The Gator Country Picks: Week 8

There aren’t a whole lot of hard games for our staff to pick this week, so getting separation on the leaderboard might be a little tough.

That means our three way tie for the lead isn’t likely to be broken until next week.

Today our resident “experts” and four much smarter subscribers pick each SEC and Top 25 game on the schedule in a little friendly competition.

To say this weekend’s games are a snoozefest in terms of a picks contest isn’t quite doing it justice. We could pick this week’s games with a blindfold on after a couple shots of whiskey and still get at least 90 percent of them right.

In fact, there were only two games out of 20 that had more than one person pick an upset.

Our toughest pick of the week was Miami vs. Georgia Tech. Four people chose Georgia Tech, with our guests split 2-2 and our staff favoring the ‘Canes 4-2.

The next closest pick was Wisconsin vs. Michigan State, with two of our staffers picking the Spartans in the upset.

Finally, a handful of our pickers picked a lone upset, with one person each taking Jacksonville State over Kentucky, UNC over Clemson, Washington over Stanford, Northwestern over Penn State and Purdue over Illinois.

Enough with the boredom, here are our thoughts!

Justin Wells

Since I really have no way of getting into the mix to win the battle of wits with my fellow GC employees this year, I’m really using my “picks” as practice for next year when I can show off my skills. I had a moment of clairvoyance with my Michigan St. over Michigan pick last Saturday…and hope to build on that this week. Hopefully, that $20 trip to the High Springs tarot card reader will pay off again…

Tim Casey

Now that I’ve fallen to the bottom of the standings, I’m going to start playing it safe with my picks. I can only hope that the rest of the pickers haven’t recovered from Thomas’ birthday celebration on Tuesday night. Since the Gators have the week off, I’ll be watching the World Series instead of football. My pre-World Series prediction was St. Louis in 6 games.

Derek Tyson

It’s a close battle and we are coming down the home stretch. I’m not very confident on this pick but I did select Miami over Georgia Tech. Hopefully this is the week I take over the lead.

Adam Pincus

The Vanderbilt and Wake Forest picks last week looked good for a split-second and then my week came crashing down like Florida’s offense. Week eight’s SEC games are fairly easy to pick, in my opinion. All SEC

teams win.

Matchup of the week is in East Lansing where the Michigan State Spartans host the Wisconsin Badgers and its vaunted offense led by quarterback Russell Wilson and running back James Davis from St. 

Thomas Aquinas. I was really impressed with Michigan State against Michigan last week and expect its large defensive line to do a good enough job versus the Wisconsin rushing attack. Key in this game will

be the effectiveness of MSU quarterback Kirk Cousins, who has completed 65.9 percent of his passes this season. If he can stay turnover free, Spartans win.

Next upset pick is the Miami Hurricanes defeating the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at home. Miami quarterback Jacory Harris had his best game of the season last week against North Carolina. Georgia Tech is coming off of a loss and has not looked as dominating in conference play.

I’m sure I’m not the only one making this joke, but the for sure winner this week is the Florida Gators. With Florida’s bye week, the Gators are assured of staying out of the loss column.

Andrew Spivey

This is a week I will go with all of the favorites, as there are not too many big games. Hopefully the rest of the guys will make a bad pick so I can gain some ground in the standings if not next week I will make up some ground.

Thomas Goldkamp

I’ll keep it short and sweet. I win.

Below is each of our 10 experts’ picks.

AP – Adam Pincus, AS – Andrew Spivey, DT – Derek Tyson, JW – Justin Wells, TC – Tim Casey, TG – Thomas Goldkamp, pk – pkaib01, ch – chrisleakfan4life, St – StuckUpNorthGator, CF – CFLrob