By JIMMY D / Rose Bowl betting | Jimmy's archive
Merry New Year!
Jimmy doesn’t usually stress college football bowl action for football fantasy types, but the Rose Bowl between USC and Texas is special. You have the Heisman Hype factor and the Fantasy Recruiting Hype factor.
Quarterbacks Vince Young and Matt Leinart in tomorrow’s game were No. 2 and No. 3 in Heisman voting and USC running back Reggie Bush won it. So even latecomers who don’t study the college game can get a good look at these future stars.
Jimmy wants to have a little action on the game, so he consulted his Vegas guru Rich Crew, who is always a proponent of betting the superior running team.
“The team that can run the ball the most consistently will win 80 per cent of the time,” he told me Monday. “The Trojans have not only out-rushed their opponents in every game, they have dominated on the ground with a 2.9-yards-per-carry advantage (6.6 to 3.5).”
Sounds good to me.
As of Monday night, you could get underdog Texas at +7.5 points at some selected sportsbooks. If you think it will be a scoring festival, you could bet the OVER 69.5 at MySportsbook.com (which was the most favorable number as of Monday.)
NFL Wrap
The NFL regular season ended Sunday, which means some of you are reveling not only in New Year celebrations but also pool victory antics.
Jimmy has spared you the seemingly obligatory 2005 retrospectives of NFL fantasy stories. I find it toxically boring to rehash what everyone has read and experienced in the year gone by, preferring to glance ahead to 2006.
The fall in Philadelphia and rise of the rest of the NFC East was intriguing on a league landscape and fantasy level, as was the rise of Larry Johnson and fall of Priest Holmes in KC.
But if I may wax nostalgic just a bit in Jimmy D fashion, I greet the New Year and look forward to Jan. 26 when the Canucks visit the Red Wings. Two of Jimmy’s struggling players – Alex Auld and Robert Lang – will meet in the contest and Jimmy would like to get there to wave a supportive poster during the game.
It would be my Auld-Lang Sign.
OK, that was bad.
Jimmy D museum closes
2006 starts on a sad note for Jimmy, who saw a museum dedicated to his namesake closed. The James Dean Gallery (yes, Jimmy D was named after the Rebel Without A Cause actor) in Gas City, Indiana closed Dec. 31, forcing many of the cool James Dean treasures into storage.
The museum and gift shop had operated in nearby Fairmount – where Dean went to school – since 1988 but recently moved to bigger digs on the outskirts of town.
Last year was the 50th anniversary of the fast-living, fast-driving actor’s death in a car crash in southern California.
He had just wrapped up shooting the movie Giant – for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor - and was headed for a car race. Instead of towing his brand new Porsche Spyder behind a truck, the 24-year-old decided to drive it and died later in a near head-on crash. Boston Pizza Pick ‘Em Update
John Chapman was the final regular-season week in the Boston Pizza NFL challenge with a score of 12 in a very tough week of upsets.
The contest runs through the first few playoff weekends before we crown the first champion.
The feedback has been positive and we are contemplating an NHL game and March Madness contest. So if you are keen, drop me a line at JPoole@Herald.ca or Jimmy@ATS411.com
In the meantime, stay busy, stay lucky and avoid really corny Auld Lang Syne plays on words. Jimmy D |
