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 –0.6% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,890 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,249 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). We are profitable all-time, but only narrowly.
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. Movelor is heavily used in making college football picks, with some references to ESPN’s FPI and SP+. FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks, but mostly futures.
We’ve got picks for college football and the NFL tonight, plus our futures for the week in both versions of the sport. Here’s the context on each market.
Single-game college football bets: On the season, we’re 51–46–2. We’re up 1.28 units and up 1%. Really treading the line here.
Single-game NFL bets: On the season, we’re 9–14–5; we’re down 6.08 units; and we’re down 22%. We are treading no sort of line here.
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. As with the MLB futures, this is circular, but if we use Movelor probabilities and include today’s plays, our mean expected return on the 300 units (based on what we’ve bet so far) is 15.00 units, or 5.0%.
NFL futures: We began the season with 150 units in our NFL futures portfolio, with the intent being to spend 100 of those over the season’s eighteen weeks and keep 50 in reserve for hedging and arbitrage opportunities. This is circular, because we use FPI to make the picks, but FPI’s probabilities show us with an expected return on the 150 units of 2.77 units, or 0.9%.
Wake Forest @ Duke
We love to bet on college football teams with injured quarterbacks, and that is surprisingly not one of the weirder things we love around here (I think the NIT thing is the weirdest, as used to it as we all are by now). This doesn’t fully fit that bill—Riley Leonard is out, that part fits, but the market is not reacting as dramatically as we’d expect—but we make some reaches on weeknights with college football, and we’re on tilt after that Diamondbacks loss. We’ve been cycling through three separate if–only’s all day.
Pick: Duke –6.5 (–115). Low confidence.
South Alabama @ Troy
We also love betting on teams favored by five or six points, and we love betting against South Alabama, and we love betting on Troy. We are doing all our favorite things tonight.
South Alabama’s better play in mid-October may have been a competition-based illusion. They’ve smoked Oklahoma State and lost to Central Michigan, and most of the time, they’ve been in between. Troy has fairly consistently been the same low-ceilinged, Sun Belt favorite-adjacent team. Give us the Trojans to move one step closer to putting the West away.
Pick: Troy –5 (–115). Low confidence.
Tennessee @ Pittsburgh
We have no idea what to think of Will Levis and the Will Levis Titans, but we think playing the Steelers after a short preparation week is a bad draw with a relatively new quarterback, and if home field is worth three points, this would imply the Titans are just as good as the Steelers, which we just do not think is true. Give us a messy, ugly, four-point Steelers win.
Pick: Pittsburgh –3 (–110). Low confidence.
ACC
In our college football futures portfolio, we’d like to hedge against our big Kansas State position ahead of what’s becoming a high-leverage game on Saturday. The value on Texas is so bad, though, that we can’t justify it. We acknowledge Texas is likelier to win than the Wildcats, but we could really use an upset in that one.
In lieu of that, we’re making two bigger safe plays this week. The first is to put five units on Florida State, who is almost 100% locked into the ACC Championship and will very likely play Louisville, on whom we have a lot of upside. At the moment, our balance in that hypothetical matchup would be 7.27 units of downside on FSU and 17.5 units of upside on Louisville. There’s value here on the Seminoles, and we’re going to take it.
Pick: Florida State to win –275. Low confidence. x5
AAC
This is a small play, because the value is small, but since it’s positive we want to get something down on SMU. After last week, they’re the new AAC favorite. In a Tulane/SMU matchup, our balance would now be 4.45 units of downside on SMU against 1.95 units of upside on Tulane. That isn’t ideal, but that’s why we’re making this play.
Pick: SMU to win +155. Low confidence.
Pac-12
There’s some good longshot value available on Arizona, who isn’t down as bad on Pac-12 tiebreakers as you might think. There are too many ways this can all work out to write the Wildcats off just yet. Our other Pac-12 action is six units on Oregon, who is probably more than 50% likely at this point to win the Pac-12 title. They have some outs even if they pick up a second loss, and they’re looking decidedly like the best team in the conference.
Pick: Arizona to win +5000. Low confidence.
Pick: Oregon to win +115. Low confidence. x6
Super Bowl
The best value we’re seeing this week in NFL markets is on the Ravens to win the Super Bowl, and we’re seeing it at a good price. The concern likely fueling this is that the Bengals, now 4–3, will rally and win the North. The Ravens have already won head-to-head in Cincinnati, though, and while the Bengals are playing well right now, it’s hard to justify saying they’re better than the Ravens just yet.
Pick: Baltimore to win +1400. Low confidence.
NFC South
We have one prior play in the NFC South market, on Atlanta at +175 to win the division. FPI sees value on the Saints today, and we’re going to take that, giving us two profitable horses in the race.
Pick: New Orleans to win +130. Low confidence.
NFL Playoffs
In a similar move, we’re betting against the Falcons to make the playoffs. The value’s there, and while this is kind of the same bet as the one on the Saints, we’re fine making it in two places.
Elsewhere, we like the Bills to figure it out and reach the playoff field when all’s said and done (they’re the top Wild Card right now, and they’re only a narrow road underdog on Sunday against the Bengals, with home games against the Broncos and Jets up next). We also like the value on the Titans, who have a lot more uncertainty now that Will Levis is under center. We tried not to overthink it earlier, and we’ll try the same here. This appears valuable.
Pick: Buffalo to make playoffs –190. Low confidence.
Pick: Atlanta to miss playoffs +150. Low confidence.
Pick: Tennessee to make playoffs +550. Low confidence.
