Of course, the whole reason those sportsbooks continue to exist is that generally speaking the vast betting public does NOT do a better job picking winners and losers. In fact, it’s an incredibly lucrative business because for the general public to even break even, it needs to pick correctly 11/21 times.

Anyhow, this season I’ve decided to sack up and actually see how I do against the spread, in public. All season, I’ll post my weekly picks against a well-known Vegas sportsbook (MGM Mirage). I’ll pull the current point spreads a couple of days before the games start from vegasinsider.com, a fairly reputable site for such things. And then, every week, you can come back and see how I did (and laugh at me).

Here’s Week 1:

Thursday

WAS (+4) at NYG
Return to glory for the Super Bowl champs? No Osi, no problem.
Pick: NYG

Sunday

DET (-3) at ATL
Rookie QB starting in his first NFL game? There’s no way I’m picking that.
Pick: DET

SEA (+1) at BUF
I like the Buffalo Bills as a trendy pick for the Playoffs. I also love Trent Edwards.
Pick: BUF

NYJ (-3) at MIA
Game 1 of Brett Favre Era 2.0, but I’m not believing it.
Pick: MIA

KC (+16) at NE
No comment.
Pick: NE

TB (+3) at NO
Even though Jeff Garcia single-handedly ruined a Vegas weekend for me last year…
Pick: TB

STL (+7.5) at PHI
I like Philly this year, even against my old roommate.
Pick: PHI

HOU (+6.5) at PIT
Not really buying the Texans as a sleeper.
Pick: PIT

JAX (-3) at TEN
On the road for Jacksonville. Plus Jeff Fisher hates the Jaguars. I’ll take the points.
Pick: TEN

CIN (-1.5) at BAL
I just don’t really trust Cincinnati at all. On the road, in a divisional game…
Pick: BAL

CAR (+9) at SD
Remember the old days when Carolina was always a trendy pick to get to the Super Bowl?
Pick: SD

ARI (-3) at SF
The JTO/Martz Era is in full-effect. I think we’re going to win outright.
Pick: SF

DAL (-4.5) at CLE
I don’t even know what the over is on this game, but I’d take it.
Pick: DAL

CHI (+9.5) at IND
I have inside sources (Un-Pseudo Stoops) that say the Bears might be awful this year.
Pick: IND

Monday

MIN (+2.5) at GB
I saw Aaron Rodgers with my own eyes a few years ago - he is not Brett Favre.
Pick: MIN

DEN (-3) at OAK
I ended up drafting Jay Cutler in every fantasy league I’m in. HUGE season coming up.
Pick: DEN

Wow. I’m a Jim Harbaugh fan. This team actually looks tough. Not ready to say good, but I’ll give them tough.

I couldn’t have agreed more (of course, immediately after that Stanford let OSU march up and down the field on two consecutive drives to almost tie the game up, but let’s just put that aside for a moment). The other word that popped into my head as I watched us run up 200+ rushing yards on a Pac-10 team for the first time in (probably) years was ‘prepared’. However, ‘prepared’ isn’t the same type of compliment as ‘tough’. Being excited about your team being ‘prepared’ is a backhanded compliment if I’ve ever heard one. After all, to be excited about good preparation implies your team has previously been decidedly ‘unprepared’ in the past (read: 2004-2006).

‘Tough’, though, is a real compliment in sports. It implies a certain grit and iron that we love in our athletes. At its core, toughness in sports indicates an acceptance of (or even interest in?) giving and receiving physical punishment for the purpose of winning. The other indicator is a complete unwillingness to complain or whine. At the end of the day, this is why Favre’s legacy has been tarnished, not because he decided to un-retire - we can all understand still wanting to play, just not crying about being unwanted.

In many ways, ‘tough’ is the greatest compliment that can be paid to an athlete who is, on balance, less physically-talented than his competitors. That’s why I was so excited, as a 49ers season ticket holder, to read Michael Silver’s article on JT O’Sullivan’s lack of sympathy for Alex Smith and Shaun Hill.

(Getty Images/Greg Trott)

Harkening back to his college days, O’Sullivan recalls, “I loved it when we’d play a school from a more prominent conference. You had a bunch of guys who thought, ‘I’m pretty sure I was good enough to play at this school, but they didn’t want me.’ You get a whole group like that, all of us with chips on our shoulders, and it’s pretty powerful.”

Eight employers later, does O’Sullivan still carry that chip?

“Oh,” he said, “the chips have turned to boulders … to mountains.”

At the end of the day, toughness really can’t be proven with some words in an article, it has to be shown by doing things like diving into the stands at full-speed to make an outrageous catch (Jeter). Those are the types of moments that can make even me, a guy who hates the Yankees, acknowledge the legend of Derek Jeter.

But to me it’s a good sign that O’Sullivan’s bitter and angry. It’ll make him that much hungrier to not lose his job after all these years of waiting.

Let’s go, Niners.

I told Michael and Mara on Friday night that at least a few small things were bound to go awry on Saturday, so not to worry about it. Miraculously though, it really feels like the whole ceremony/reception ran like clockwork. I’m clearly a biased party, but it was an amazing event. You can read about the long preparation the happy couple had at michaelandmara.com .

I also had the honor of giving a short toast/speech as the Best Man. Through the amazing power of the Interweb, you can see it here on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cZhR9rV3a4

And certainly over the coming days there’ll be a ton of photos getting posted up, but here are a couple choice selections from Angry Ninja’s album “Mike Chou Wedding”:

Introductions at the reception. Lots of blue.

Chocolate fountain at the reception is always a crowd-pleaser.

The First Dance for Michael and my new sister-in-law Mara.

Random asian guy who showed up at the reception.

The verdict? Fantastic.

The only dish that wasn’t superb (to me) was Ivy’s cod. The two appetizers we ordered were particularly great: mushroom-filled ravioli in a lemon-cream sauce and the perfectly-seared scallops. The lamb sirloin killed and our Hamacher Pinot Noir was a great pairing.

In an area with a lot of really great restaurants, I’d say Range was immediately in my top ten, and maybe better, without any outrageous shock when the check hit the table.

I mean, shoot, they have Lebron, Kobe, AND you give them crazy hits like that?!

Really though, so far the Australians have effectively followed the playbook for how you stay with the Americans:

• Neutralize ball pressure by attacking the basket with the dribble (sort of a staple of any offensive gameplan against Coach K teams).
• Don’t turn the ball over (I think they have 7 or 8 turnovers at half, which against Kobe & co. qualifies as low turnover basketball).
• Try to make all the US shots difficult (or make the US shoot free throws). Hope the Americans get one of those free throw bugs, which seems to be working (I believe the US is 10-20 from the line in the first half.
• Slow the game down as much as possible by getting everyone back on defense and sagging off the US shooters (and hope they don’t shoot like they did against Spain, working so far).
• Bring in a thug to hack at the US star players to try to get someone thrown out. Dwight Howard almost fell for it when Carmelo was over-aggressively fouled.
• Pray and get lucky.

Despite all that, they’re still down 12 at half (though they were within 6 or 7 for most of it).

Here comes the second half!

Random thoughts I jotted down while watching:

• I still don’t understand the officiating. Lots of very bizarre calls. Lebron chested up a guy the entire way down court on defense, held him as he tried to cut, and they called the foul on the offense. At least it goes both ways, sort of.
• Jason Kidd obviously is starting these games as a lifetime achievement award. Chris Paul does a lot better pushing pace and pressuring on defense.
• In general, the ball pressure by the US is the best part of their game. Lots of forced turnovers, lots of traps off of ball screens. I think the official number ended up being 28 turnovers - that’s ridiculous.
• Spain’s superstar youngster, Ricky Rubio, hasn’t looked that impressive, though he is 17. Scouts think he could go number one overall when he gets old enough. So far all I’ve seen him do is get flustered by Chris Paul and Deron Williams pressuring him and get bailed out by two shitty foul calls by the refs. He does appear to be pretty skilled, but he certainly doesn’t look like an elite athlete in ANY way. Not sure how that’s going to translate to the NBA, where it’s just really hard to dominate as a point guard without top-shelf athleticism in some way. His shot is also way too slow. It’s a pure set shot and he winds up for literally a second on catch.
• By the way, Rubio’s jersey says “Ricky” on the back. No last name, just “Ricky”.
• Pau’s brother Marc Gasol looks and plays like a fatter, longer-haired version of Brad Miller
• Dwyane Wade looks GREAT. Definitely doesn’t look like he has any lingering injury effects. He’s doing a tremendous job in help defense and is getting his hands on a lot of balls. He just had one dunk that actually made me exclaim “Whoa!” Yes, I’m also sitting by myself in my room.
• Lebron can jump very high. He’s also ripped. When you see him playing against guys who aren’t as physically gifted as all the usual NBA superstars, you’re just reminded that he was clearly genetically-engineered to be a basketball playing machine.
• The Spanish use the dirty rec center play of slowing the game down by haphazardly chucking the ball away every time they make a bucket. They also flop a lot, though not quite as much as the Greeks. I guess this is just standard International basketball and it really explains a lot about how Manu Ginobili plays in the NBA.
• Hey, there’s been a Tayshaun Prince sighting! Hooray!
• Spain has switched to a zone. It’ll be interesting to see how the US team, full of a ton of guys who like having the ball in their hands, are able to attack it with the pass. Or Lebron can just hit a 24′ three-pointer, like he just did.
• In general, the US is doing a good job defending the high pick-and-roll at the top of the key, in which Spain usually seems to want to hit one of the Gasol brothers rolling straight down the lane. Lots of helping and recovering from the other defenders, leading to other Spanish players getting the ball in awkward places. Seems like they should be sticking some shooters in the corners to counteract, but haven’t seen it yet.
• It’s amazing how easy it is to beat a full-court press when you have Chris Paul and Deron Williams on the floor at the same time. I’m not sure what Spain’s accomplishing by pressing, unless they just want to speed up the game.
• An AWFUL traveling call that a ref just made on Kobe. So bad that Coach K went to the head shake and “get that shit out of here” wave.
• Dwight Howard is on a mission to block every shot that he sees. He just picked up his third goaltending call, on an outrageous volleyball swat into the stands.

Time for the medal round. From the looks of it, our guys just need to avoid injury, foul trouble, and choking. Yikes, I think I just jinxed them.

I watched a bit of it this morning on nbcolympics.com (note, you can stream the entire game online and the quality is fantastic). A few random thoughts:

• If the US loses, it’ll probably be because of foul trouble. If you’re used to watching US college or NBA basketball, it’ll feel like these International FIBA games are a complete joke from an officiating perspective. You know when you’re playing pick-up with some random dudes and that ONE GUY calls a foul on EVERYTHING? That must be how all the US players feel, especially the guards. Lots of tiny ticky-tack calls. Luckily for the US, all of the other countries are much more used to this style of officiating.
• As expected, Kobe is the ringleader. He sets the tone on defense by playing really hard and it just permeates the rest of the team. Everyone pressures hard on the ball and denies passes - sort of classic Coach K defensive philosophy.
• The size of Lebron and Carmelo really helps the US on defense. With four guys on the floor who can pick up against guards, we’re really able to switch a ton of ball and off-ball screens. Trapping off of pick-and-rolls also works great when you have those two extra perimeter defenders to deny the next pass on a trap.
• Lebron can jump very high.
• The tandem of Howard and Bosh at the 5 spot is probably the weak link, only in that we’ve only got those 10 fouls to work with (please, God, don’t force us to put Boozer in). With all the stupid shit the FIBA refs call, could be an issue.
• Chris Paul and Deron Williams both look a little uncomfortable deferring to the other scorers so much. When they’re able to spend some time breaking their guys down off the dribble, they look great. Also, when Paul is out on the break, he’s a complete blur. The transition game in general is a huge advantage for the US.
• The Greek team LOVES to flop. At one point Kobe fouled one guy and he fell down like he’d been shot with a Magnum. Right on queue, the FIBA ref called a flagrant foul (you can’t make this stuff up).

Gotta love the Olympics.

The Hashmarks blog on ESPN has a pretty good write-up about how it all went down. At the end of the day though, know this: The Green Bay Packers ended up with a helluva deal out of an extremely difficult situation.

Last week a friend asked me what I thought the Packers should do and I honestly had no idea. They were basically in a rarely-seen lose-lose-lose situation. They could tell Favre to shut up and go away (PR disaster). They could tell Favre to come back (and look like desperate blowhards willing to bend at the waist for him). Or they could move Favre to another team (with the Vikings the most serious suitors at that point, that would have been truly disastrous).

Instead, here’s what they ended up with:

• They moved Favre to an AFC team (meaning they probably will never have to stare at him on the other sideline)
• They got (most likely) a 2nd or 3rd round pick
• The situation ended with Favre actually looking like kind of the bad guy
• They received closure of the most clear kind

And lest you think they didn’t get enough, let me remind you that in the NFL draft picks are king. If you can get a 2nd or 3rd round pick for an aging QB who missed most of your training camp and who was prone to suddenly throwing absurd interceptions at the most inopportune times, you probably do it. Hell, if Brett had never retired and you got an offer for a 2nd round pick? You at least listen, right?

So if I’m Packers front-office management tonight? I’m high-fiving my buddies and going out on a celebration binge. It sounds awful, but they basically pulled an 8 out of a situation where any person in his right mind would have been happy with a 3.

If anybody’s interested in betting on The Field in a “U.S. Men’s Basketball vs. The Field” for the Gold bet, let me know. There’s nothing like heavy wagering to spice up the Olympics.

1. Elite educations make you incapable of talking to people who “aren’t like you.”
2. An elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.
3. Elite educations train students to expect and accept an entitlement to be mediocre.
4. Elite educations willingly lead students to the “safe” and secure life.
5. There is no intellectualism (as he defines it) because students just do “good enough.”

It is certainly a critical article, and it is one that immediately drew a sharp reaction from me. After all, who wants to be labeled as, essentially, an elitist who skirts by in life? Assuming Deresiewicz would consider Stanford “an elite institution,” I (and all of my friends from school) just got slapped in the face by a man who has never met us, much less spoken to us.

Though to be clear, if he has trouble finding anything to say to a plumber with a Boston accent and a Red Sox cap, he would probably have trouble finding anything to say to me also. I can think of at least ten one-liners to rag on the Red Sox immediately (”Damn, how hard is it for your team to catch the fucking DEVIL RAYS?” or, as Stoops suggested, “It’s a good thing we both hate the Yankees.”).

Yes, I understand that his criticism is technically of the institutions themselves, but it’s a bit like we were all sprayed by stray bullets from the drive-by.

However, I would be lying if I categorically denounced the entire article. When I look closely, within his shockingly elitist examples, there is some truth. Let’s take a look:

Elite educations make you incapable of talking to people who “aren’t like you.”

I’ve probably covered this already, but I consider this point to be a complete fucking joke. I didn’t go to Yale (and maybe Stanford’s just not as stuffy of a place), but I have a feeling this is more an issue with the individual than the institution. As Phil put it in an email, “What I find comical is that he expects to be able to relate, and then blames his education and collegiate institutions for his deficiency.”

It’s unfortunate that Deresiewicz opens his article with this particular point, because I feel like the absurdity of it really discolors his other arguments and observations. Perhaps his inability to converse with ‘people not like him’ is more a reflection of another of his points - not all intelligence plays well in the classroom.

Frankly, socially intelligent individuals (many of whom I know endured these apparent ‘Elite Educational Prisons’) are capable of talking to any human about, literally, any topic. Are we to believe that attending an elite institution removes your ability to enjoy sports, music, movies, news, and every other potential topic of conversation that is shared commonly between large portions of the population? I think they’re allowed to listen to rap music at Yale.

I don’t even know what “people not like me” means - are these people who are lacking vital organs that I have? The whole point is crazy.

An elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.

It’s hard to deny the (at least half-) truth of this statement. I was witness to this fact while I worked at Google. In case you were not aware, Google likes to hire Ivy League and Stanford graduates in all of its departments, including departments where the primary job function is answering customer support emails from users/advertisers/publishers. I can’t tell you the number of times I heard the phrase “I’m/we’re over-qualified…” from such coworkers while I worked at Google, as if such work was simply beneath them.

That’s not an indictment of those employees, or even Google, but rather just an observation that there is a significant sense of self-worth inculcated by an elite education. I’m not positive that I view this sense of self-worth to be truly a disadvantage, save for (the fairly plentiful) occasions when it extends to arrogance.

Elite educations train students to expect and accept an entitlement to be mediocre.

I don’t imagine anyone would argue the presence of some level of grade inflation at elite institutions. Yet the generalization that all elite educations reward mediocrity seems overdone. And certainly Deresiewicz’s contention that all students of elite institutions expect that to be able to turn their work in late with no repercussions is absurd, at least at Stanford. I have no insight into Yale or Columbia.

I don’t remember ever hearing any of my friends talk about how they’d just run that paper over a day late. But I certainly do remember the eerie glow of rows of monitors at Sweet Hall at 3 in the morning, or working in the lab trying to debug that damn microprocessor implementation before it was due in a few hours at 9am.

The truth is that I would have been really fucking embarrassed to act as Deresiewicz describes. I think all of my friends would have also.

Elite educations willingly lead students to the “safe” and secure life.

Agreed (for 90+% of the Stanford graduates that I know). I can’t even really begin to argue with this point, as I’ve commented to numerous folks that temptation for security and fear of failure manifest themselves in my own psyche. After all, this temptation is the same reason that Google continues to be able to stock its customer service teams with Harvard/Stanford/Princeton/Yale graduates who end up incredibly conflicted due to their strong sense of self-worth.

For many Asian-Americans, I would add that parental influences often play an even more significant part than their elite educations. As an example, trying to explain to my own mother why I would leave a company like Google or go play poker for a living is somewhere between comical and impossible.

There is no intellectualism (as he defines it) because students just do “good enough.”

I’m extremely conflicted on Deresiewicz’s last “disadvantage.” His contention is that because elite institutions (and their students) have become increasingly focused on jumping the hurdles to reach a diploma (and subsequently the secure life), the students ignore true ‘intellectualism’. He describes the intellectual life as focus on “The Big Questions” and large visions. In doing so, he also takes a side swipe at all technical fields, which he paints as part of the evil commercialization of elite instititutions:

Of course, for the system to work, those alumni need money. At Yale, the long-term drift of students away from majors in the humanities and basic sciences toward more practical ones like computer science and economics has been abetted by administrative indifference. The college career office has little to say to students not interested in law, medicine, or business, and elite universities are not going to do anything to discourage the large percentage of their graduates who take their degrees to Wall Street. In fact, they’re showing them the way. The liberal arts university is becoming the corporate university, its center of gravity shifting to technical fields where scholarly expertise can be parlayed into lucrative business opportunities.

There is some level of truth to his overarching point (I certainly did jump through the right sequence of hoops to graduate at school), however one can’t help but read his argument and wonder if he is just profoundly biased. After all, has Bill Gates led this “intellectual life”? Has Steve Jobs? And if they have not, is that because they haven’t focused on ‘The Big Questions?’ Or is it because their ‘Big Questions’ aren’t about understanding Kierkegaard or examining Faulkner’s inner motivations?

If, as Deresiewicz says, “Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas,” then how is it that ‘an infrastructure to serve an essentially infinite number bytes of information to small boxes in every home in the world over the fucking air’ not an idea?

The beauty of living in the Silicon Valley is that you see, meet, read about, and see the work of countless individuals who are passionate about ideas every day. For some (not all) of them, elite educations were four+ years spent building a foundation to just enable them to be passionate about ideas. And that seems like fairly decent work by our best universities, even by Deresiewicz’s own definition of why they exist.