Super Bowl XLVI Recap

Getting the Super Bowl right picking

NY Giants +3 over New England

brought me back to 50% for the full year at 128-128-11. I finished a dreadful 7-14-1 with my efforts to identify "value overdogs". A plain-vanilla, all-underdog strategy finished well ahead of yours truly at 135-121-11 or 52.6%, just above the long-term average for all-underdogs.

I have been under 50% in the playoffs 8 of the past 9 years. I need to develop a consistent approach and stick to it.

One strange Super Sunday quirk is that the NFC team won the coin toss 14 years in a row until finally losing this year. The chances of calling a fair coin toss correctly 14 times in a row are less than 1 in 10,000.

Professor Steven Levitt, author of the best-seller Freakanomics, argues that the Super Bowl is an unusually good day to pick the underdog. Underdogs are 22-22-2 in 46 Super Bowls so far. But, Professor Leavitt is confident that once we have a statistically significant sample of 1,000 or so Super Bowls, his prediction will be borne out -- provided bettors continue to overvalue overdogs for the next 950 years.

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Another quirk is how streaky the conferences have been in taking turns dominating on a straight-up basis. The NFC and AFC (successors to the NFL and AFL) split the first VI Super Bowls. Then the AFC won VIII of the next IX contests. Then the NFC took XV of the next XVI including XIII in a row. The AFC turned the tables to win VIII of the following X matches. And, now the NFC is on a IV out of V run. All in all, the NFC has won XXV of XLVI.

NBA Heavy Underdogs 2012 Recap

Heavy underdogs with more than 12 points finished 18-20-2 for the 2012 regular season.

NFL 2011-2 Recap

Updated 7 February 2012

For those of you playing in season-long pools picking winners against point spreads, I recommended mostly underdogs again this year. I finished 128-128-11 for the entire season, 124-121-11 for the regular season followed by 4-7 in the playoffs.

I was less than rapt to go an abysmal 7-14-1 with my efforts to identify "value overdogs" leaving me trailing a plain-vanilla all-underdog strategy leading the way at 135-121-11 or 52.6% -- a touch above the long-term average for all-underdogs over the past 20 years. Underdogs have finished over 50% in 7 of the past 10 years and 16 of the past 20.

CFL 2011 Recap

The National Football League (NFL) is my principal interest (aside from toy boy and fiance Archibald), but just for fun I pick Canadian Football League (CFL) games against the spread (ATS).

After correctly picking BC -7 over Winnipeg in the Grey Cup, I was chuffed to finish 44-32-1 or 57.8% ATS for 2011.

I was 45-32 or 58.4% winners ATS in 2010 and am 55% to the good over 2009 to 2011 combined.

Official Godiva toy boy and fiance Archibald was totally wrong with his mid-year prediction that Montreal would triumph over Calgary in the Grey Cup. Spend more time in my boudoir and less time in betting parlours, Archibald, you handsome devil.