On October 6, 1996, my wife said to me, “Why don’t you just make the Green Bay Packers your top pick every week?”
Pam, who I will celebrate my 50th anniversary with next June, has been with me through my time of working for the Oakland Raiders and since I opened Qoxhi Picks in 1981. Fortunately, she is a football fan and very supportive of this unique way I have chosen to earn a living … picking football games and telling the truth on actual results.
In 1996, the Green Bay Packers were my preseason Super Bowl pick, and that Sunday they had won their fifth game in six starts by another gaudy score, 37-6, over the Chicago Bears. Their only straight-up and point spread loss up to that point was a contest in Minnesota where the touchdown underdog Vikings beat them, 30-21, in fourth week action.
Turns out betting on the Packers every week did as good as our designated top picks that year, they both finished the regular season 10-6 against the point spread. Green Bay also went on to beat the New England Patriots that year in Super Bowl XXXI. But when Pam suggested betting on them every week the next five Sundays would have blown a cold wind through our house. After they clobbered the Bears, the Packers lost their next five games against the point spread, then recovered and won their last five decisions enroute to that 10-6 season record.
That just seems to be the way it goes. Once someone says, “I’ll never bet on or against a team,” it coincides with a reversal of fortunes. One of my favorite people in the world, Tom Tolbert, who was recently relieved of his broadcasting duties at KNBR for reasons only some misguided bean-counter could explain, was high on the Carolina Panthers coming into this season. He went to the well with them the first two weeks and got blown out twice by scores of 47-10 and 26-3 by the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Chargers.
“I’ll never bet on them again,” he declared on the radio before their Week Three matchup against the Las Vegas Raiders, a game in which the underdog Panthers won, 36-22.