Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

9/9/2010 at 7:30am

Thank God for Mississippi.

Growing up, The Betting Man heard those four words on more than one occasion. More often than not, the phrase involved the release of some economic or educational statistical data in which the state of Arkansas was ranked painfully low, just not as low as Mississippi.

TBM is guessing he's not the only one in on this joke. Sadly, what's no joke is TBM was left muttering those same four words at the end of a Week 1 that left him 0-3 vs. the spread and 99 mythical dollars poorer.

USC, Northwestern and Virginia Tech all left TBM feeling blue and bleeding red. The only more teed-off combination of red and blue in Week 1, in fact, is that of the reverse mullet-wearing boys and infinitely foxy girls down in Oxford, Miss.

But enough about Week 1. It's time to give Week 2 a gander.

Thursday Night Special, Part II: TBM stayed up way too late last Thursday, only to be disappointed by a USC defense that tackled like the Golden Girls. (Hollywood's version, not the ones from LSU, which TBM would gladly be tackled by any day of the week.)

But, hey, TBM won't be scared away by one bad Thursday. Instead, he's coming back — and with a road favorite, no less.

Yep, the play here is to take Auburn -2 at Mississippi State ($50). The reasoning is simple: This is Auburn's toughest road test until a last-weekend date at Alabama.

There's also the hunch Mississippi State is much-improved, but maybe not quite ready for primetime. TBM thinks Auburn wins by two scores.

The Florida Rule: There was a time — and not that long ago, if you think about it — betting against teams from Florida was like having that third martini. In other words, good things rarely happened.

With that in mind, TBM looked hard at a couple of Florida teams — Miami and Florida State — that seem to be on the upswing. There's also the fact they're both catching a pretty good amount of points this week.

Miami, for the record, is getting 8 ½ at Ohio State, while FSU is getting 7 ½ at Oklahoma. Just for grins, and old times' sake, TBM will take both 'dogs in a $20 parlay.

The Arkansas Game: Let's see, TBM will be in the stands at War Memorial Stadium, the Razorbacks offense worked out some opening-game kinks last week, and Louisiana-Monroe has a redshirt freshman listed as its first-string quarterback. Add that up and there's no way TBM ain't taking the Hogs here — even if it means laying (gulp) 34 points.

Oh, what the heck? Pigs for $100.

Tagged: Arkansas Razorbacks, Bobby Petrino, The Betting Man, Rob Keys, Golden Girls