Are You Ready For Some Parlays - Mailing It In

Letters aplenty coming in around here. Tom refers to the 44-41 loss of my beloved Fightin' Irish to the Michigan State Spartans asks:

Any truth to the rumor that subject blog will be renamed "Nihilist on the Phone with the Suicide Hotline"?

In short, no. I am not suicidal, and certainly am not renaming the blog. While I am a Notre Dame partisan, I am also rational and understood all too well the weaknesses of my favorite team. I submit as evidence the fact that I recommended them as a preferred pick the week before the loss and do so again this week, but refrained from recommending them against Michigan State because of fear that this game might not go the right way. In short, I will go on a limb and suggest the Irish will finish the regular season with a record of 7-4. Any better and the program will be ahead of schedule.

I also recognize that my parlay record is 0-4 and my cumulative record is 4-8. If I can't turn things around soon, this bit will be relegated to the ash heap of history. Perhaps I am a pretender. So, like the Pretenders, my theme for the week will be "Back to Ohio," as lots of teams from Ohio should cover this week.

Now here are my picks for this week:

Notre Dame -13 @ Washington
Ohio State -7 v. Iowa
Ohio University -4 v. Kent State

Bengals -1 1/2 @ Bears
Browns +16 @ Colts
Eagles -7 1/2 v. Raiders