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Back in August, three days before the Auburn game, I asked the CougCenter community for season predictions. While the Cougars were coming off a 3-9 season, we were also at the end of fall camp and many were drunk on August optimism. The result was a wide range of predictions ranging from 3-9 to 12-0.
The two 12-0 predictions were a bit facetious, but someone did predict a 10-2 season. In all, 50 people participated, which makes for easy percentages, so that was convenient. Here's a closer look at who predicted what:
| Win/Loss Total | Number of picks | Members |
| 12-0 | 2 | republicofcascadia, Quatroux |
| 10-2 | 1 | Valiance |
| 9-3 | 2 | Ruralcoug, cougdude50 |
| 8-4 | 9 | Lastchance101, JVanWSU, cougbuddy, CarolinaCoug, It's a Crimson and Gray thing, Zade57, SoCal Coug, 707Coug, ZzuCruCougs |
| 7-5 | 8 | Ryan Eames, s_seagren, Brett Gleason, WSUSeagull, Zabelator, SoCalCoug, valleycoug, mariner_rick |
| 6-6 | 11 | Mark Sandritter, CougAir, wazzu93, james_WSU, pf_flyer, ColoradoCoug, Burt S., johnnycougar, kimlovescougars, BothwaysUphill, B-Lot tailgater |
| 5-7 | 5 | fearthewheat, Jeff Collier, t-line_coug, The Crimson Lance, PullManiac, Strave19 |
| 4-8 | 7 | mcrose14, Fractal, SpectreFCO, Blackie1829, jackswift, rcook72, wsu4life |
| 3-9 | 4 | CFN_MS, Shellin, Kyle Sherwood, Dr. Coug-A-Lot |
Myself and 10 others drank just the right amount of Crimson Kool-Aid to correctly predict a 6-6 season. I should note that these were regular season predictions and did not include a hypothetical bowl game. Technically, I should have written this post before the New Mexico Bowl, but technically I should do a lot of things.
Kyle Sherwood was expecting a much worse ride on the Gravitron and was one of four who predicted a 3-9 season. A few people may have been under the influence of something when they made their picks. Blind optimism remains one hell of a drug.
In total, 24 of the 50 came within one game of accurately predicting the regular-season win total. Not bad. We didn't however, just pick total numbers. We also picked games:
| Game | Predicted Wins | Predicted Losses | Percent correct |
| Auburn | 25 | 25 | 50% |
| USC | 11 | 39 | 22% |
| Southern Utah | 49 | 1 | 98% |
| Idaho | 49 | 1 | 98% |
| Stanford | 11 | 39 | 78% |
| California | 32 | 18 | 64% |
| Oregon State | 30 | 20 | 40% |
| Oregon | 3 | 47 | 94% |
| Arizona State | 30 | 20 | 40% |
| Arizona | 8 | 42 | 16% |
| Utah | 44 | 6 | 88% |
| Washington | 22 | 28 | 56% |
Only eight of the 50 correctly predicted the Cougars would go on the road and beat Arizona. If you take out the two 12-0 predictions, only six people thought WSU would win that game. Meanwhile, 30 picked the Cougars to beat ASU. That didn't turn out very well. As a group, we were apparently very confident the Cougs would beat Utah with 44 of the 50 correctly predicting that game. Take that Utes.
For those of you wondering, kimlovescougars was the one person to pick WSU to lose to both Idaho and Southern Utah. That begs the question of whether or not Kim actually love cougars or if they were just saying it because they saw it.
If you bet the CougCenter majority opinion on each game, you would have gone 7-4-1. We can take that even further and see how accurately the group predicted the entire season on a game-by-game basis.
| Correct W/L Predictions | Number of Members |
| 10 | 3 |
| 9 | 6 |
| 8 | 18 |
| 7 | 11 |
| 6 | 10 |
| 5 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 |
Three members -- mcrose14, jackswift and ColoradoCoug -- correctly predicted 10 wins and losses. Sherwood was among the group with nine correct while I was one of 18 members who picked eight games correctly. It was not mariner_rick's year as he finished with five correct predictions. Only two of kimlovescougars' predictions were correct.
Congrats to mcrose14, jackswift and ColoradoCoug. Your names have been added to the wall of CougCenter champions. You are all very famous now, don't let it go to your heads.
