bobby 6, TMech 10, Columbo 5)
Denver Broncos 5.5 (Dean 3, Bobby 5, TMech 6, Columbo 8 )
Oakland Raiders 5.25 (Dean 8, Bobby 4, TMech 5, Columbo 4)

NFC East
Philadelphia Eagles 10.5 (Dean 11, Bobby 11, TMech 11, Columbo 9)
New York Giants 10.25 (Dean 10, Bobby 11, TMech 9, Columbo 11)
Dallas Cowboys 9 (Dean 8, Bobby 10, TMech 9, Columbo 9)
Washington Redskins 5 (Dean 5, Bobby 4, TMech 6, Columbo 5)

NFC South
Atlanta Falcons 11 (Dean 10, Bobby 11, TMech 11, Columbo 12)
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 10.25 (Dean 10, Bobby 10, TMech 11, Columbo 10)
New Orleans Saints 8.25 (Dean 9, Bobby 8, TMech 7, Columbo 9)
Carolina Panthers 3.25 (Dean 4, Bobby 2, TMech 4, Columbo 3)

NFC North
Green Bay Packers 11 (Dean 11, Bobby 12, TMech 10, Columbo 11)
Detroit Lions 9.25 (Dean 9, Bobby 9, TMech 10, Columbo 9)
Chicago Bears 8.25 (Dean 7, Bobby 9, TMech 8, Columbo 9)
Minnesota Vikings 5.25 (Dean 4, Bobby 6, TMech 6, Columbo 5)

NFC West
St. Louis Rams 8.25 (Dean 8, Bobby 7, TMech 9, Columbo 9)
Arizona Cardinals 7 (Dean 8, Bobby 7, TMech 9, Columbo 4)
Seattle Seahawks 5.5 (Dean 5, Bobby 5, TMech 6, Columbo 6)
San Francisco 49ers 4 (Dean 5, Bobby 4, TMech 2, Columbo 5)

AFC Playoff Seeds
1. Patriots 2. Steelers 3. Chargers 4. Colts 5. Ravens 6. Jets

NFC Playoff Seeds
1. Packers 2. Falcons 3. Eagles 4. Rams 5. Giants 6. Buccaneers

First Round Playoff Games
New York Jets 21 @ San Diego Chargers 17
Baltimore Ravens 31 @ Indianapolis Colts 17
Tampa Buccaneers 10 @ Philadelphia Eagles 31
New York Giants 24 @ St. Louis Rams 19

Quarterfinals
New York Jets 20 @ New England Patriots 28
Baltimore Ravens 14 @ Pittsburgh Steelers 17
New York Giants 20 @ Green Bay Packers 28
Philadelphia Eagles 31 @ Atlanta Falcons 35

Conference Championships
Pittsburgh Steelers 17 @ New England Patriots 24
Atlanta Falcons 24 @ Green Bay Packers 21

Super Bowl
New England Patriots 25 vs Atlanta Falcons 28

In Plaxico Burress’ interview with Jeremy Schapp the other day, the disgraced NFL wide-receiver replied to Schapp’s question of, “Why didn’t you have the gun in the holster?”, with the beautifully simplistic and succinctly accurate reply of, “Bad judgment”. Burress should get 3-4 months knocked of his sentence for coming to realize that.

Yesterday I was reminded of Bad Judgment, with Rick Pitino, head coach at the University of Louisville, married father of 5. Coach Pitino went and banged Karen Cunagin Sypher, in a restaurant, with his assistant coach as the lookout, 6 years ago. Who is she? Apparently she is someone that is really into Louisville basketball. This brings to question Pitino decision making on 3 accounts.

1. As the Head Coach of a major basketball program, Pitino is someone that needs to show parents that their kids should play basketball for him, that sponsors should give him money, and that alumni should continue to give buckets of money to him and his team. Why is he banging broads in public? To quote Plaxico Burress, “Bad Judgment”. If you were the father of a kid that was being recruited by Pitino, are you letting Coach into your house? You might think twice, because when you go to refresh everyone’s lemonade glass, Coach is going to be basketballs deep into your wife.

2. Not inviting his assistant coach to get a piece from the buffet is flat out wrong. To top it off, he makes the assistant coach stand lookout?!?! Pitino implicates the assistant coach by making him stand there, and then doesn’t even let him get in on the action. That is no way to keep unity on your coaching staff. Bad Judgment.

3. The chick ends up being loony. Go figure! We all know so many ‘sane’ girls that have nail-banging sessions on a restaurant table. I am not complaining, I am just saying. Watch Fatal Attraction, its a documentary on that type of ‘lady’. Anyway, Cyphers tries to get money from Pitino, blah blah blah, she gets arrested for extortion and lying to the police. It sure seems like her arrest is very much deserved. However, and according to Syphers, during the time she was attempting to extort money, Pitino’s words to her were along the lines of “your boy’s will end up in cement”, “you will end up in cement”, “your whole family will be in cement”. Now, I don’t know what to think. Is Syphers just pulling out blatant Italian mob stereo-types, or is Pitino a stereo-typical Italian mobster? Personally, I believe that Pitino would say something like that. I also don’t believe he would actually do, or have done for him, any of those methods of silencing people. But, I do know that he likes to scream and yell, and he is a little man. Pitino reacted angrily to the release of the Syphers police interview where she makes these claims. In a hastily called press conference Pitino angrily stated that its all a lie, a fabrication. He also brought up Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death and scolded the sportswriters for not covering the death of Kennedy. Acting like an idiot at the press conference you call to defend yourself against accusations from a crazy person that has zero credibility is Bad Judgment.

Today’s Wagers Made Using the Recognition Heuristic or something that attempts to apply this most basic of heuristics. What dooms this experiment is that I am not ignorant enough. When you stop laughing at me I will explain what I mean. The Recognition Heuristic says that while complete knowledge is better than zero knowledge when making a decision; neither is as beneficial as partial knowledge.

I applied the Recognition Heuristic to this week’s wagers at the Money Line level. To use this heuristic for with Spreads you first must answer the question ‘Who will win?’ before you can answer the question ‘Will the team I have decided will win cover the spread?’. With Spreads, the ultimate decision is not about the winner of the game. So this week I made it about the winner of the game.

Now, there isn’t a lot of value in betting Money Lines in football. Granted, there are the instances of huge dogs to winning,, but there is a reason the money line is so big, it is massively unlikely. Conversely, wagering on a huge favorite may ‘guarantee’ you a win, but you must risk so much for so littl in return. However, when parlayed you can create some bang for your buck. Answer this question. Do you think you could pick 50% of the winning NFL teams each week? I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I do remember playing office pools where only winners were picked, and I remember routinely winning 10-14 games. Perhaps my memory favors me too much, so I am not relying on memory, instead I will begin to chart. Charting is awareness my friends, and awareness is the key to it all.

My NFL wagers this week are:
- 7-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 10.17% of my OI. All money lines.

- 14-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 452.72% of my OI. All point spreads.

- 14-Team Parlay risking .5% of my Original Investment (OI) to win 295.75% of my OI. All money lines.

I am of the firmest belief that Just Paying Attention (JPA) is sufficient to achieve mediocrity. When JPA is accompanied by Hard Work (HW), Success (S) then becomes more probable. Pr(S) = JPA x HW⁴

Pr(S)
0 – 20: Don’t forget anything is possible.
20.01 – 45.00: You never know.
45.01 – 55.00: There is a chance.
55.01 – 65.00: One that got away
65.01 – 80.00: Count on it
80.01 – 89.99: if it doesn’t happen, reevaluate
90.00 +: no reason it shouldn’t happen, if it doesn’t more than 77% of the time, then stop everything!

How do you interpret the above? How do you define JPA, HW and S? Is HW to the fourth power adequate? over-hyped?
What situation or situation type is this being applied to?

I would love to know your ideas and thoughts. Please post your responses as a Comment to this post so that others can learn from your perspective. If you are shy and don’t want your response public, then please Click Here and email your comments to me.

thedean@deanbrowski.com