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Posted 10/11/2006 at 09:05 PM
Mama told me there would be days like this. Of course, when she told me that she didn’t exactly how expensive days like last Saturday would be. But as everyone out there knows, a 1-4 Saturday can hurt your wallet – not to mention your ego.
But anyone that has played this game long enough knows days like that are inevitable. The key is to limit them to the rare occasion and to follow them up by quickly getting back to winning ways. That’s the plan for Week 7 – but first a quick peak back to bloody Saturday.
The day started off nice enough. Penn State, who I had grabbed early in the week at -3, took an early lead at Minnesota and went into halftime up 14-7. After the Gophers tied it at 14 in the 4th quarter the Nittany Lions answered to go up 21-14 with five minutes left. I thought I was home free. But in a sign of things to come, Minny tied it up and it went to OT. When Minnesota scored a touchdown and then missed the extra-point I knew I was sunk. Either Penn State would answer and then win outright with a made extra-point or they wouldn’t score at all and lose the game. Either way I was a loser. PSU ended up winning (28-27) thanks to a bad pass interference call on the Gophers. 0-1.
Things got worse as my big play of the day (Rice -2.5) went south as well. The Owls had looked really sharp in Week 5 against Army and I thought that momentum would carry them against a weaker team in Tulane. Wrong again. 0-2.
Thankfully I had added Baylor +6 as a late play. I had been tracking this game all week and decided to move on it Saturday morning when action started to come in on Colorado. When the game went into OT I had a sick feeling my rotten day would continue and had visions of Colorado winning their first game of the season by seven. Thankfully Baylor pulled it out (34-31) for the outright win. 1-2.
UCLA +12 and Alabama -29 were my last two games and predictably they ended up tanking. The Tide allowed a Duke team that had been completely shut out in three of four games this season to actually take a halftime lead on them at 14-10. When I saw that score I just knew it wasn’t my day. Of course, Bama woke up in the second half and ended up winning 30-14 but they never got close to covering.
The Arizona loss was another story. Despite losing QB Willie Tuitama in the second quarter due to a concussion, the Wildcats only trailed 20-7 in the fourth quarter and were at the UCLA 16 with 4:33 to play when backup QB Adam Austin was picked off for a touchdown. Game, set and match. 1-4.
Left on the table: I came close to playing Washington State (-3.5), Oklahoma (+4) and Nevada (+12) but ultimately passed on those games. Those plays wound up going 2-1.
Christian Alexander plays at Sports.com
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