Why are people picking the Giants?

OK....so I'm not saying the Giants can't win, because they certainly can. There have certainly been bigger upsets. Villanova over Georgetown. US over USSR. App State over Michigan. Boise State over Oklahoma. Zora Andrich coming from out of nowhere in Joe Millionaire. Heck, these (sort of) same Pats pulled a pretty big upset against the Rams in 2001.

There are many, many, many more examples of teams that have had much worse match-ups than the Giants and still pulled the game out. In fact, I would say they have an ok chance of winning.
(Side note, to New England fans these days, that last sentence is the equivalent of my saying that the Pats suck; Brady sucks; the defense sucks; Harrison took HGH.....uhhh...scratch that; and Brady is ugly and dresses bad and has bad grammar....but I digress.)

The thing that gets me is that there's really no logical reason to pick the Giants to win. From a purely empirical/statistical standpoint, I don't think that anyone would argue with the statement that if the Pats and Giants played 10 times, the Pats would (conservatively) win 7. That being the case, then, you can't logically pick the Giants.....it's a mathematical thing. If someone gave you a jar with 70 red marbles and 30 white marbles and told you that they would give you $1000 if you predict the color marble they will randomly pull out.....you'd be kind of silly to say white. Well, the same applies here. You may choose white and be right, but it doesn't mean you were smart to do so. If a roulette wheel had twice as many black spaces as white with the same pay-out, you would lose your shirt pretty quickly betting on white.
(Sidebar - this is kind of in-line with the theory that you should fly on an airline that just had a plane crash because the recent crash affects the odds of an imminent crash.....uh uh. The odds are reset. Sorry. You may still die. But, on the other side of the token, if your fear is flying, the odds of dying on a 10 mile drive to the airport are several times higher than dying on the flight. That's why I always hire one of those bicycle rickshaws to take me to the airport.....much safer)




There are a couple of reasons that someone would pick the Giants:

1) They are a writer who was told by their employer....say, CNNSI.....that they needed to "handicap" the game. Being a writer (let's call him Dr. Y) who wants to write something interesting, while still incorporating some wisdom, he finds 10 or 12 reasons why the Giants MAY win the game (the aforementioned 30% chance) and writes about it. The 10 or 12 reasons may be valid, but, they may also ignore other factors. Dr. Z, I mean Y, doesn't really care if he's right (and he doesn't hate New England - as I'm sure many NE fans have already put pen to paper to accuse him of), he just wants to write an interesting, informational article that doesn't stick to the status quo. I love Dr. Z and he may be serious, but I think he picked the Giants because you don't become a successful sports writer by always picking the favorites.

2) You actually enjoy telling a large group of people that the underdog is going to win. You do it all the time.......7 out of 10 times you're wrong. But, what can people say. You picked the underdog and they're supposed to lose. You just go about your business until you can get into the next sports discussion and inform people of why the underdog will win. Statistical probability (on which this blog is based) says that, at some point, this person will be correct and they will SING TO THE HEAVENS. Not that I know anyone like that.

3) You have inside knowledge that Tom Brady has contracted malaria from Giselle - which she, of course, got while doing a Maxim cover shoot in Namibia entitled "Really Expensive Lingerie and How it Will Help Eradicate Abject Poverty?" And even then, I'm not so sure the Pats would lose. Unless Giselle has some other friends on the Pats......why did I just go there?

4) You really, really, really know football and you have some type of knowledge that a certain match-up or weakness can really affect the outcome of the game.
(Two sidebars about this one. 1. The comment I made above about Dr. Z may fall into this category since he is an unquestioned - or should be - authority of the game. 2. In New England, this is not viewed as an acceptable excuse because picking against or saying anything negative about the Pats shows that you don't know what you're talking about.)

Honestly, if Ron Jaworski gets on TV and show me the x's and o's and concludes that the Giants are going to win the game, I will honestly believe he is onto something. Because (gasp) he knows more about football than I or most of us - even if what he says does not appeal to you. He's not paid to handicap games - just break them down.





And hey, I've picked underdogs before - but usually b/c I actually believe the underdog is better than they're given credit for or I thought there was a match-up that did not favor the favorite.

A few examples:
When I was in 7th grade, I bet half of my class that Spinks would beat Tyson. I was 12 and I had watched Spinks beat Larry Holmes. I thought I had the inside track since everyone else was just picking the favorite. I was a paperboy at the time and I still remember running to the stack of Sunday papers in my garage and seeing the headline that Spinks went down in 91 seconds.
I never paid up.

The one time this year (besides the Colts) that I thought the Pats might lose was when they played the Bills. It had all the ingredients for the upset. Division rival. Second best team in the division. At Buffalo. But I forgot the one simple thing that really should drive any selection. Probability. If the Pats and Buffalo play 10 times in Buffalo, the Pats win at least 6-8. That means that if you're picking against the Pats your picking against math and logic and why would you do that? In my defense, I thought they MIGHT beat the Pats. I didn't sing it to the world or bet on it. By the way, the score was 56-10.....I think.

And, mind you, I'm not talking about games where there are odds involved. If you honestly believe the Giants win 3 out of 10 games and you're getting 7:1 odds, then, by all means. The benefit outweighs the risk.

So....that's my blog for the day. I am perfectly aware that
1. nobody is reading this,
2. any prediction/comment I made in the September blogs I posted were so far off that if anyone did read them they puked in their mouths. Mostly, I stuck with the facts and analysis. But I did say that: the Browns had a horrible QB situation and should pick up Leftwich; Del Rio was in over his head and should not have released Leftwich....I'll have to look back to see the other horrible observations I made.

And, before I sign off, what I'm saying here about why you can't reasonably pick the Giants is not based on opinion. It's simple probability and statistics. If you flip a coin, you have a 50:50 chance of picking correctly. I guess it's an opinion that the Pats would win at least 7 out of 10 against the Giants.....but, I don't know, I think it's a reasonable estimate.

One more thing. I don't begrudge anyone picking the Giants, I just think it doesn't follow logic - unless someone honestly believes the Giants are better. This is not meant to be an opinions......I'm just pointing out that it doesn't make mathematical sense. Also, articles talking about HOW the Giants could win make perfect sense to me.