Let all the Bulldog faithful rally behind the men who now wear the red and black with two words, two simple words which express the sentiments of the entire Bulldog Nation: Auburn Sucks.
As of today, 19 days from Georgia kicking off and only *17* days from Week 1 action, we have 81 GTP Refugees signed up! Not too shabby, and well over halfway to last year’s total pickers.
Week One starts on Thursday 8/28 and runs through Labor Day with 12 games to prognosticate upon.
Click the link above to join in on the fun. Should you have any questions or concerns, you can email me at dawglicious22 at g mail dot com.
Last year, we finished the regular season with 146 intrepid GPTers making picks and taking their licks.
At the old shop, the good Senator had 302 pickers, so the drop off was expected as we launched GPT Refugees. I’d love to see our numbers grow, so invite others to come to the blog and sign up!
First games to pick will be Week 1 Thursday 8/28. Week 0 games aren’t available on our Pickem site, but looking at this lineup, only the most degenerate gamblers among us would want to pick from these:
Gross. But the degenerate in me wants to pick the Maui Wowie at home against Intellectual Brutality, lol
Email invites went out last night for all those on file from last year. If you don’t get one, that’s ok. Check spam, or click on the link above to register.
If you have trouble registering, holler at me at dawglicious22 at gmail dot com.
More details, rules, and reminders on how the Pickem works later, but for now…
I think Alabama being only a 8.5 point favorite is a little generous, but with the portal and all, who knows? Given how rosters are more fluid than ever, I don’t see how the oddsmakers can even prognosticate this far in advance.
I posted something yesterday about a Twix in where the poster said that a collective of teams who underwhelmingly didn’t beat the spread were “overrated”. As EE commented, that’s some Olympic sized long jumping to a conclusion on overrated versus underrated, and I agree. Personally, my summary of this post can be this, and you can read the rest after:
Kirby Smart doesn’t care about the spread, and could give two shits if you do. Unless it’s Tennessee, where Kirby tries to make a point against the Vowels, or if he’s looking to prove a point altogether.
I think we covered in 2022 against TCU, right?
I looked deeper into the Dawgs historic trek through the ATS tracking from 2016 forward, and I tend to notice a couple of trends:
If a team is highly regarded and highly ranked, it doesn’t equate to beating Andreas. Likely, the spread is bigger because said team is held in high regard, so the spread is wider and less likely to be beaten.
If a team is good but not highly regarded, they are likely to beat the spread more often. The number 1 percentage for beating the spread in 2024 went to Arizona State. Case in point.
If your curious, here’s the percentage of games where Georgia beat the spread in the last nine years:
2016 – 46.2% 2017 – 73.3% (7th best in all of CFB)
2018 – 57.1% 2019 – 57.1% 2020 – 40% 2021 – 66.7% (tied for 14th best in CFB)
2022 – 53.3% 2023 – 38.5% 2024 – 28.6%
So the lowest performance came in 2024. Highest was in 2017 and 2021. What does it mean? Well, hell if I know, but I think I see something here.
In seasons where Georgia has a top flight defense, coupled with an efficient offense, it’s not unusual to see Georgia beat the spread. This is likely because the defense is keeping points off the board while the offense is putting points on the board. Sounds elementary, but think about 2017, which was lead by arguably the best backfield Georgia’s ever seen as a collective in Michel, Chubb, and Swift…plus a lights-out defense featuring shut down guys like Deandre Baker and Roquan Smith. They had a good defensive line, too. Fromm was a good game manager and as we know that makes it hard to beat a team with that much talent on both sides of the ball, plus a deadly accurate and reliable placekicker in Rodrigo Blankenship.
I don’t think I have to elaborate on 2021, which featured an even better defense and a great offense. 2022 and 2023 had better offensive production, but the defense declined slightly in 2022 and 2023, so that narrows the gap when it comes to point spreads.
When it comes to the Fabris Pool, I typically always bet against the Dawgs, except when it comes to Tennessee and Auburn, which seems to be Kirby’s historic whipping boys. I definitely bet against the spread against Kentucky, though I was wrong in 2023 when Beck had his great coming out party that night in Athens. Tech has now become a similar bet for me of late.
I’ll do a follow up to this to see if some of my assumptions above hold true, because I don’t have the time at publication here to look at individual games in that 9 year timeline.
Still, I believe that Kirby, whether in Manball mode or otherwise, favors explosive plays but sound game management and clock control, attempting to minimize the defensive snaps and keep the defense fresh to cause havoc in the game. Whether Georgia covers or not is of little consequence to Kirby, and if Georgia is low or high in this metric definitely doesn’t make them over or underrated.
It’s just how Kirby rolls.
What do you think? How do you bet the Dawgs? What do you notice?
Numb. Unemotional. Withdrawn. Those are the feelings your humble commish experienced this weekend, and that was before the damn game in T-town. I guess it’s a protective shield I’ve built for myself and my loved ones after years of practice, but it works and I’m ready to see what Kirby can do over the next two weeks to get our Dawgs clicking for sixty minutes, rather than the second half.
As for halves, we are nearing the half way point of our season, and some of us have had very unDawg-like nice first halves! Especially StuartDawg, who paired a tie-breaker Week 5 victory over 10-2 SUhatter94 with a leap into first place in the season standings! Nice job, Stu!
Bam!Zoom!
Plenty of season left, y’all! Lick those wounds and let’s take it out on the Barn this week.
Your humble commish,
Dawglicious
P.S. Week 6 games post on Monday once lines are finalized in the site
Just a friendly reminder we do have a Friday night pick this week between the Hokies and the Hurricanes.
Speaking of hurricanes, I wanted to get this reminder in just in case Helene heads towards my house (or yours) and knocks out the internets. If you’re in the path, be careful, y’all.
128 players in the pool! Still time to get in to make a run at the season championship (unlike FSU).
UGA grad Mrs. Dawglicious did some grad work at FSU, but not enough to have feelings about the Noles’ implosion
1) Just in case you would like to opt-in to email picks reminders from FunOfficePools, it’s very easy!
Click on the “Your Profile” tab in the top right, and it will take you to this screen where you can opt-in for reminders to pick games:
Click “Update Profile” and you’re all set!
2) On another note, each week could come down to the tiebreaker game total score. The site allows 5 levels of tiebreaks (which could be more or less than what the SEC has put in place this year; I haven’t devoted the brain space to memorize those yet). Here are the five:
That should take care of weekly bragging rights in case we have a logjam of folks vying for the top spot.
Signups continue for The 2024 Fabris Pool! As of this post, we have ninety (90!) pickers lined up for this Thursday night’s action to kick off Labor Day Weekend and Week 1. There’ll be a game on Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday, with a slew of Saturday games from beginning at noon and ending just shy of midnight on the East coast.
If memory serves, we had 200-some-odd players at the old shop, so glad to see a goodly portion has found their way here! Pride and bragging rights are on the line. Pool Discussion post to go up later in the week.
We’ve had a really good initial response in preparation for the 2024 campaign starting next Thursday. Lots of familiar names from the old shop. Here’s the link for anyone who would like to join us and show off your CFB prognostication skills:
Here’s your link to sign up for our traditional season-long college football pick ’em!
Week One starts next week on the Thursday before Labor Day Weekend. If the link above doesn’t work, just copy and paste the link below into your browser.
Once inside the site, you won’t need a password to access the pool. Even if you have participated in the good Senator’s Fabris Pools in the past, you may have to create a new account.
The pool name is Fabris Pool 2024- GTP Refugees
For iPhone users, if you’d like to make picks each week on the app instead of the website, search for Fun Office Pools. Android users will still need to enter picks on the website.
The first game will be on Thursday next week. You’ll have until game time of each individual game to make or change a pick for that game, but once it starts, that game is locked. Email reminders from the site will be sent each week, along with a friendly reminder post here. Again, if any issues, please let me know and I’ll do my best to address any technical issues ASAP.
Games are worth 1 point apiece, with 12 games a week to pick. There should be a good southern flavor to the picks, along with national games of note, with a few more interesting games due to conference realignment. Degenerate gamblers and Fullcast readers will appreciate the occasional scintillating matchups like !El Assico! Weekly winners and season standings will be posted each week.
Don’t forget to pick the tiebreaker score. First tiebreak is combined score, then winning team’s score, then losing team score, should it go that far.
I can’t wait for the real season to start after FSU jumps in the Tech tickle pile in Dublin!
