Image cred: AP Photo/Brody Schmidt
Trent got ahead of me this week and posted his picks yesterday. Go check them out before you read mine.
Did you follow orders? Okay, good. I had a good week last week and managed to make up some ground; had a weird feeling about the Pokes the Friday night before and, as they often have throughout Mike Gundy’s tenure, when at home as an underdog, the Pokes came through. They have a similar task this week against a ranked KU squad. Can they do it twice in a row?
Trent and I both got WVU-Houston wrong (as you can see from the receipts for me here, and for Trent here.
Cougs-Moutaineers aside, Vegas has all of this week’s other Big 12 games at less than a touchdown. No Sooners or Horns this week: our betters need a week off after spending all last weekend admiring each other at the Texas State Fair. It’s nice to see two soi-divant bitter rivals get along so well, especially now that they’re headed for the SEC, even though the whole event last weekend at certain moments seemed in its pageantry more or less like an incredibly public mutual wank-fest*.
Trent Last week: 2-3 (.400)
Nate last week: 4-1 (.800)
Trent overall: 43-17 (.716)
Nate overall: 41-19 (.683)
Thursday
WVU-Houston (see above). I had WVU over Houston by a margin of 27-21; Trent had the ‘Eers 35-24. Both of us were wrong by a margin of one hail-mary (Houston 41-39).
Saturday
Iowa State 17, Cincinnati 13. I will take the Cyclones here, in their first ever matchup with Cincy, even though the line favors the Bearcats by five. Seems like ISU has maybe started to figure things out.
No. 23 Kansas 26, Oklahoma State 31. This is game no. 74 between these two. I don’t feel good about this game but I’m taking the Pokes, perhaps especially as OSU is a three point home dog here. Mike Gundy is now 8-1 in his last nine games as a home dog; after last week against K-State, that’s good enough for me. Pokes are 41-30-2 all-time against the Jayhawks, and had won twelve in a row before last year’s decisive 37-16 win by KU in Lawrence.
BYU 25, TCU 29. TCU has looked like a turd for two weeks running and are rather hard to pick to win, but the game seems like a tossup to me and is being played in Fort Worth. These two have some history, dating most recently back to TCU’s Mountain West days. The Frogs own a 6-5 edge.
Kansas State 38, Texas Tech 34. I bet K-State responds to last week’s debacle in Stilly by kicking the absolute daylights out of Tech in the first half, though I think the Red Raiders will climb back into it before the end, ultimately falling to the Wildcats. KSU has won its last seven meetings against Tech. The only question here is can Will Howard remember how to hit the broad side of a barn?
* NB: We here at Poke Salad have nothing against so-called mutual wanks, provided they take place between consenting adults. As such, we encourage those who partake in such acts to do so out of the view of the general viewing public. While we must acknowledge that such activities under certain circumstances may be beneficial or even helpful to the general morale, we do find it somewhat objectionable in certain circumstances, such as those taking place in Dallas on this most recent Saturday the seventh of October, being that the two chief participants were (A) a member of the bovine species and (B) a farmhand of the not specially literate variety. (Bestiality being, as far as we know, as illegal in Texas as it is in Oklahoma.)
We further consider that the rampant (and weirdly erotic) mooing and braying from miles around that particular vicinity this past weekend (as happened around or beneath the voyeuristic gaze of that entity known as Big Tex) to be adequate evidence as to the acts specified in the above paragraph did indeed take place in public. At this behavior, we here at Poke Salad would like to issue a stern frown.
Fortunately, we have nothing further to say on the subject; as far as we could tell, everyone—both farmers and cows—seemed to leave the vicinity in a state of general satisfaction.