Saturday College Football (9/27)

No play on the Louisville vs UCONN Game tonight.  At the opening line, it was a borderline one unit play on Louisville but not now at 3.5.  If the line goes to -2, it will be a one unit play.

On to the weekend.  Im going to break it down by conference (these are my predicted spreads – not the official Vegas lines.  Ill highlight those that are potential plays)

ACC

1. Florida State -4
2. Duke -6
3. NCST +8
4. Wake -21 – This would be a play at the current number (hate to play them in this spot)
5. Virginia Tech +5
6. Clemson -11.5
7. Miami -2.5 (Does not account for UNC QB Yates’ injury.  Will not be a play if hes injured)

Big 12

1. Oklahoma
2. Kansas State – No line
3. Texas -22.5 – (Surprised to see this line come back to 27)
4. OkSt – No line
5. A&M – No line

Big 10

1. Michigan St -8
2. Wisconsin -5
3. Ohio St -17.5
4. Iowa -7.5
5. Purdue +3.5
6. Penn St -21- Officially played them for 1 unit at 16.  (Wish I got the opening line)

SEC

1. Auburn – 6
2. Florida -26
3. Georgia -12.5 – Potential 2 unit play at 6.5
4. LSU -22
5. So. Carolina – No line

Big East

1. Louisville -6.5
2. Pittsburgh -14
3. Cincy – No line

Pac 10

1. California – No line
2. Washington – pk
3. Oregon -17 – Potential 1 unit play on WASU (yikes!)
4. Fresno

Im waiting for a couple of lines to hopefully move and Ill lock in my weekend plays.

Thursday Night Football

Official one unit Power Rating play – Oregon State +25

No opinion or numbers on the other game.

**Power Ratings Play winner on the outright upset of USC.  I definitely couldnt have predicted that but still a very solid cover nonetheless.  USC looked ike world beaters but when you think about it, who have they played.  A Virginia team who got blown out by UCONN and an OSU team who doesnt appear nearly as salty as first thought.  Plus they had 2 weeks to prepare for this Oregon State game and still laid an egg.  Thats why you just never know in college and why its good to have an unbiased, unemotional prediction system.***

Mid Week Outlook

Didnt have much time to post on Sunday.

Laid off for the most part on this weeks NFL action.  I won two sides and then pissed it away on a teaser that saw NE lose the game as a 12.5 pt home favorite.  I should have see the writing on the wall for them clear as day.  Anyway, it was a pretty piss poor weekend as I gave away some of the previous week’s profits.

Games Im looking at as plays this week . . .

I hate to play against the Trojans but I think there is some value in the Beavers.

Wake Forest is showing up as a play but its hard to take them in the roll of big favorite.

Might have to play against my Horns this weekend even with as bad as Arkansas has been.

Penn State looks like the play.

Im showing Georgia as a play.

Ill have to keep an eye on both Washington/Stanford and Oregon/WASU.
In any event, it looks like there should be a few more plays this week.   Ill be back with a post on tomorrows game if I play it.

Mama Said there’d be Days like This. . . .

Overall rough day for me yesterday.  I havent tallied up the final numbers but its wasnt pretty.  Overall I  treaded lightly but I think I won only one of the games I played.  Lost another by the hook and anther in OT.  Since I didnt have many plays of my own I tailed another capper and it wasnt a good day.  But, that happens. I got really lucky with hitting double on some games last week so I knew a day like that was coming.  Seems to me like it must have been a god day overall for the general public.  Im in a couple of contests and I know that a handful of the worst guys in those contests (guys you can bank on fading) all did really well.  That tells me something right there.  There are days like that and you have to weather the storm.

Ill be busy today and dont really like the NFL slate that much anyway so I may lay off.

A couple of notes about yesterday. . . .

* I didnt watch the FLA/TENN game but I just got done going over the boxscore and it looks like that final is misleading.  Tennessee was inside the Florida 2 twice and didnt score.  Plus they gave up a 78 yard punt return for a TD – Thats a 21 point swing right there.  I guess good teams get lucky because they are good but How does Florida always roll these games like this?

* Was there a worse game to watch than the Wake/FSU game?  5 field goals, 4 missed field goals and 9 turnovers.  Wow.  Yes, I had FSU – bad call.  Worse game.

* Texas had an impressive goal-line stand last night.  Rice had the ball inside the 5 for what had to be 10-15 plays on one drive after 3 penalties and Texas held them to zero points.  It was pretty sweet.  Im still concerned about what these high octane Big 12 passing offenses are going to do to Texas.  The rush defense is great again but the pass defense leaves a lot to be desired. – AGAIN.

* Special teams can play such a big part in the outcomes of games. Ive seen so many botched field goals this year, its amazing.  Im going to have to start doing some more in depth research on kickers when I take a game where the spread is under 10 pts.  Its clearly the difference between winning and losing a lot of the time.  Kicker missed a chip shot that got me in the Iowa game.

* There are so many just run of the mill mediocre teams in the ACC.  Looking at the ratings it looks like whoever is the home team is going to be favored.  They are all clusterred around the same mediocre rating.  What a boring conference.

Power Ratings System

Ive been fairly encouraged to this point about the accuracy of the majority of my lines.  Granted, I dont spend hours pouring over the injury reports and trends etc.. So there is a margin of error in what my power ratings system provides.  That being said, the fact that the majority of the games that the system said to play early in the week have since moved 1-3 pts which means that Im isolating some value.  Now I need to pull the trigger and get that vaue early before the moves.  Ill focus on that this coming week.  It just means that I have to get all of my work done by Monday.

Here is a look at the comparisons for some of the bigger games this week.  The line in parenthesis is mine and the other is the current vegas line.

Wake at Florida State (FSU -7) 5

West Virginia at Colorado (WVA-2.5) 3

Notre Dame at Michigan St. (MSU -10) 9.5

Arizona at UCLA (AZ-2.5) 3

Georgia at ASU (UGA -6) 7

Alabama at Arkansas (Bama -7.5) 9

Florida at Tennessee (FLA-9.5) 8

Once we get into conference play in the next 2 weeks, my ratings should be refined enough to generate a few more plays.  Because Im not paying much attention to the lesser conferences this year, I dont have as many line predictions early in the season in non-conference play.

I have a couple of opinions this week – for games that dont qualify as plays but look like good value to me.  I think that the Georgia line is too high.  I think ASU covers there.  That line would be more like 3.5-4 pts had ASU not lost last week.  Same for the Arizona game.  There may be some value in Arizona.  Or at least there was.  Though the Florida line is about right, I think they beat Tennessee by 10 pts or more.  One line that stuck out for me as strange is the fact that Iowa is a favorite over Pitt on the road.  This looks like a good fade to me and Ill probably be playing Iowa there.  I had them last week and they were pretty brutal vs ISU.  No way do I think they should be favored.

Week 4 College Football 9/20

Not many, if any plays this weekend.  When the lines first came out, there were a handful of games that looked like plays.  Unfortunately the lines have since moved and taken them out of play range. Here is a list of the games that would have been plays and may still if we get some of that line value back.

North Carolina vs Virginia Tech

1. My line:  UNC -7
2. Opening line:  UNC -1
3. Current Line: UNC -3.5

Miami at Texas A&M

1. My line:  Miami -8
2. Opening line: Miami -2
3. Currently Line: Miami -3

I was going to play this game as it does still fall into the play range.  However, Miami starting running back Javaris James is out with an ankle injury. He was averaging 5.5 yards per rush.  His backups are only averaging 3.2 yards per rush.  That doesnt mean they wont run wild against A&M but the injury is enough to keep me off this game.

Iowa St at UNLV

1. My line:  ISU -1.5
2. Opening line: UNLV -4
3. Current line:  UNLV -2

This line was initialy inflated due to UNLV’s upset of ASU last week..  However if you look at the stats from that game, ASU should have won for sure.  Im irritated that I missed some of the value here but chances are Ill still play ISU just not as an official power rating play.

Utah at Air Force

1. My line:  Utah -12.5
2. Opening line:  Utah -8
3. Current Line:  Utah -10

LSU at Auburn

1. My line:  Auburn -1.5
2. Opening line: LSU -2
3. Current line: LSU -3

Again, back to the thought about not being emotional about the picks.  Based on the last few games, who the hell would want to play Auburn.  Thier offense is terrible.  However, there is no perception in the power ratings system.  This does still fall in the 1 unit play range.  As long as the line stays as is, Ill count it in the record as a 1 unit play.  I dont know if Ill play it personally – mainly because my bootleg book has this line at 3 (-125).  Why lay that much juice on a play I dont even like.  We’ll see on this one.

Book Keeping

First Off, Power Rating Plays – These are the plays based on my spreads being significantly different from the closing number.

1. Nevada at Mizzou – 4 pt difference – Loss
2. Louisville vs Kansas St – 6.5 pt difference – Win
3. UNC at Rutgers – 6 pt difference – Win
4. ND vs Michigan – 5 pt difference – Win

Overall Plays

College

1. ATS (4-3)
2. 2H (2-0)
3. Totals (0-1)

NFL

1. 13pt Tease (1-1)
2. 10 pt Tease (0-1)
3. 6 pt Tease (1-1)
4. Parlay (1-1) – +6.35 Units
5. 2H (1-0)

Overall : +9.7 Units YTD

Observation #1

One thing that is very easy to do in sports betting is to overreact to the previous game that a team played or be swayed by public opnion.  Some of the general public does little but scroll through the most recent results and formulate an opinion about each team.  In some respects, I think that Vegas knows this and therefore tries to capitalize on that public perception as much as possible.

Each year when I go to do my inital rankings, I read through all of the information on each team and rank the improvement or fall off at each of the key positional groups.  Then I calculate the sum of those numbers, factor in schedule and coaching changes and adjust the team’s rating compared to the previous year.  So that initial rating is based off of preseason information and prediction for the upcoming season.  Then each week I go back through the boxscore and play by play of each game and adjust that rating based on the teams performance in comparison to the line and what the likely outcome of the game was.

My point to all of this is – when I saw the line movement for the game last night, my initial reaction like everyone else was to think “this line must be off.” Based on my power rating system, I have Louisville as a 2 pt favorite in the game.  When I adjusted that for the fact that 2 starting OL were out of LVille, the line was still pk’em which was 6 points off from the Vegas Line.  I reasearched the game.  80% of people on message boards were all over KST, not giving LVille a chance and the majority of the trends favored KST.  Couple that with the perception that LVille is garbage based on thier opener with KY an the fact that KST beat up on a couple of patsies.  The public perception was that Vegas had it all wrong and KST would roll.

Well if that is the only way that you look at the game, maybe thats true.  But there is no emotion in a systematic ratings database.  If this game was to be played in week one, I had LVille as a 3.5 pt favorite and 2 weeks of games really cant do enough to change that in my mind.  I have to trust that the work that I put into it was worth it.

That is not to say that some of my ratings are off.  I thought Ohio State would be the best team in the country with 19 starters back.  Ive definitely had to adjust that rating based on thier mediocre performance.  The fact is though, barring injury, the talent on that squad is still there and one cant lose sight of that.  Anything can happen from week to week and thats what makes CFB great but like Dennis Green would say “They are who we thought they were” and its easy to lose sight of that.

Good win last night.  Im a little pissed I threw the under in there as well to juice out but they were small plays.  Sometimes its tough to stomach putting in a play that everyone else is against but you gotta love going against Joe Public bettor and winning.

Wednesday Night Football

Kansas State at Louisville – (Vegas = KST -6)

My line for this game is pk.  That accounts for 5pts of homefield advantage for Louisville so in effect, Kansas State is rated 5 points better overall than Louisville.  This game opened at 3.5 and is now up to 6.

Louisville looked horrid the first week against Kentucky but their defense played a good game.  Kansas State rolled North Texas and both teams played FCS teams 2 weekends ago. Both won big but the team KST played is a much more quality team than Tennessee Tech.

Kansas State is a big public play.  Ive been trying to find a reason to talk my way out of playing Louisville and everywhere I look, people are screaming that KST is the obvious play.  That makes me feel a little bit better about playing Louisville actually.  2 of LVille’s starting O-Linemen are listed as questionable, which is a big deal.  With a 6 pt difference, this would normally be a 2 unit play.  However, I have not been able to confirm the OL are out and assuming they are, Im going to downgrade this to a 1 unit play.

Kansas State was not supposed to be in good this year and pounding two cupcakes doesnt prove anything to me.  Despite thier offensive woes, LVille has a much improved defense and being a nationally televised night game, Ill lean with the home dog and play against he line movement.

Strong opinion on the under as well.

Louisville + 6.5 – 1Unit – Win

Under 56 – 1 unit – Loss (Do college games ever go under?)

Unfortunate split but good to see that they power ratings plays are doing well so far (3-1).  Like I said earlier, Kansas State isnt that great.  Though KST shot themselve in the foot with turnovers in the first half, Louisville looked faster, stronger and the better team.  Note:  Louisville’s kicker is pathetic.

Week 2 NFL Football (9/14)

There are quite a few games that look like fades to me today.  Last week the obvious fades went 1-2 with Baltimore winning and TB and SF both losing.  Ill start off with those.

Fades - Meaning the other side looks pretty obvious

1. Oakland +3.5 – Win
2. Minnesota +2 – Loss
3. Detroit +3 – Loss
4. NYJ-1 – Loss
5. Denver -1 – Win

The secret to winning in the NFL is knowing which of these to take and which to fade.

Official Plays

1. Tampa/Jax ML Parlay – 1 unit – Loss
2. KC u49/Indy u56/Jax u50/SD o33 – 1 unit – Win
3. SD +7/AZ -1- 1 unit – Win

I really want to pull the trigger on Oakland but I cant do it.  Ill call it an opinion.

Added Late . . .

Carolina ML/Green Bay ML/San Fran +7/Philly +7 – .5 unit pays 7.36 units -Win

Dallas -7 (2H) – 1 unit – Win

I flirted with the option of betting Dallas -270 ML and rooting for a small Dallas win but Im going to roll the dice.  I may hedge some of it through the live betting option.  Just gotta hope that Dallas doesnt get out real quick and ruin that idea.

** I got pretty lucky with this – I played Dallas -7 2nd Half as a bit of security.  I only played them for 1 unit just in case Philly didnt cover.  I hit both sides.  2nd time on the weekend.  That means I definitely should not press my luck the rest of the year **