PYU Week 11: Relax

(DISCLAIMER: This game is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

After the Temple game, which suddenly seems so long ago, I got the bright idea to offer a novelty bet on how many points SMU would score against USF Saturday. As of 6 AM Friday morning, only one person has taken it. I’m glad it’s not popular: I think we’ve piled on this team and coaching staff enough. With an interim staff, let’s just hope for the best and try to have some fun.

Even ordinary bets on USF are down this week. There are usually several every time they play, because we’re all a bunch of homers. As of now there are only five. Though this could also be from the uncertainty of an interim coaching staff.

But a lot of teams have shown improvement under interim coaches this season. A woeful Charlotte got an out-of-nowhere blowout road win; Georgia Tech, Wisconsin, and Nebraska have been more competitive; even Auburn took a much better Mississippi State team to overtime after it finally got rid of Bryan Harsin. So there is reason to hope for a dead ca— no, I’m not calling it that. I’m trying to be positive here.

Here are this week’s picks as of about 6 AM:

I’ll update this post at week’s end to catch up the results.

RESULTS

Get ready for the saddest parlay win of all time:

In the history of PYU, we’ve never had a parlay with 1 win and 2 pushes. In 2020 we had three parlays where every bet was a push or a cancellation, but never a 6 to 1 win that became a 1 to 1 win. Better than nothing, I guess.

This win of 25 units was just enough to negate dsidwell31’s loss of 25 units on the “SMU to score more than 64 points” wager. He was the only player to make that bet. It turns out USF’s defense isn’t that bad. Or at least the offense is good enough to stay on the field for a bit.

I’ve been picking on dsidwell31 here, but he was one of our ten, count ‘em, ten winners this week:

The top three players were within 6 points in the points race, and all of them earned points this week, so what are the standings now?

Remember, when there are more than eight winners in a week, all winners below 8th place also get one point for the points race. But it wasn’t enough just to score points this week: McIntyre2K7 scored the maximum number of points, extending his lead, even though most of his pursuers also added to their totals.

But what about the money race? Will our two races result in a split delegation?

We have a new money leader! jrjs, who was as low as 714 after Week 4 and only had 1107 units after Week 8, has leapt into the money lead!

McIntyre2K7 and BullsOnParade96 are close behind, and several other players can get into to the peleton with a huge week. McIntyre2K7’s 30 units’ worth of “pending” Futures was on Kansas to win more than 3 games, so that’s going to be a win, which will add 57.27 to his total. (When you win a futures bet, you get your initial bet back (30) plus the winnings ,(27.27)).

Here are all the plays that won 50 or more units in Week 11:

jrjs used his “dueling in-game parlays” strategy again, taking Indiana +40/under against Ohio State -39.5/over, The latter won. ElliotMoore hit two upset winners. Over/under plays were popular.

You know what I haven’t talked about yet? The ending of the SMU-USF game. SMU was favored by 17.5, and USF went for two at the end of an 18-point game. They failed, and SMU covered. This affected no one, because only two people played the point spread in that game, and both were a part of parlays that were already doomed.

Week 12 features a lot of games that lost their luster in Week 11 due to upsets: UCLA-USC, Illinois-Michigan, Georgia-Kentucky, Oregon-Utah, Syracuse-Wake Forest, SMU-Tulane. And it’s SEC Silly Season: Austin Peay-Alabama, East Tennessee-Mississippi State, UMass-Texas A&M - actually hang on a sec, Texas A&M might lose that. So not many games of national importance this week.

In the post-modern American, we have the aforementioned SMU-Tulane on Thursday, USF-Tulsa on Friday, Navy-UCF, Houston-East Carolina, Cincinnati-Temple, UTSA-Rice, FAU-Middle Tennessee, Louisiana Tech-Charlotte, UAB-LSU, and Memphis plays FCS team North Alabama.