Roadies And Hits

The Green Bay Packers comfortably completed a profitable, if fortuitous, sweep for road teams in the NFL Wild Card games, and it's now onto the Divisional Round where road teams unsurprisingly fare less well, but at least one has won every season since 2005. This was the first time in NFL history that all four road teams won in a single round. 

This is the round where the higher seeded home teams all benefit from a well deserved week off, but over the past ten years, there's always been at least one road winner (above). As is almost always the case, all four home teams are favoured this year, with the Carolina Panthers the most vulnerable at 1.689.

Backing the road team to cover the spread since 2005 has generated an ROI of 22% from the 40 matches.

In the College version of American Football, tonight sees the National Championship game between favourites Alabama (-6.5) and Clemson. This is only the second season of College Football play-offs, so there's next to no historical data to guide us, but Alabama have the experience having played in both seasons, and the -7.5 line on Betfair looks value at ~2.36. Alabama are going for their fourth title in the last seven seasons while Clemson last won the championship in 1981. 

The Clemson coach (Dabo Swinney) is an Alabama alumni and former Alabama assistant coach which is an interesting twist. 

He's also not a very nice man. His planned attendance at an anti-LGBT fundraiser was only cancelled after a public outcry, and he has been accused of promoting a Christian agenda with the team:

“At Clemson, God is everywhere. The team’s chaplain leads a Bible study for coaches every Monday and Thursday. Another three times a week, the staff gathers for devotionals. Nearly every player shows up at a voluntary chapel service the night before each game.”

Good grief. It's debatable how "voluntary" this attendance is of course. Alabama's Nick Saban is not much better, with his "devout Catholic beliefs" permeating the football program. At least the latter doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, thank God for the wins (or blame him for the losses, which would seem only logical, yet never happens). But then there's not a lot of logic with religion.

Now, what is going on with this blog? Having topped 1,000 hits for the first time ever on Thursday, the total 

shot up to 1,821 on Saturday and exponentially increased to a scarcely believable 3,707 hits yesterday. James' 2,000 target has been smashed! My Leeds reader mentioned yesterday continued his path through the blog, but to more than double the previous record total just 24 hours later is quite amazing and means I have now beaten Full Time Betting blog's six year average daily hit rate (1,324) twice in two days - not that this is a competition or anything.