Bob Lobel: New England Fans Waiting For The Playoffs

By Bob Lobel (@BobLobel)

Okay, it’s the Thanksgiving-Christmas hole. So have we all figured out how the NFL playoffs are going to shake out? Of course not. Me neither. The networks spend hours showing us the current playoff standings and spend more hours explaining it like “NFL Playoffs For Dummies.”

It happens every year. Try to keep track, just to see if your team is in, and who they’ll be playing.  Keep checking the standings and all their permutations. Last weekend, Bob Costas attempted to explain the possibilities of the playoffs. It took seven minutes for him to go through it and I still don’t understand anything well enough to recite.

We go through this every year, but New England are the lucky ones. It seems like it’s the same every year. 12 wins, a first-round bye, getting to stay at home, another week to get healthy.

The 2015 SuiteSports Bowl Pick'em Challenge

Thanks to the College Football Playoff and a few new bowls, we've got 39 games to pick this year.

By SuiteSports Staff

It's the second year of our (hopefully) annual Bowl Pick'em challenge and, like a Charmander growing into a promising Charmeleon, then eventually a Charizard, we're evolving from last year.

Gone is Yahoo, because, seriously, Yahoo fantasy sports are the worst now. We have begrudgingly switched to ESPN, but the rules are the same: Make a pick for every bowl game and rank that pick based on how confident you are in it being true.

This year we've also added correspondent and college football guru Andy Dougherty to the party, and each of us has a slightly different methodology. Well, except for Joe's wife Caity, she's still picking with her gut.

Enjoy!

(Note: You can view our picks through screen-captures of the ESPN league that we set up. You won't be able to see anything from the thumbnails but you can click to enlarge.)

(Other Note: There was some confusion as to which way the confidence points went. Is 1 at the top of the page your most confident pick, or is 39 your most confident pick and worth 39 points? After reading the rules, we're pretty sure it is the latter, but all of us except Jeremy did the former... Oh well.)

Pre-Bowl Season Winners and Losers

If you earn bowl eligibility in the MAC, you can either head to Detroit... Or here.

By Joe Parello (@HerewegoJoe)

We are about to achieve maximum football this weekend, as college bowl season kicks off to complement the final two weeks of the NFL season, as well as playoffs at both the pro and college levels.

The only days we won't have a bowl game between Saturday and January 4th will be December 21st, December 25th and December 28th, simply because college football can't mess with the NFL of Jesus.

But before bowl season even starts, we can pick out some clear winners and losers based on where teams are headed (ie, TCU and Baylor; losers. Ohio State; winner), so here are your Pre-Bowl Season Winners and Losers.

The SuiteSports Bowl Pick'em Challenge

Anyone can pick these games, but who ya got in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl?

By SuiteSports Staff

Yesterday we brought you our college bowl primer, and today we present you with our exclusive picks. Editor's Jeremy Conlin and Joe Parello have put way too much thought into this, employing elaborate strategies that are bound to fall apart before Christmas Eve.

Joe's wife Caity, meanwhile, picked games base on "feeling." If you've ever done an NCAA March Madness Bracket with a girl in your office/school, I think you know how this is going to end.

Because we are sadists, we used Yahoo, and decided we would not be allowed to change our picks after this story runs (Which is now). So, without further ado, here are our picks and methodologies. You can click on each of our pick sets to enlarge them.

Your Bowl Season Primer

Can Auburn make it eight in a row for the SEC?

By Joe Parello  @HerewegoJoe

The college bowl season opens Saturday, beginning a bonanza of college football that will give us a game to watch nearly every night until the BCS Championship Game on January 6th (Minus Christmas and December 22nd/29th, so as not to compete with Jesus or the NFL).

If you're just a football fan, the bowl season is amazing. Finally, college football gives us some intriguing inter-conference match ups that will no doubt feature contrasting styles and unfamiliar foes battling after plenty of preparation.

If you're a rich booster for a team that had a successful season, you've probably already booked your flight to Florida/California/Arizona/Texas/Louisiana/Georgia and scored your "alumni section" tickets from the school for twice as much as you would pay on StubHub a week before the game.

But, if your team came up short of expectations, it's a depressing potential trip to Detroit or Birmingham that you probably decided wasn't worth the time or money. Or heck, if you're a Purdue fan like me, or a Gator fan like my wife, this entire month is a reminder that your team wasn't even good enough to face Arkansas State in Mobile, Alabama.

That's depressing, but bowl season is still an amazing all you can eat buffet of football, so I'm going to put my own personal disappointments aside and bring you everything to watch for in every 2013-2014 bowl game.

All times Eastern, by the way.

Studs and Duds: Seriously, You Don't Like the Ending of Empire Strikes Back?

If you don't like the ending of this movie, we can't be friends.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin) and Joe Parello (@HerewegoJoe)

Studs and Duds is a weekly feature on Suite Sports. Who had a good week? Who had a bad week?

Studs

EA Sports' Advertising

I still maintain that the release of  each year's Madden NFL Football video game should be a national holiday. So should the Super Bowl, and so should every playoff game, and really every big Monday Night game… Ok, so maybe I just don't like to work and I like football.