I am an extremely competitive guy. Even when it comes to fantasy sports, I hate to lose. I've never played in a league for money because I shudder to think about how angry I would get if I lost. I mention this because I am currently playing a College Bowl Pick 'Em game, and my picks are already a lost cause, and have been since day one. Of course, I was rather angry at first, cursing myself for making the wrong picks, questioning my intelligence, and all the other things those of us who take our fantasy sports a tad bit too seriously do. However, as time has gone on and I have the chance to think about it, I am neither angry nor disappointed that my picks are so poor. Because no matter what anybody may tell you, picking bowl games is an utter crap shoot.

Now, i would say I know college football fairly well. I'm a huge fan, and not a Saturday went by during the regular season where I didn't spend the entire day in front of my TV watching games. Additionally, I played college pick 'em over at Yahoo! during the regular season, and finished 96th percentile. I don't say that to brag, that would be quite sad, but I mention it to further justify my notion that I know a fair amount about college football. However, bowl games are an entirely different animal. They have little to nothing to do with the regular season. Other than the BCS National Title Game, the regular season has little impact on bowl games. Sure, there are conference ties and such, but those have only a tenuous effect on who ends up playing who. Then when these teams do match up, you can essentially throw the regular season out the window.

There is no way to know how a team will react to the bowl they are in. Will they be happy to be there? Will they be disappointed but play well to show everybody they deserved a better bowl? Will they be disappointed and thus play poorly? Is their record skewed by a weak conference leading them to be in a better bowl than they should be based on talent? Or do we just presume a conference is weak and the team is better than we think? There are a myriad of questions, and no way to know the answers.

Take for example the Hawaii Bowl, which I am currently watching. Notre Dame had another mediocre season, finishing 6-6 with a loss in Syracuse thrown in there. Hawaii, on the other hand ended the season with a near victory at home against Big East champ Cincinnatti. Notre Dame is fresh off another disappointing season flying all the way to Hawaii for a de facto road game, with a million things to distract them and seemingly nothing to play for. Hawaii, on the other hand is staying at home where they almost beat a team who is playing in the Orange Bowl. It would seem likely for Hawaii to win, as far as I am concerned. As I write this, Hawaii is losing 42-7 in the third quarter. It is at this point I realize that Hawaii may have almost beat Cincinnatti, but it was a Bearcats team that had already won the Big East, lost their best receiver to an injury early in the game, had nothing to play for, and probably was thinking of the game as a pseudo vacation. The Fighting Irish, on the other hand, came into this game with a nine game bowl losing streak, the luster of the school fading fast, and Charlie Weis hanging on by a thread. They have everything to play for. I have been had by the Hawaii team, they have bamboozled me. However, since they are only on television sparingly and always late at night whereas you can see Notre Dame struggle weekly on their own private network it skews one's view of both teams.

That is another issue of picking these games, so many of the teams you see a few times at most. While I've seen Oklahoma, Florida, Penn State, et al plenty of times I couldn't name you one player on Southern Mississippi or Troy. You might as well pick that game by the flip of a coin. Western Michigan vs. Rice, Houston vs. Air Force, they are all in the same boat. I picked BYU to beat Arizona with high confidence points because I had seen BYU play a few times, they were ranked highly, and only lost to TCU and Utah. Arizona, meanwhile, I had only seen lose to Oregon State and beat a terrible Arizona State team. Playing in their first bowl game in a decade, I thought it was a lock. It is only now I realize there are few if any locks in bowl games. They are too singular, too detached from the regular season. Even the most likely of wins can turn into upsets, and you can look no further than Boise State over Oklahoma a couple years ago for proof of that.

So, if you are like me and you're fuming over a wasted year of bowl game pick 'em, don't sweat it. It's more or less a game of chance, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Sure, somebody may have a reason for picking a team to win and it may sound logical and may end up being right, but I assure you anybody who picked the other team could have had an argument just as sound. Two teams end the season not knowing what lies next, then they are shipped off to some random city to play some random team in a one off game that if we are being honest has no meaning unless it's the National Championship Game. That is a recipe for unpredictability, and that is what we always get. I will continue to play bowl pick 'em in the future, simply because like most of you probably are I'm a fantasy junkie. However, I will go into the bowl season with no pretense that I have any clue what is going to happen. The best advice probably comes in the words of Superintendent Chalmers: "I say lay back and enjoy it, it's a hell of a toboggan ride!"