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 –1.9% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 6,402 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.3% across 2,266 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.
Active markets today: College basketball, college football futures. Our NFL futures for the week are coming tomorrow. We want to be sure we have the tiebreaker scenarios down on those.
Single-day college basketball bets: On the season, we’re 29–32. We’re down 4.17 units, but we’re 8–5 over our last 13 and up 3.86 units over that stretch.
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 about 104 units so far. We’ve never lost more than 25% of a futures portfolio before, but this might be the time it happens. We are very sorry. We do believe in our upcoming picks, for whatever that’s worth.
Minnesota @ Michigan
Oregon @ Washington
Washington isn’t a better team than Oregon, but it’s close enough that these games have similar recipes: The standings should even out, the home team should win, and the price is decent. We’re betting on everyone to follow the script.
Pick: Parlay – Michigan & Washington to win (+118). Low confidence.
FCS National Championship
CFP National Championship
Speaking of Michigan and Washington…
Here’s the position we’ve gotten ourselves in, after Monday’s results:
| FCS | CFP | Final Net |
| Montana | Michigan | -78.17 |
| SDSU | Michigan | -95.17 |
| Montana | Washington | -180.77 |
| SDSU | Washington | -197.77 |
On a portfolio of 300 units, that is very, very bad. We got ourselves into a hole, we made a dumb panic bet on Selection Sunday, and then we rode Texas to try to save our ass. We picked the wrong horse.
We’re left with a choice: Do we try to minimize our losses, or do we try to climb out of the hole?
If you’ve been faithfully following us on these, we’re very sorry for putting you in this position. This is historically bad performance from us. If you want to hedge and be done with us, putting 38 units on the Washington moneyline and 13 on the South Dakota State moneyline will leave you with a loss of about 44% and our deepest apologies.
For the rest of you…
We aren’t going to hedge out of this.
What we’re going to do, instead, is ride our confidence that South Dakota State will win and our confidence that Michigan will cover the current spread. We have 76 units of cash flow left in the portfolio. We’re going to put all 76, gradually, on a parlay of those two things happening, unless the price changes so as to make that absurd. After today’s 19 units, here’s where that leaves us, with 57.23 units left in cash flow, 19 of which are on their way tomorrow:
| FCS | CFP | Net |
| SDSU | Michigan & Cover -4 | -71.61 |
| Montana | Michigan | -97.17 |
| SDSU | Michigan, No Cover | -114.17 |
| Montana | Washington | -199.77 |
| SDSU | Washington | -216.77 |
Pick: Parlay – South Dakota State to win, Michigan –4 (+124). Low confidence. x19
