Podcast: Episode 47 - Dec 21st, 2016

Gary and Chris roll into Wednesday's show by talking about last night's WCE meetup and watch party, discussing how the NBA should use the D-league like a minor league system, in light of the Grizzlies losing 3 straight since Mike Conley came back (he came back too early). The boys break down the effect of college kids skipping out on meaningless bowl games, and ideas of how to make these exhibitions more exciting, how insane is Florida State's new extension and buyout for Jimbo Fisher, Rutgers recieves an NCAA Notice of Allegations, and we break down some random news (NFL Pro Bowl rosters, man sues McDonald's, UNC received NOA, and San Diego security guard clears the snorkel in front of Charger cheerleaders).

San Diego security masturbates in front of cheerleaders?

Is this even real life?

I can't make this up.

A security guard at the Chargers vs Raiders game decided that pre-game was the best time to rub one out while he was standing directly in front of the Chargers cheerleaders.

You gotta see this.



 

Boca Raton Bowl (Mem/WKU) Watch Party Tues Dec 20th!

We're having our first ever WinningCuresEverything.com watch party tomorrow night, Tuesday, Dec 20th at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Olive Branch, MS for the Boca Raton Bowl matchup between Memphis and Western Kentucky!

More information:

ESPN's Darren Rovell took a jab at the Salvation Army

- Gary Segars (twitter: @proseveregary)

Darren Rovell is a sports business analyst for ESPN.  He basically lives on twitter, and is constantly posting what foods are available at which stadiums (which I rather enjoy seeing), and comments on basically everything that has to do with the business of sports.

But last night, he tried to take a jab at the Salvation Army, and it flopped.

Badly.

Podcast: Episode 46 - Dec 19th, 2016

Gary and Chris kick off the week discussing the weather change, the NFL playoff picture after Week 15 and how much fun the last 2 weeks will be, whether or not the Saints pulled Mark Ingram to stop him from reaching a contract incentive, the fallout from the Oklahoma Joe Mixon video where he punched a woman and broke her jaw, and we recap bowl games and make our bowl picks.

Vid of Oklahoma RB Joe Mixon punching woman is awful

Oklahoma RB Joe Mixon was "suspended" last year due to a domestic violence charge from 2014.  Mixon punched an Oklahoma female student inside a bar / restaurant and broke her jaw, which had to be wired shut for some time.

Just reading that should be enough to piss you off.

But wait until you actually see it.  Because we all know the visual means more than just words.

WCE Friday Picks (12/16/16)

- Gary Segars (twitter: @proseveregary)

We've finally got multiple college football games back for this weekend, with 5 bowl games, and then a slew of NFL games on Sunday to keep up rockin until we get a bowl game every night next week.

One of the best times of the year, my friends.

On the year, in all picks combined (NFL & CFB gambling, and our head to head), I'm sitting at 108-91-9 while Chris is at 91-109-8.  Bowl season and the rest of the NFL season can get things back to even pretty quickly.  Still a lot of football left - enjoy it while you can!

What 4 Major 16-team Conferences would do for the CFB Playoff

- Gary Segars
(twitter: @proseveregary)

Until we get the major conferences down to 4 instead of 5, there's always going to be an issue with the playoff, because one of the 5 major champions will be left out every year.

To top it off, this year, you even had a team that wasn't a conference champion (Ohio St) get in over a team that beat them head-to-head and won the conference (Penn St).

But we understand.  I wrote an article last week about how the playoff is a for-profit business, and you're always going to have something shady happen for the sake of ratings, especially after the year 2 experiment with Michigan St, and the poor scheduling of the games, ultimately spelled the playoffs' doom last year.

This year, they had to make up for it, and Ohio St means eyeballs, whether they won their conference or not.

So maybe the solution to the problem is not expanding the playoff.

Maybe the solution is to change the conferences.

Better coaches: State of Florida or SEC East? Rankings!

With Lane Kiffin's hiring at Florida Atlantic being made official yesterday morning, that now makes 2 former major college and NFL coaches that are taking over Conference USA school in South Florida.  Not to mention a former upstart that didn't get things quite right at Texas, a current upstart former Pac 12 offensive coordinator, an ACC coach that won a national championship just 3 years ago, an ACC coach that has won the SEC twice (and almost a 3rd time in 2012), and an SEC coach that has gone to the SEC Championship game 2 straight years.

The NFL coaches would be #8, #9 and #10 as most recognizable in the state of Florida now.

The Tuesday Recap: Dec 12th, 2016

On the year, in all picks combined (NFL & CFB gambling, and our head to head), Gary is sitting at 104-87-8 while Chris is at 87-104-7, with his last pick coming tonight in the Monday night game between the Colts and Jets.  Still plenty of time over the NFL season and college bowl games to get back to even.
I went 5-2 in the biggest games of the weekend, while I went 3-2 in college gambling picks and 1-1 in NFL picks.  Chris did not do as well, but he's built a pretty good bank thanks to his past successful weeks.

Why Lane Kiffin took FAU job over LSU

The odds of Lane Kiffin coming back to Tuscaloosa for a 4th season in 2017 were always around 10%.

Not because of any bad relationships between Kiffin and Nick Saban, but because this was always supposed to be a rehab assignment.  Truth be told, Kiffin, at age 41, never should have been relegated back to being an offensive coordinator, even if it was for the best team in college football.

Podcast: Episode 43 - Dec 12th, 2016 (our first morning show!)

Today we rolled with our first morning show edition of the show.  Chris and I will be doing Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for the rest of the year, and we'll try and start a daily morning show after the new year.

Gary and Chris start out their first morning show with discussion about last night's Cowboys loss to the Giants and how bad Dak looked, Johnny Football showed up at the Heisman Trophy ceremony and met up with winner Lamar Jackson afterwards to give him some advice, the Grizzlies destroyed the Warriors Saturday night and have won 6 straight, Army beat Navy for the first time since 2001 and Donald Trump showed up in the booth, the Packers beat the crap out of the Seahawks (and Russell Wilson threw 5 interceptions), and we talk about tonight's Ravens at Patriots game.

WCE Friday Picks (12/9/16)

This week has been a little crazy, but we still found time to make the picks for last night's podcast.

Here's what we look like so far on the year:

Head to head against the spread on the best games of the weekend: Gary is 53-43-4 (55%) and Chris is 37-59-4 (39%).

Our college football gambling picks against the spread: Gary is 38-30-2 (56%) and Chris is 33-24-1 (58%).

Our NFL gambling picks against the spread: Gary is 13-14-2 (48%) and Chris is 17-23-2 (43%).  Over everything, against the spread, Gary is 104-87-8 (54%) while Chris is at 87-104-7 (46%).   Now, check out this week's picks.

"...hope is all a defeated fan can ask for."

- Chris Giannini (@ChrisBGiannini)

 The 2016 season in the NFL has not been its best... by a long shot.

Plagued with boring games, dreadful coaching, and worthless quarterback play, ratings and interest overall have been down. That doesn’t mean the season has been a complete waste. Teams like the Raiders and Lions have pulled themselves out of the gutter to lead their divisions and have been unbelievably entertaining. Their young QBs are both in the race for the league MVP and their offenses seem to be clicking on all cylinders.

Playoff will always be broken until major conferences move to 16

There is no right way to fix the college football playoff as it is currently setup.

NCAA President Mark Emmert told ESPN's Brett McMurphy yesterday that he would "prefer an 8-team CFB Playoff so all Power 5 conference champions are guaranteed a bid."

But an 8-team playoff guaranteeing all conference champions get in doesn't solve things either.

The move to 4 teams was supposed to fix the issues that the BCS brought by having only 2 teams, which was brought up to fix the problem of not having #1 play #2 every year thanks to bowl contracts.

Power 5 coaches are not leaving for other jobs

Oregon just filled their head coaching position by hiring South Florida's Willie Taggart.  Great hire - Taggart was the running backs coach at Stanford under Jim Harbaugh (so he knows the West Coast), and has rebuilt programs from the ground up at Western Kentucky and South Florida, taking both from terrible losing seasons early on, to big time winning programs built to last.  You see what Jeff Brohm was left with at Western Kentucky?  Yeah, the same thing will be there for South Florida.

The Monday Rewind: 12/5/16

Things started out poorly on Friday night, but we were able to continue our winning ways this weekend with a big night on Saturday night.  I went 5-2 in the biggest games of the weekend, while I went 3-2 in college gambling picks and 1-1 in NFL picks.  Chris did not do as well, but he's built a pretty good bank thanks to his past successful weeks.

On the year, in all picks combined (NFL & CFB gambling, and our head to head), I'm sitting at 104-87-8 while Chris is at 87-104-7, with his last pick coming tonight in the Monday night game between the Colts and Jets.  Still plenty of time over the NFL season and college bowl games to get back to even.

ESPN swayed the CFB Playoff Committee & why a 6-team playoff is better than 8 or 4.

Ok, let's start off with this:  Let's say a team was 11-2, and were conference champions from the
media-stated most difficult division in this year's best conference in college football.  They had won 9 straight games (8 straight by 14 or more, and the 9th was the title game over a top 6 team), had gone 9-1 in that conference, and in their 2 losses (one to a top 5 team, one to a top 25 team), both in September, they had injuries all over the field, and were starting walk-ons at linebacker.

But once they got healthy, they were on fire and beating teams up.

Let's say another team goes 11-1, with a loss to that conference champion head to head, and they had a really good non-conference win over a top 10 team in the 3rd game of the season.  But they didn't get a chance to play for the conference championship, so they played one less game.

If I flipped the names of the team, and said the conference champion was Ohio St, and the team that didn't make their championship game was Penn St, would the committee have put in Ohio St over Penn St?  If the roles were reversed, it wouldn't matter, because Ohio St was getting in no matter what.

It's almost like I didn't watch Penn St beat Ohio St back on Oct 22nd.  And that leads to questions...

Final Playoff Resumes (what's really going to happen): 12/2/16

We've finally reached the end of the college football regular season, and the Championship Weekend is now upon us.  And what a long, strange season it's been.


We're now to the point where the playoff committee has to show whether they're interested in viewership, or retaining their credibility.  They stated one of the most important criteria for getting into the playoff would be conference championships... but the way things are ranked, and how they are talking about teams leads one to believe that TV ratings may be more important, especially after how poor the ratings were last year for the Alabama / Michigan St game in Dallas and the Clemson / Oklahoma game in Miami.  The ratings were so bad, in fact, that ESPN had to give away $20M in free ads due to the viewership being so horrible.

Why Lane Kiffin would leave Alabama for LSU

I've had several people ask me to help make sense of the idea of Lane Kiffin leaving Tuscaloosa for Baton Rouge.

It's really not as hard as some people think it is.

Yes, Alabama is, currently, a better, more stable program.  Yes, Kiffin and Saban appear to be working together well, getting to 3 straight SEC Championship games, 2 straight playoffs, and winning the playoff last year.  LSU just hired their interim head coach as full-time head coach, and, yes, it's the same coach that went 10-25, and 3-21 in the SEC, as head coach at Ole Miss from 2005-07.

But that doesn't mean it couldn't work out for Lane.

WCE Thursday Picks (11/30/16)

Good gracious.  Life comes at ya fast, right?  We are actually on the final weekend... CHAMPIONSHIP weekend... in college football.  Yes, we have Army - Navy next weekend, and then we get plenty of bowl games to keep us occupied (and yes, we'll be picking bowl games throughout December), and we'll continue to pick NFL games... but we've really made it to the end of the season.  And we've done fairly well, if I do say so myself.  Between all of the games that we've picked against the spread, between our gambling picks and our big game picks, I'm now at 95-82-8 while Chris is at 83-95-7.  We've both go a chance to hit over 100 wins before the NFL season is done.  And that's a pretty big deal. On to the games for this week!