Editor’s Note: Since November 2018, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been mixed, with an average return on investment, per pick, of –1% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 6,209 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,257 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks these days are mostly in experimental markets for us).
Use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose, and you should not bet more than you can afford to lose. If you’re afraid you might have a gambling problem, seek help.
Odds for these come the better option between Bovada and BetOnline. We used to use the Vegas Consensus, but it’s no longer consistently available in an accurate form online. We use Movelor heavily to make college football picks. We use kenpom heavily to make college basketball picks. We use FPI heavily to make NFL futures picks, but not spreads and totals.
We’ve got a college basketball play, we’ve got some college football plays, and we’ve got our daily college football futures mechanizing. Here’s the context on each market.
Single-game college basketball bets: On the season, we’re 20–15. We’re up 3.06 units and we’re up 9%.
Single-game college football bets: On the season, we’re 71–75–3. We’re down 9.86 units and down 7%.
College football futures: We started the season with 300 units in our college football futures portfolio, with the intent being to spend 200 of those over the season’s fifteen weeks and keep 100 in reserve for hedging and arbitrage opportunities. We’re down a little more than 40 units so far, but we have upside remaining. More importantly: All of the bets we list here grade out as positive-value bets. So, if you’ve been faithfully following, we’re still on track to not lose more than 25% (and we retain upside), but if you’re new, these are a good place to start.
BYU @ Utah
Soon to be among the Big 12’s best rivalries, the Holy War’s tonight in Salt Lake City, and BYU has been playing sensational basketball. They’re a bit of a kenpom darling, and kenpom only has them a 4-point favorite here, but kenpom’s uncertainty breaks both ways. These guys are spectacularly efficient on both sides of the ball, they’ve handled comparable competition to Utah, and they make their free throws, which is the determining factor in our picks these days (though we might turn away from that if we don’t start winning again soon). Give us the visitors in a big, big game.
Pick: BYU –3.5 (–110). Low confidence.
North Dakota State @ South Dakota
We’re far from sold on NDSU in the big picture—we really don’t think they’ll beat South Dakota State if that rematch happens—but we do like them today. South Dakota caught them earlier this year when the Bison were playing their worst. We don’t think they’ve figured everything out, or that their ceiling is what it used to be, but we think they’re going to comfortably be the better team in Vermillion, and we see them at least keeping the game at arm’s reach.
Pick: North Dakota State –6.5 (–110). Low confidence.
Army vs. Navy
This is a funny game because when Navy was at +3 I said, “Oh heck yeah, we’re taking that,” and then when it dropped to Navy +2.5 I said, “No way, that is a bad line.” Anyway, we’re going to go on the under side, on the premise that these teams are worse versions of what we’re used to seeing from them in recent years, and that’s going to create messes in the middle all day. The market’s caught up to the Army/Navy under, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hit.
Pick: Under 28.5 (–110). Low confidence.
College Football Playoff
We like the value more and more on Michigan, but it’s possible this’ll be our last set of Michigan units for a while. This pushes them ahead of Alabama on our profitability list, and we like this Michigan team but we don’t want to get too committed to one over the other. We’ll see if there are FCS markets available tomorrow, but otherwise, we might start pivoting into the Sugar Bowl moneyline as a lever.
Pick: Michigan to win national championship +190. Low confidence. x6
