There’s nothing quite like the Super Bowl. Name another event that can leave full grown men screaming at the TV without receiving a dismissive look from their significant other. Even women love the Super Bowl. Yes, you read that correctly! Some gals love the game, but even those that don’t get excited about the commercials.

The theater of the absurd has continued for yet another week of pigskin pick’em. I’ve come to grips with the reality that my predicting destiny is to finish the 2012 season with exactly the same amount of wins and losses. Another incredibly average 7-9 performance leaves us with a 110-106-7 record for the season. You don’t need Mr. Sparks’ help to do that math.

Hopefully Thanksgiving weekend was good to everyone on and off the dinner table. A 9-5-1 week raised our record to a respectable 89-80-6 for the season. We’re not getting banned from Las Vegas Books with those results but we’re not making too many return trips to the ATM either. Now we’re entering the finishing stretch of the NFL regular season schedule as teams continue to jockey for playoff positioning, so it will be important to consider a team’s motivation level as we make our selections. As many as six teams are battling for the final seed in the NFC.

So much for my wonderfully useful theory that the locked-out officials’ return would bring clarity back to the increasingly complex endeavor of picking winners against the spread in the NFL. Suffering through an awful 5-9 week will leave you scrambling for alternative answers. Searching, searching, still searching... Listen, picking winners is hard. It may sound easy on the surface. Team A is better than Team B, Team A is only favored by a field goal, pick Team A. Say the magic word, abracadabra, and Vegas sheepishly hands out free money for everyone!