With Christmas less than three weeks away, your holiday schedule is likely filling up with parties and get-togethers between now and New Year’s.
These events range from the “kid-friendly” Christmas party with Santa in attendance, to a Friday final night of Hanukkah to the out-of-hand office shindig that makes for an uncomfortable Monday morning.
All these celebrations have their pros and cons depending on your yuletide temperature and you’ll fill out your calendar accordingly.
It’s a lot like looking at the NFL odds and deciding which underdogs I’ll include in my weekly column. They all have positives and negatives, offering a different party path when taking the points.
I’m making a list of the underdogs in the Week…
The Las Vegas Raiders and Minnesota Vikings will open up their respective preseasons on Saturday afternoon out in the Midwest, and there will be plenty to watch for with both teams figuring things out at quarterback.
Sam Darnold is expected to open the year as the starter for Minnesota over rookie JJ McCarthy and will do the honors of beginning this one for the home side, while the Raiders will give two candidates a quarter each.
What do we make of this matchup, and better yet — how do we make money from it?
Let’s get right into it with our Raiders vs. Vikings predictions and NFL picks for August 10.
Raiders vs Vikings prediction
My best betUnder …
In 2011 Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, received a letter. It came from a group of Emirati intellectuals inspired by the recent wave of pro-democracy protests sweeping through the Middle East and north Africa, and requested a range of modest reforms, including an extension of the voting franchise which at the time encompassed just 2% of the country’s population.
No marching on the streets. No popular unrest. Certainly no disorder of any kind. Just a letter. Nonetheless, with a regime petrified to the point of paranoia by the spectre of political Islamism, the reprisals would be swift and merciless.
Ramifications of City’s two-year ban may be seismic – not least for U…