How to pick football games

There's no shortage of theories and supposedly fool-proof methods of picking the winners of football games, particularly in the NFL. Yet, there's only one that has proven to be tried and true over the years.

No, it doesn't have anything to do with analyzing a zillion stats, sabermetrics, trends, histories, or even your Uncle Fred's lucky penny. The wise guy oddsmakers in Vegas? Forget about them. They couldn't pick their nose with a power auger. Good grief, in the Baltimore/New England game, throw in the point spread and they missed it by over 3 touchdown. Three touchdowns!!! Shows you what they know.

There are those that rely on other "experts" when making their own not-so-bold predictions. You'd think that some otherwise respectable sportswriters would know better than to do such a thing. After all, if they were worth their weight in Enron stock, the scribes wouldn't cite other pseudo-gurus as if they were infallible, because when one looks closely at their record -- most times the people that have made a reputation for themselves picking games turn out to be as clueless as a male guest on "The View".

Sports Illustrated's own Peter King seems to fall into that category of so-called experts that scribes reverentially refer to now and then. If Peter King says it's so, then it must be true, right?

Well, let's see. Not long ago, the omniscient Mr. King had the Denver Broncos beating the Baltimore Ravens, the Seattle Seahawks downing the Atlanta Falcons, and the Green Bay Packers defeating the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL playoffs. Mercifully, he got one right by saying the New England Patriots would dispatch the Houston Texans. King went on to predict the Packers would defeat the Seahawks and the Broncos would triumph over the Patriots to get to the Super Bowl, which he had Green Bay winning 33-30 over Denver.

Obviously, King didn't know what he was talking about. So much for gurus.

No, there's only one method that's foolproof, and it involves yours truly. My entire family history, going back centuries, has been absolutely consistent when it comes to such things. Fresh off the boat, my earliest ancestor in this country predicted the British would slam-dunk the Minutemen in the Revolutionary War. Davey Crockett, Jim Bowie and their pals were a no-brainer to prevail at the Alamo. We had the South in the Civil War. Custer was a lock at the Little Big Horn. Remember that headline about Dewey defeating Truman? That was my grandpa's doing. My own dad was giving long odds on Sonny Liston easily knocking out that punk Cassius Clay. And we have steadfastly maintained the Detroit Lions were going to win the Super Bowl every year since that nice man and visionary extrordinaire William Clay Ford bought the team.

Yep, if nothing else, we've been consistent. So if you want to make a lot of money picking games, there's really a very simple way to do it.

Allow me to do all the heavy lifting. I'll crunch every conceivable stat, get into deep analysis of individual players and how they match up against their opponents, game strategies, and even thoroughly dissect any intangibles that may come into play. At the end of the day, I'll put it all together and it will be obvious which team is going to win the game.

And then all you have to do is bet on the other one.

I'm liking the 49ers in the Super Bowl. Do what you will......