Wow, that's impressive. By the way, are you making your predictions against the spread or straight up?
Jim Meyerriecks 500 Baby! Way to go Marty!
Joined: 09 Apr 2002
Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 1718
Posted:
Dec 11, 2004 5:03 pm
We just pick the games straight up. This is the third season I've been writing Out on a Limb. In the first season, we used the spread, but we haven't used it the last two seasons. Honestly, we're having a down year so far. Last season, we went 155-84 straight up. However, when we used the spread in 2002, we finished just 111-121 on the year, with a handful of pushes.
It's not necessarily that we don't use the spread because it would be harder to pick the games, but also because of the old disclaimer we used to run over the column that these picks are "not intended for gambling purposes." While I'd like my record to look good at the end of the season, Out on a Limb is just meant for fun, both for me and (hopefully) for the reader.
I try to use a much more serious tone with my baseball column (The Hook), and OOL is more of just a secondary (go a little crazy with it, I.e, my prediction on the end of the 'Hawks-Vikings game) thing that I do to keep myself writing throughout baseball's offseason. It seems to be the one column that's written on the site that doesn't really have any fantasy statistics or predictions involved, but just picks the games for the heck of it. Perhaps we'll bring the spread back for next season, but it's doubtful. We'll see.
