With last night's 2-0 sweep with the Marquees, I believe overall NC is on a 22-9 combined college and pro run of late.
Although this obviously represents the short term rather than longer term, where the record is not as good(if it was the record would go beyond 31 games), it is
still quite good at 71% and especially compared with the combined record for the Late Phone Star Rated Plays, which stand at 49-44 for the season or
a paltry 52.7%.
All this is interesting and telling as the Late Phone Plays are allegedly better and are a lot more expensive than the Marquees, which sell for as little $4 apiece
on Saturdays to $12 most of the other times.
The question is why do the Marquees do better than the Late Phones it seems year after year?
My theory on this (and that is all it is), is this:
The college plays on Saturday as well as the Pro Plays on Sunday have to pass a lot of very difficult scrutinized criterion and standards to make it to Late
Phone status.
There are lots of games choose from on weekends and especially so on the Saturday college schedule.
On Saturdays only the five or so games which best meet the difficult criterion are selected, and the same on Sunday.
On the other hand, on plays during the week such as Monday night Pro Marquee, weekday college football, the Thursday
and Sunday night Pro Marquee, there are obviously many fewer games to choose from, this meansg that inasmuch as NC wants to sell something
on those days, they simply choose the one(s) which meet a much lesser criterion than the Late Phones-that is precisely why they are designated
as Marquees rather than Late Phone Plays.
My point/commentary is here since the Marquees usually do a lot better than the Late Phones, perhaps the standards NC are using to pick
the Late Phones are simply too stringent and need to be tweaked a bit more in line with those used with the Marquees in order to achieve
a higher winning percentage.
Although I don't subscribe to either of the weekly newsletters nor buy the annuals, I have read them on occasion.
My overall gut feeling is that while these publications contain every last detail/stat about each game and every team and player in the country and are
nice to know for the football fanatic, a lot of it is totally irrelevant to picking ats winners, and needs to be simplified.
I would compare it to the old saying of one being able to see the trees but not the forest with these teams and games.
Thus in conclusion if I was Phil Steele and/or the handicappers who comprise NC, I would take a look at what criterion has worked so much better
with the Marquees than the Late Phones and streamline the later along the same lines as the Marquees in hopes and expectations of improving
evening things out for the better with the Late Phones.
Back later.
ointer:
