A Thursday Night Lean for the Degenerates: Meet the OBC

Ole Miss (-4/53) at South Carolina:  Regular visitors know that SNL loves to write about USC for 2 reasons:  1) A soft spot for the OBC, a great Gator and a**-kicker of (former) Gator nemesis’, UGA and UT.   As fate would have it, the OBC is under the Thursday Nite Lights again this very evening, taking on a top-5 club in Nutt’s Ole Miss Rebels.  Now the bulk of you will no doubt entertain yourselves with soophomoric hyperbole predicated on the fact that the Rebels’ Caoch is “Coach Nutt”, and the South Carolina mascot is “the Cocks”.  Hah, hah.  SNL would love to engage in this banal dribble, no sarcasm intended, except that he is trying to figure out an angle on this game from the more mature perspective, i.e. beating the spread.

Dr. Saturday has penned an erudite piece on this game, the thesis of which is that the Ole Miss “brand” (as opposed to USC, Florida etc…) has not been around long enough to embed itself in the collective consciousness of the college gamblers…err….fans.  Ergo, this spread is low-which it is-for a top-5 club on the road at an unranked opponent.  SNL tends to agree, which makes Ole Miss the play here-right?  Maybe not.  Spurrier still claims some cache’, at least offensively, and Nutt has shown a propensity to shoot too soon when playing the Cocks, as was the case last year when Ole Miss promptly lost to USC after narrowly defeating a turnover plagued Gator squad.  Ole Miss has also feasted on lightweights, Memphis and fill-in-the-direction Louisiana, which means we have no real objective measure to determine how good Ole Miss really is this year.  Ole miss did, however, give up a 179 yards rushing to Memphis, which may be a harbinger of this year’s rush defense.  Even so, the OBC’s Cocks aren’t known for exploiting up the middle, so this fact may bear little on tonight’s game.

The Cocks, after making all of us suffer through a 7-3 snoozer at NC St., lit up the scoreboard against UGA.  Problem is, everyone is lighting up the scoreboard against UGA this year.  Long gone are the days we can count on the OBC’s offensive genius to turn armless Qb’s into Heisman Trohpy winners.  In fact, about all we can count on from USC tonight is a bunch of un-funny puns employing the obvious double-meaning of the word “Cock”, as show more fully below. 

At the end of the day, there’s simply not enough of a resume here to head in either direction, which means a play on either side would be G-A-M-B-L-I-N-G to say the least.  Still, SNL knows that most of the flock are quaking like the dopers on intervention to put some “action” on tonight’s game.  You know who you are Mr. “debit-card-on-BoDog”, denial will only hurt you in the long run.  In effort to satisfy your fix, however, SNL will tell you that the “value” in this line is on the Under, based on Ole Miss’ perceived ability to score and the nationally televised USC’-UGA game, which produced around 80-points.  That said value is a relative term, and SNL is going to pray that the OBC can draw up some ball plays that will allow his Cocks to hang around, so if you must, takethe under and the points, and play small!! 

Flock, before you go doubling-down on your whole $31.00 bankroll tonight, please know that this weekend’s card is the best so far from an investment standpoint.  So be judicious in your investing.  Also, please note that SNL will not take credit-win or lose-for this pick, which is purely given to assuage the degenerates among you, who are many. 

-So Sayeth the Shepherd