Week 1 2018: #CFB Picks are graded; results are in!

Welcome back everyone for the week 1 results.  Starting today this is where you are going to notice some big differences from last year.  You’ll have to reference the weekly pick posts if you want to see the picks themselves, because this is the new grading format.  Thanks to Chuck the Stat Guy we are running automated grading on our experts to bring you faster results and total accuracy.  We’re working on the grades against the spread but I’ve added the manual tallies below.  Now let’s get to the results.

Big winners this week include Paul Finebaum, Chris Fallica, and Andrea Adelson.  However our undisputed co-champions this week are Dr. Lou Holtz and special celebrity guest Luke Bryan.  If you had Lou Holtz and Luke Bryan splitting a weekly title at some point this year in your pool let me know so I can tell you how to collect your prize.  I’m actually very pleased with Lou Holtz because he came out of retirement and won the first week straight out of the gate.  Congratulations to both.

Losers this week include Desmond Howard, Danny Kanell and Mark May.  However our undisputed loss this week gets credited to Kirk Herbstreit with a disastrous 2-9 record this week.  Its ok Kirk, we’ve got a long season ahead of us.

Coach Corso got off to a good start with a win on his first headgear selection this week (Notre Dame).  As mentioned, special celebrity guest Luke Bryan went 9-3 on the week, and this trend needs to stop before it ever gets off to a start.  The man with no ties to Notre Dame or Michigan was invited onto College Gameday for no other reason than the fact that he was playing a concert in town Saturday night.  If ESPN is telling me they couldn’t get a single notable alumni of Michigan or Notre Dame to pick this thing then they must really think I’m a fool.  I digress…

ATS grades: Dusty Dvoracek (3-2), Chris Fallica (2-3), Pat Forde (1-4), Bruce Feldman (3-8), Danny Kanell (1-2), Scott Spreitzer (0-3), Phil Steele (6-3), Scott Van Pelt’s WINNERS (2-3).  The newly rebranded Bear’s Board went 1-2 on the week.

Everyone else finished the week somewhere in between all of this, so check out the grades below to see how your favorite (or most hated) personality did this week.

person.name percent.correct n.correct n.wrong n.games.predicted
Tim.Cowlishaw 100% 1 0 1
Chris.Doering 100% 4 0 4
Paul.Finebaum 100% 5 0 5
Trevor.Matich 100% 3 0 3
Marcus.Spears 100% 4 0 4
Celebrity.Guest 75% 9 3 12
Dusty.Dvoracek 75% 3 1 4
Lou.Holtz 75% 9 3 12
Tim.Tebow 75% 3 1 4
Chris.Fallica 71.43% 5 2 7
Andrea.Adelson 69.23% 9 4 13
Steve.Coughlin 66.67% 4 2 6
Joey.Galloway 66.67% 2 1 3
Phil.Steele 66.67% 8 4 12
Jennifer 60% 9 6 15
Dari.Nowkhah 60% 3 2 5
Lee.Corso 53.85% 7 6 13
David.Pollack 50% 2 2 4
Mack.Brown 50% 1 1 2
Bruce.Feldman 50% 6 6 12
Jesse.Palmer 50% 1 1 2
Jonathan.Vilma 50% 1 1 2
Mark.May 45.45% 5 6 11
Danny.Kanell 40% 2 3 5
Colin.Cowherd 33.33% 1 2 3
Desmond.Howard 30.77% 4 9 13
Kirk.Herbstreit 18.18% 2 9 11
Skip.Bayless 0% 0 1 1
Pat.Forde 0% 0 4 4
Joel.Klatt 0% 0 1 1

Week 1 2018: #CFB Picks from Lou Holtz & Mark May!

I am very excited to report that Lou Holtz and Mark May have once again joined forces on something called “The Crowd’s Line” to bring you premium-level bickering and more importantly college football picks.  Here are the week 1 picks via their latest video on Youtube.

Lou Holtz:

Northwestern  over  Purdue
Alabama  over  Louisville
Auburn  over  Washington
Troy  over  Boise State
Oklahoma  over  Florida Atlantic
Texas  over  Maryland
Notre Dame  over  Michigan
Ohio State  over  Oregon State
West Virginia  over  Tennessee
Centre  over  Hanover
LSU  over  Miami (FL)
Florida State  over  Virginia Tech

Mark May:

Purdue  over  Northwestern
Alabama  over  Louisville
Washington  over  Auburn
Boise State  over  Troy
Oklahoma  over  Florida Atlantic
Texas  over  Maryland
Michigan  over  Notre Dame
Ohio State  over  Oregon State
Tennessee  over  West Virginia
Miami (FL)  over  LSU
Virginia Tech  over  Florida State

2015-16 Season results and champion Phil Steele! #cfb

The 2015-16 season of college football brought excitement and many hours wasted in front of the television, and it is with great sadness that we now enter the offseason.  However, that also means that it is time to crown the 2015-16 GAMEDAYCOLE.COM SEASON CHAMPION!!!  Competition was fierce this year, with 4,271 picks tracked this year and an average correct pick rate of 70.03% on the season.  We had 33 competitors eligible for this year’s championship, and it is without further adieu that I present to you our 2015-16 season champion, Mr. Phil Steele!

Phil Steele: 2015-16 Champion
Phil Steele: 2015-16 Champion

Mr. Steele finished off this season with a record of 597-174 straight up and 121-105-2 against the spread, which comes out to 77.03% straight up and 53.54% against the spread.  I don’t know what his secret is to picking games.  Maybe it is his computer.  Maybe it is the mustache.  Maybe it is the fact that he hasn’t slept since June due to football.  Whatever it is, it works.  Congratulations Phil.  You can now add this to your long and impressive resume, and no doubt impress acquaintances at cocktail parties with this accolade.

There are plenty of other notes to get to for this season’s wrap up.  As you may notice, Greg McElroy topped the straight up percentages on the year at 84.54% with a record of 82-15 on the year.  While this is impressive and deserving of congratulations, he was hurt by the limited number of games he picked, and the fact that his picks are almost entirely SEC conference picks.  Phil Steele had a much larger body of work, and combined with his win rate against the spread that was enough to vault him over McElroy on the season.  Next year we will probably have a separate award for the experts focusing on a single conference, but it is too late to be starting that nonsense right now.

Lee Corso’s headgear picks on the year were his worst year on record.  He went 6-12 on the year in the headgear picks due to some tough breaks and close losses on underdogs.  Charley the Cat had a season on par with Coach Corso, and ended up squeezing out a 7-11 season to beat Corso on the year picking games.  Gameday Jen had her best season on record, going 153-59 (72.17%) on the year, so watch out Phil; she is coming for you!  Maybe next year we’ll have her pick against the spread and make us some money.  Our Gameday guest celebrities had an abysmal year at 56.39% picking games straight up this year.  Maybe you shouldn’t be trusting Rick Ross, the Philly Phanatic, or Eric Church for your betting advice after all.

You can see the full rankings below to see how everyone else did on the year.  We will be putting together a recap of preseason predictions this week to see how great everyone’s preseason picks surely went, so keep an eye out for that and much more to come.

Straight Up SU % ATS ATS %
Greg McElroy 82-15 84.54%
Phil Steele 597-174 77.03% 121-105-2 53.54%
Paul Finebaum 78-27 74.29%
Pat Forde 256-89 73.99%
Andrea Adelson 84-30 73.68%
Booger McFarland 80-32 72.73%
Tim Tebow 45-17 72.58%
Trevor Matich 68-26 72.34% 14-21-1 40.00%
Jennifer 153-59 72.17%
Jason Sehorn 82-33 71.30%
Kirk Herbstreit 120-49 71.01%
Marcus Spears 55-23 70.51%
Brad Edwards 89-38 70.08% 22-20-1 52.38%
Colin Cowherd 73-32 69.52%
David Pollack 71-32 68.93%
Joey Galloway 93-43 68.38%
Robert Smith 49-23 68.06% 10-17-0 37.04%
Mark May 23-11 67.65%
Kevin Carter 38-19 66.67%
Jon Berger 32-16 66.67%
Todd McShay 33-17 66.00%
Danny Kanell 88-47 65.19% 20-23-0 46.51%
Desmond Howard 111-60 64.91%
Chris Fallica 77-42 64.71% 71-67-3 51.45%
Lee Corso 101-56 64.33%
Ryen Russillo 46-27 63.01% 23-19-0 54.76%
Scott Van Pelt 5-3 62.50% 34-35 49.28%
Joel Klatt 105-64 62.13%
Celebrity Guests 75-58 56.39%
Dari Nowhkah 46-36 56.10% 10-8-0 55.56%
Lou Holtz 13-11 54.17%
Stanford Steve Coughlin 42-37 53.16% 40-44-3 48.19%
Season Average 2925-1250 70.06% 365-359-10 50.41%