Weekly Pick'em

The Weekly pick'em was a main stay of Durty Butter last year, and I know a lot of you made a lot of money off of me. I get thousands of e-mails a day asking for my help again, so here it is. The Durty Butter Weekly pick'em is back and better than ever. Part of the reason that I haven't had a pick'em yet was because I needed a week where I thought that Illinois could cover. Well folks we finally have it. Before we get to the picks though, I have a few things that I would like to get off of my chest.

1) I have already talked at great length about how baseball is the dumbest sport in the world right? Well if you haven't heard my reasons, I'll go over a couple of them for you real fast. First, you have 2 different leagues that have separate rules. How damn dumb is that? There is no set rules for baseball. Second, the field of play is different. How the hell can you compare records, wins/loses, and batting stats when in one park you only have to hit the ball 320 feet down the line for a home run, or another one all you have to do is pull the ball to left field 250 feet and bounce the thing of a big frickin wall??? They might as well also be able to move the pitchers mounds too. The next point is based more on stupidity than anything. In April, it is generally still pretty damn cold in the northern part of the country and also rainy, yet in 3 weeks it will warm up and be sunshine and happiness all around. Even animals know this. It is inborn in them to move south until the weather warms up. Yet the MLB in the infinite stupidity will still schedule games in the northern part of the country for the first 2 weeks, and they are either rained out, or are so god damn cold that people feel like they are at a Bears game.

You know why people can stand cold weather at a football game, but not at a baseball game? Because baseball is boring as shit!!! Are you gonna stand up and cheer for every ground out to 2nd? Hell no. However at a football game, there are things to stand up and cheer for on pretty much every play. A sack, a big hit, 3rd down, a run over 5 yards, a pass that is over 20 yards, and every score and consequent kickoff, cheerleaders, a punt return of more than 10 yards, 4th down and either team is going for it, hot chicks dancing. Baseball you stand up when the guy next to you has to go take a leak because he just pounded his 17th Old Style.

I bring this up because right now I am watching a playoff game that started at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday! WHAT?? There are only 2 series going on right now. How the hell can you not schedule this for after 5? If this was the Cubs, or Sox, or Cardinals I would probably want to watch it because I have a vested interest in those teams, but screw you MLB, I'm not going to leave work or school 2 hours early for some horseshit game with 2 teams I don't care about because you are that conceited!! It's Friday night, people can stay up late to watch baseball. You have no problem having a 9:30 P.M. Central start on a god damn Tuesday night when the Cubs or Cards are in San Diego, forcing all of us that don't live in the hell hole known as California to stay up until 2 A.M. for a meaningless game. Yet for the Division series, you start it at 3 P.M. Central?? Does no one west of the Mississippi River work past noon on Fridays? Have we adopted the European tradition of a Siesta during the afternoon, and nobody remembered to tell the Midwest and East Coast? You couldn't start one of these games at 5 P.M. and then have the next one at 8 P.M.? Oh no, you couldn't do that because your games take for god damn ever to play!!! I'm actually surprised that this game didn't start at noon for fear that it might overlap with 8 P.M. start of the Yankees game. Screw you baseball!!!

One final thought. Every day when I turn on the TV, there is some type of NASCAR on. I thought that people who sat around for hours at a time and watched cars drive in circles over and over where absolutely batshit crazy. However I have found a group that has to be clinically insane...... People who watch the Time Trials!!!! At least when you are watching races, there are other cars around, and they are.. well... racing. But the people who are watching the Time Trials, holy crap!!! These people need to be in a padded room with a facemask on so they don't try and eat the door knob off. They literally watch a car drive in circles. That's it. And they watch a clock to see if that car did it faster than another car, because the other car already drove in circles by itself. ONE...............CAR.............AT..............A.............TIME!!! Absolutely blew my mind!!

On to my picks

OHIO STATE (-14) @ PURDUE

Ohio State like every year has a phenomenal defense. They have 2 pretty good running backs, and have a QB who can beat you with his legs and his arm. Terrell Pryor has digressed a little bit in passing this season, but that doesn't really matter too much because the rest of the team around him is solid. The only problem that OSU has had is really putting up huge numbers on Offense, but playing Purdue should change that. Now the 2 big time opponents that Purdue has played, they have actually had a shot to beat in Oregon and Notre Dame. The common factor with both those teams is that their defense was crap. If Purdue scores more than 2 touchdowns I will be shocked. Purdue hasn't been able to stop anyone, and Ohio State is going to run the ball down their throats. Just a little background. Ohio State shut out Illinois and Toledo (Toledo Crushed Colorado and dropped 31 on Purdue) and only gave up 18 to USC. Also last week Ohio State was a 14 point favorite against Undefeated Wisconsin and covered that spread easily. Purdue is not Wisconsin.

USC (-10) @ NOTRE DAME

Notre Dame is not good. You have obviously heard all of the talk about the great comeback wins that they have had, and how Front Butt is finally turning this program around and blah blah blah. They have given up 30 points in 3 of their last 4 games, and none of those teams were ranked. Only Michigan State was really any good. USC has the best defense in football. This is not Purdue, Jimmy Clausen is not going to be everyones dark horse Heisman Candidate after this one.
Washington pulled off the one PAC-10 upset that always happens every year to USC by winning 16-13. Ohio State managed 15 points against USC in a loss. Other than that USC has given up 4 field goals in 3 games. Notre Dame will rush for less than 50 yards, and Golden Boy Jimmy is gonna be scraped up off the turf a lot. The only thing that could possibly change this is if USC takes Notre Dame lightly, but that won't happen. Every year Pete Carroll and USC takes one team lightly, they lose, and then they run the score up on everyone else to try to get back into the National Championship. This is the year that it could actually happen, because Florida, Alabama, and Texas are the only legitimate teams that could go undefeated, but UF and Bama have to play each other. USC will look to get a good win on their resume, and even though Notre Dame isn't a good team, everyone treats them like a BCS bowl team, so USC will use that.

IOWA (+3) @ Wisconsin

Iowa has played great against good teams, and has let bad teams stay close to them. A shocking fact, Iowa's best games have come on the road, in wins at Iowa State and Penn State. Iowa is great against the run as always, and Wisconsin relies on the run way too much as always. Nothing that Wisconsin has done has impressed me. After watching Michigan State beat Illinois I realized that MSU is a very sloppy team. They should have destroyed Illinois after Zook gave them a 2 quarter head start. So beating them at home is not that great of a feat. Wisconsin should not be favored in this game at all. If you are looking for a game to tease, take Iowa +9. If Iowa somehow manages to lose this, it will be by less than 3, let alone 9. This should be a classic Big Ten football game. I don't see either team moving the ball very much, and it will come down to the defenses, and Iowa's is much better than Wisconsin's.

TEXAS (-3) vs. OKLAHOMA

The Red River Shootout!!! I love this game. I hate both teams, but I love watching this game. Defenses be damned, these games are legitimate shootouts!! Not so much that the score is always high because its not, it's just the atmosphere. Oklahoma has gotten the best of Texas winning 6 of the last 9. Last year, Texas beat Oklahoma, but still got screwed out of the National Championship game by a crazy tie-break system. Oklahoma has lost much more talent from last year than Texas has, and Sam Bradford did not look great coming off his injury last week, and by great I mean he is nowhere near where he was last season when he won the Heisman. Oklahoma went from a National Champion contender to having 2 losses already. You can't put those losses on losing Bradford, because if this team was as good as it was supposed to be, they should have found a way to beat BYU and Miami. They did lose by 2 points, but they still didn't win.
Texas hasn't looked great either, but they still have more talent, and they control their own destiny for a National Championship. Bradford and Tebow have gotten there, the only one that hasn't is McCoy. This year is tailor made for Texas to run the table and make it. I don't see them screwing it up now. Also just for fun, watch Jordan Shipley. He is the most exciting white receiver in the NCAA since Larry Fitzgerald. (I know Larry Fitzgerald is black, but that is the whitest name ever).

ILLINOIS (-3) @ INDIANA

I am picking this for a number of reasons. First I hate the entire state of Indiana. It is a hell hole that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If you are from Indiana and I have offended you, GOOD, you should take offense, and feel free to stop reading my blog, I could care less. Second, my hatred for Indiana basketball will 1) never die and 2) has now spilled over to football. Next, if we lose to Indiana, I might stop watching college football all together, and I really don't want to do that because I love college football. And finally when it comes to actual football: It doesn't matter how horrible our coaching is, and it doesn't really matter how many dumb mistakes we make, Indiana is just a dogshit football team, and we are more talented.
Illinois has lost to Mizzou who was ranked, Ohio State who is ranked, Penn State who is ranked, and Michigan State who is a decent football team.
Indiana beat Eastern Kentucky by 6, Western Michigan by 4, and Akron by 17. They should have beat a bad Michigan team, but instead shit the bed at the end of that game, and then got crushed by Virginia this last weekend, and Ohio State the weekend before. For the record the only BCS conference team that has been worse than Indiana in the recent past is Virginia!! They have 2 good defensive ends, and that's it.

I have always had the strategy that you should never bet a game based on how bad an opponent is, but instead on how good you think your team is. Well, screw that, because both of these teams are garbage. The only thing about this game, is that in the mind of the Illini football team, this game means much more. Illinois needs this win to get their season back on track. If they want to make a bowl game (they won't), they need to beat up on Indiana, Purdue and Northwestern. Also if Ron Zook doesn't think that this game will determine his future at Illinois, all he has to do is sit back and watch the fallout on Sunday if they blow this game.

Illinois spent a lot of money to redo Memorial Stadium, and if they think that people will come out to support a team that didn't make a bowl game 2 years in a row and had losses to the likes of Indiana the previous season, they also need to be in a padded room. No Juice Williams and no Arrelious Benn, the recruits that have committed are wavering, what is there to excite people for next season? Eddie McGee? We already played that hand, and we lost our ass. Make no mistake, anything short of a blowout for Illinois is detrimental to this team. This is the biggest game that Ron Zook has coached at Illinois, and he better know that.