OH, Astro-Blue Bonnet Bowl, Why Have You Forsaken Me ?

Why do I bet the bowl games ? The NCAA officially sanctions 312 bowl games. Look it up, I'm wrong, but any time I start a sentence "Why do I bet…" you pretty much know I'm frustrated and I'm not concerned with the facts. Just like everyone on ESPN in the morning not named "Mike", which is probably being generous.
Of the 312 bowl games, comprising 624 teams, I know something about approximately 13 of the teams. I can name a coach, player or conference for 73% of the rest. The remainder, I'm lucky if I know a time zone. Beyond that, I'm clueless. I look at their records, glance at a four sentence blurb written by an intern at "Sports and Bikinis.ca"and then start throwing darts at a list of names on a canvas so big it makes Jackson Pollock look like Sergio Aragones.

                                                  Blue Poles lost to the St. John's Red Storm
                                                by a safety.
Then I take a chalk line between two of the darts, hold the string real tight and try to remember if Lee Corso wore one team's mascot's cowboy hat or the other team's mascot's full body ring tailed lemur  costume.
Sometimes I get really primal. Say Northwestern Maine A&M is playing South Padre Island Tech. I take South Padre Island every time, because I want them to score so there are more pans of the cheerleaders doing high kicks. Look, I'm sure there are lovely women in Maine, but I'm not the fucking Beach Boys, I don't have to kiss every region's ass to sell a record.
But I can be scientific. If I have a ton of money, an autographed Ricky Williams vaporizer and Dhani Jones's frequent flyer miles riding on a game, I'll turn on my Pacman Jones signature police scanner and tune in to the frequencies for every coastal town plus Vegas. Because you know at least two dozen guys are getting arrested. Some dumb SOB who was raised on a farm on the Wisconsin/ South Dakota border and is actually gonna get a degree in applied mathematics and is smarter than two of me before I ever took my first of 17, 000 career hits of mescaline--a guy who has been his team's quarterback's center  since they were in Montessori school--is gonna drink a fifth of coconut rum and get caught with a hooker. This is not cynicism, this is fact. I do not have to look this up. The last time a ranked team went to a bowl game without at least one crucial element of their success getting suspended for "violation of team rules" was 1941 when all the players were in the armed services and Lou Holtz and Bobby Bowden played paper football to decide the Rose Bowl.
And let's be clear:Even at Notre Dame,"violation of team rules" does not mean failure to say grace before a meal. You really have to fuck up. It doesn't matter what your legacy is with the school, or your GPA…ok, maybe it matters if your dad is on the board at Exxon and just happened to have an eight figure check laying around with NEW ROBOTICS LAB in the memo line, but it amazes me that guys like Max Bullough at Michigan State can fuck up so bad they cost their team a chance to lose to Stanford by only single digits. Max Bullough's family has been around State's program for so long it was their pig that got used for the inaugural game's football. I can't wait to hear what that jackass did. I hope it's full on amateur Hunter S. Thompson gonzo.

                                                               Can't mention the good Dr. 
                                                               without a little Ralph
Me, I won't be getting any hookers (or coconut rum, for that matter), because every year I lose my ass on all these Funyons Quaker State 10W40 Bowl presented by Red Lobster's Going Out of Business Sale.
I knew when I started this blog, I would be passing out gambling advice. First rule of VictoryCharade: Don't pay attention to VictoryCharade gambling advice.