NCAA Basketball Handicapping: Talent Down Across the Country This Season
by Robert Ferringo - 10/26/2016

Last year was a high-water mark for college basketball. There were several incredible teams performing throughout an exciting and entertaining regular season. There was a level of experience and talent scattered throughout the country that we probably haven't seen at any other time this century. The season was capped by another thrilling NCAA Tournament that ended with an all-time great championship game.

NFL Power Rankings Week 7
by Robert Ferringo - 10/19/2016

"Who have you played and who have you beaten?" A certain college basketball analyst is fond of using this phrase to help simplify the sometimes mystifying process of selecting at-large teams to the NCAA Tournament. It seems like a simple mantra. But the point of the question is to say that teams aren't always what their records - and public perceptions - purport them to be.

2016 AAC Basketball Predictions with Expert Handicapping and American Athletic Odds
by Robert Ferringo - 10/18/2016

American Athletic Conference basketball has been an under-the-radar bastion for serious hoop heads the past several seasons. Prominent power programs like Connecticut and Cincinnati have been toiling in relative obscurity in a league that was set up with football in mind and basketball as an afterthought. Venerable mid-majors Temple and Memphis has been using the league as a ladder to climb up to "major program" status. And resurgent squads like SMU and Tulsa, thanks to well-regarded coaches, have been fighting their way to NCAA Tournament bids and national prominence.

NFL Power Rankings Week 6
by Robert Ferringo - 10/12/2016

One of the reasons being cited for the decline in football viewership this year is fans' exasperation over how convoluted the NFL's games have become. No one seems to know what a catch is, no one seems to understand how the games are officiated (or why officiating is so inconsistent), and on the whole there are a lot of average fans out there that just don't seem to be able to follow what is going on in the game.

NFL Power Rankings Week 5
by Robert Ferringo - 10/5/2016

Quarterback is the most overrated position in sports. This isn't some trolling Hot Take. And I'm not trying to take anything away from what is the most difficult and important position in sports. (Although I'm sure starting pitchers and hockey goalies would make their case otherwise.) Quarterbacks are conductors in our weekly symphony of violence. And no other position requires the talent and focus, both physically and mentally, as NFL quarterback.

NFL Power Rankings Week 4
by Robert Ferringo - 9/28/2016

True knowledge is knowing that you know nothing. Socrates was one of the world's great minds and a massive fan of irony, ethics and a strong vertical passing game. And his insight into the comical worthlessness of human understanding has never been more apt heading into Week 4 of the NFL season.

NFL Power Rankings Week 3
by Robert Ferringo - 9/21/2016

Just two weeks into the season and you can smell the stench of panic coating teams throughout the NFL. Everyone knows the gruesome numbers about the probability of a team that starts the season 0-2 making the playoffs (it is somewhere just north of 10 percent). But it is even worse for teams that start 0-3, as only five clubs in the history of the NFL have been able to turn their seasons around after losing their first three games.

NFL Power Rankings Week 2
by Robert Ferringo - 9/14/2016

Lost in all of the talk about Jack Del Rio's decision to go for a two-point conversion, and thus the win for Oakland over New Orleans last Sunday, was the fact that so many NFL still coaches still don't know when the right time to go for two is. And that idiocy was on full display in Week 1 of the 2016 season.

2016 Pittsburgh Steelers Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

Allegedly the Pittsburgh Steelers have one of the most talented teams in football and are a Super Bowl contender in the wide-open AFC. However, injuries, suspensions and all manner of impediments continue to keep us from seeing what this team can do at full strength. So is the potential for a championship a myth or not?

2016 Kansas City Chiefs Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

With a season win total of 9.5, I can't exactly say that the Chiefs are underrated heading into the season. And even the most optimistic of Kansas City fan would acknowledge that this team doesn't quite have the look of a Super Bowl contender. Yet despite that I still feel like Kansas City's brain trust of Andy Reid and Alex Smith still don't get the credit they deserve.

2016 Indianapolis Colts Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

If you watched the Colts at all this preseason, it's as if you could feel the anxiety and the tension surrounding this team. From owner Jim Irsay's reaction to the cancelled Hall of Fame Game to the hostility any time someone is asked about the friction between coach Chuck Pagano and embattled general manager Ryan Grigson, there are just not good vibes surrounding this Colts team. And I think the reason is that a lot of people know that they are going to lose their jobs in six months.

2016 New Orleans Saints Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

The Saints have had back-to-back losing seasons and have finished 7-9 three times in four years. They appear to be a franchise flailing rather than the dominant NFC South power we saw between 2009-2011. With Drew Brees and Sean Payton they still have a chance. But this team has a lot more questions than answers heading into the 2016 campaign.

2016 San Diego Chargers Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

San Diego is one of the sunniest places in the country. So it is ironic that a dark cloud hangs over this Chargers franchise. The specter of a move from the city that has hosted this team for over 50 years has cast a pall on this entire organization. Add in public relations disasters, poor front office management, and then some run-of-the-mill bad luck (injuries, etc.), and the Chargers are a team that really doesn't know what direction it is going.

2016 Oakland Raiders Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

After nearly two decades of being one of the biggest jokes in the NFL, the Raiders enter the 2016 season as Everybody's Sleeper Team. Every bobblehead media member has been gushing over Oakland for the past three months, and for the first time that I can remember this team enters the season with legitimate expectations.

2016 Atlanta Falcons Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

I feel like at this time last year if you had offered Atlanta and new head coach Dan Quinn an 8-8 season with some breakout performances by some young players they would've snatched it up in a heartbeat. However, the way things worked out the Falcons did go 8-8 but ended last season with a bittersweet feeling after becoming just the seventh team in NFL history to start the year 5-0 and fail to make the playoffs.

2016 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

When I look at Tampa Bay, I see a lot of style but not a lot of substance. The Bucs haven't finished above .500 since 2010, and with a new coach and some new systems it appears their decade-long rebuild may still be ongoing. Add in the fact that the Bucs are in a division featuring more experienced coaches and quarterbacks and more established systems, and I think it is a tall task to ask Tampa to move up in the standings.

2016 Tennessee Titans Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

The Titans have been one of my sleeper teams each of the past two seasons. And each of the past two seasons I have been wrong. They have gone a combined 5-27 the past two seasons. The combined total of those two years wouldn't even have been good enough to beat their season win total (5.5) for either of those seasons.

2016 Cleveland Browns Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/9/2016

Hue Jackson is taking the reigns on a top-to-bottom rebuild within one of the worst franchises in sports. The Browns have posted just two winning seasons since their return to Cleveland in 1999, and they have won four or fewer games three times in five years. Jackson took a hatchet to the Browns roster this preseason, and the result is a team that, in the short-term, is significantly worse than the one that won just three games last year.

2016 Carolina Panthers Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/8/2016

The Panthers are the last of the pure Cover-2 Teams in the NFL. Now, when you hear someone say "Cover-2" you probably think that it is just a defensive scheme. And it is. But a Cover-2 Team buys in, wholly and completely, to the philosophy that has made this one of the indelible systems of the last quarter century.

2016 Denver Broncos Expert Predictions and Season Win Totals Picks
by Robert Ferringo - 9/8/2016

The defending Super Bowl champions are lords of the NFL landscape. And on one hand you have to give Denver a load of credit for hocking a major loogie in the face of generally accepted NFL dogma. The Broncos won last year's championship in spite of, rather than because of, its quarterback play. And after several years of deluded NFL thinking that passing, points and high-powered offense wins games, the Broncos proved - yet again - that the more violent, physical team wins on the football field more often than not.