The Obligatory Te'o Takes and Super Bowl Pick

Hey, did you hear Monti Te’o got catfished??? Holy crap!

I'm gonna get you!

Wait, what does catfish mean?  Seriously, though, let me be the 2,432,209,891st person to tell you, this has got to be the weirdest story since... ever? How many sentences can I end in a question mark?

My personal favorite part of this story is that it’s distracting from Lance Armstrong (see also, Catholic, the Pope is) and the lame Super Bowl storylines about Ray Lewis (other than the unintentional comedy of his Jesus rants and the Harbaugh brothers.

Anyways, let’s just cut through the carp (hehehe), and just tell this Te’o thing like it is, because, as a mildly popular sports blogger, I’m required to weigh in on this one.

1. Te’o is either the most gullible person ever or the best liar ever - I’m going with the former here. He’s clearly a typically honest dude (we’ll get to that), and seems like a genuinely good person. And he got duped. But seriously, dude, ever hear of Skype? Ever wonder why this chick who loved you so much and clearly knew how famous you were didn’t want to be seen with you? Couldn’t tell the difference between a guy’s voice and a girl’s? C’mon, yo. You could get any chick on campus you wanted, Mormon style, and this is what you settle for? That, by the way, it what fuels the conspiracy theorists. I’m not buying it, though, he just seems like a completely naive and genuinely nice person.

Could you imagine if it’s the latter, though? I don’t know if he’d be demonized, bring down the entire Mormon religion, hired by the FBI, or all three. I can tell you one thing...

Penny stock?

2. How does this affect his draft stock?  Uh, if the latter above were true, he’d be a 5th round pick at best. Assuming it’s not a massive lie (it can’t be... right?), I think this is gonna be the most interesting storyline to NFL fans once the dust settles. Talent-wise? Top 5. Now? I think the biggest question is how he’d be received in a locker room. Personally, I think most athletes will just bust his balls and make fun of him for being a dumb kid. So if you’re a GM, you have to decide if that’s going to affect his play in the long term or not. I’d take him Top 10, hands down. I’m hoping he slips to the Bears at 20. Guessing maybe 8-10, Bills, Jets, or Titans, with the Bills and Titans being preferred since there would be minimal media exposure. No way he gets past San Diego at 11.  Though a quick scour of the Internets has most mocks with him around the 20-25 range.  I think that's a steal.




Up all night with Te'o

3. How much, if any, of this mess was Te’o’s fault? Resident fraud Notre Dame fan Fah T and resident Notre Dame football hater, yours truly, talked the day after all this broke, and came to a quick and simple agreement on this - he’s a good kid who made two really stupid mistakes: 1. he needed to clarify, immediately after the media jumped on her death, that they had not actually met face to face. He could have garnered the same attention by saying something like “I never got the chance to see her beautiful face in person.” Granted, this could have distracted their whole season, but at least, and most Mormon-y, it was honest. 2. He REALLY needed to be honest with his father and others around him when he found out she could have been fake, and REALLY shouldn’t have continued to play up the story after he found out. I mean, I know that’s obvious, but we probably aren’t making as huge a deal about this if he hadn’t covered some of it up for awhile. Maybe we don’t even see that Deadspin article. The lesson, as always: never stay on the phone all night listening to your girlfriend breathe unless you have an unlimited talk plan. And make sure it’s really her and not that kid up there.

Every ESPN anchor, sportscaster, People editor, and TMZ whatever-er has an opinion on this.  But far and the way the best one I've heard so far comes from resident LB steroids expert Jeremy, who said the other night, sober-ish, "It's really simple... Monti Te'o is a dweeb."  (Editor's Note - my longest readers will get a chuckle out of that link... links to friend's blogs and the now famous, but then fledgling www.zoowithroy.com are on there.  Funny shit.)

Te'o's wingman

Super Bowl Pick

Seriously excited for this game. Started out at San Francisco -4.5, bet down to 3 within a few days, now at 3.5, where I think it'll probably stay.  Comes down to three things for me...

1.  I think the extra week off benefits the 49ers.  I think Jim's the more tactically savvy Harbaugh (more time to prepare), the biggest injury on either side is 49ers DE Justin Smith (played in the NFC title game, now gets another week to heal), and I think it kills the Ravens momentum.

2.  This Ravens team has team of destiny written all over it.  That bomb in Denver where Torrey Smith gets behind the safety?  Going into Denver and New England and beating Peyton and Brady?  Absolutely beating down the Pats in the 2nd half?  Yikes.

3.  Key matchup is the average Ravens O-Line vs. the other-worldly 49ers D-Line.  The Ravens want to go deep and run, and either way, they gotta be able to stop that Niners front four.  Not so sure they can do it.

So you'd think I'd be leaning Niners, and on paper, I do.  I think the Ravens are gonna have to hold a TE or RB in to stop that front four, which might limit their chances to get deep and/or roll Flacco out.  I think the extra week is huge for San Francisco.  But #2 up there scares me.  I don't know why, but I just don't see Kapernick being able to carry this team to win it.  The Ravens have been in a million playoff games the last few years, and this is a veteran team that won't get sucked up by the moment.  LB Rules say stay the hell away... actually, I would have grabbed that 4.5 if I were in Vegas at the time.  But I'm taking my lumps, paying off the cuz-in-law soon, and just gonna sit back and enjoy this.  Don't call it a lock, but...

Baltimore 24, San Francisco 20.

Contact Logical Betting at logicalbetting@gmail.com and twitter.com/logicalbetting.  Probably going to be on heitus for awhile, but we'll be tweeting a lot, so keep up with us there.  We'll be back in a few weeks to talk about... something.  I'll miss you, NFL.  Hasta.