Thanks Muchas gracias to Vivek Ramaswamy for his Super Bowl pick: KC +1.5 over san fran.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1751740881751724329
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/31/super-bowl-taylor-swift-travis-kelce-conspiracy-theories/a3980d7e-c08c-11ee-a4c6-8f5c350e9316_story.html
My Super Bowl pick was also based on the persuasive case from Professor Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame that NFL bettors would do better if they realized that underdogs consistently best overdogs ATS over long periods and that the Super Bowl underdog is the best bet of the year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/dissecting-the-line.html
During the 2023 regular season, underdogs were 127-137-8 or 48% against the spread (ATS) = 82-86-3 road underdogs + 45-51-5 home underdogs (normally the best bet in sports over many years). Overdogs won the regular season for only the 7th time in the past 32 years.
Based on the historical record, I will not abandon my all-underdogs strategy after one bad year.
Toy boy Archibald has retired his NFL ATS pool due to volunteer work taking up all his time even to the point of neglecting me. With Arch barely in my life, (and even more barely barely, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink) I joined another pool and picked all underdogs all year long. A simple all-underdogs strategy recorded 25 winning regular seasons over the past 32, a track record significant to statheads (to borrow one of Arch's catch-phrases). I finished 3rd out of 65 players in the pool in 2022. This year I finished tied for 36th out of 57. However, I was pleased to finish 1st in week 14.
I am not aware of any evidence showing most playoff matches to be different in the regular season. Our pool continues during the playoffs and I stuck with all underdogs during the wild card round going 4-2 = 2-0 home underdogs + 2-2 road underdogs.
I never pick favourites except for the No. 1 seeds in the divisional round. Teams with a bye going into the playoffs win about 3/4 of matches straight-up. I doubt that the point spreads reflect the full advantage that should be accorded No. 1 seeds, but I have no evidence to substantiate my gut feeling. I went 1-1 ATS this year with home overdogs No. 1 seeds in the 1/4 final divisional round. They were 2-0 straight-up. Road underdogs went 1-1.
In the conference championship semi-final round, I went 2-0 with my underdog picks. So, for once, a winning playoff record ATS this year = 9-4 = 2-0 home underdogs + 5-3 road underdogs + 1-1 home overdogs + 1-0 Super Bowl.
