MACtion did a little number on us, and we’re 0–3 to start the college basketball season. Can we keep our strong NFL season going? Or am I going to go to bed regretting choices I’ve made?
The numbers say the answer to those questions is, “Both.”
We’ve got our college football and NFL futures for the week as well, but we’ll get to those in a minute. First, three picks for tonight:
Cincinnati @ Baltimore
FPI’s been good to us this year. Our theory is that markets overthink things. Tonight, FPI has the Ravens 6.9 points better than the Bengals, and that’s before accounting for home-field advantage. Both teams have some injuries, but I don’t know that the balance favors the Bengals, let alone by enough to make up for the game being in Baltimore and the 0.9-point gap between FPI and the spread.
Pick: Baltimore –6 (–110). Low confidence.
Florida Atlantic @ East Carolina
This one’s tough. App State/Coastal Carolina is also tough. We want to make a pick in one of them, and this is the side we feel best about. Do we feel great about it? No. We’ve had a bad year, we’ve gotten crushed the last six days, and then there are all the other reasons we’re uncomfortable with it. But, we feel better about it than any other college football option tonight.
We’re seeing a lot of people take ECU here. I don’t know if that’s a reflection of my media diet or of the public betting trends, but I haven’t seen anyone say they’re rolling with the Owls, which is a little bit of a red flag. East Carolina fired Mike Houston and then beat Temple, who Movelor estimates is the seventh-worst team in the FBS. That’s being cast as an interim coach rebound for ECU, but again: It was Temple.
FAU, meanwhile, has lost three straight, is 2–6 overall, and is coming off the little Tom Herman/Alex Golesh handshake spat, which has all led some to call this a spiral. They’re the only winless AAC team. Laws of mediocre Group of Five chaos and mean regression would maybe point towards an FAU bounce-back, especially with one more day of rest here than ECU. We do sometimes subscribe to those theories.
The reason we land on ECU anyway is this:
East Carolina was better before firing Houston than I think people realize. ECU is a well-established FBS program. They’re among the best football programs at a directional state school. They made bowl games in 2021 and 2022, and while they’ve often been bad, they’ve rarely been an out-and-out doormat. There’s some good history there from the Conference USA days. They won a Peach Bowl back in the 90’s. This is a long way of saying that firing Houston was not ECU obligatorily moving along to a different dumpster. It was going badly—and last year was awful—but it wasn’t going that bad. Aside from the blowout loss to Charlotte, they hadn’t done anything inexcusable.
Movelor, SP+, and FPI all have East Carolina ranked in the 90’s within the FBS. Movelor’s the lowest on FAU out of the three, but SP+ also has ECU covering this spread. There’s the Thursday night piece, where you’re ready for messiness and a close game, and there’s all the uncertainty which abounds when a team’s on the brink of bowl ineligibility, like FAU is. But we do see a lot that works in ECU’s favor here, even if we’re wary of going too mainstream.
Pick: East Carolina –7.5 (–110). Low confidence.
Southern @ Iowa
If I’m doing my math right with the TeamRankings tracker, overs are now 97–52–1 this young college basketball season. Markets of course adjust, and this number is spectacularly high. Per kenpom, though, Iowa and Southern are both in the top twenty in average offensive pace following their respective openers, and Iowa knows how to score. We’ll keep trying the overs until either the gap closes or we start finding the right ones.
Pick: Over 161 (–105). Low confidence.
Heisman Trophy
If Travis Hunter stays healthy, we expect him to win the Heisman. But we have enough upside on Travis Hunter that our portfolio will be fine if he does. With Ashton Jeanty probably slowing down (he put up big numbers against San Diego State, but his efficiency was low again), we like Cam Ward here.
We understand the Dillon Gabriel theory, and we’d take Gabriel over Ward if we were building a college football team for the rest of this season. But Ward has thrown for ten more touchdowns than Gabriel, rushed for more yards (albeit three fewer scores), and thrown for more yards. That doesn’t mean he’s better, but it goes a long way with voters. Miami and Oregon are comparably likely to head into the playoff at 13–0. We think Ward’s an appropriate favorite.
These odds are admittedly a little pricey, but I’m not sure 36.4% is actually too high. We’ll put six units down, enough to allow Ward to join Hunter as a profitable scenario. This does knock Jeanty out of profitable status, but we’re still pretty skeptical of Jeanty, and he’d only result in us losing four units, given bets placed so far.
Pick: Cam Ward to win +175. Low confidence. x6
College Football Playoff
Our model shows +32% expected value on this, and we’re not getting that kind of value often. Our model’s power ratings are lower than the consensus on Boise State, too.
Basically, if Boise State wins out, they’re in the playoff, and if Boise State finishes 11–2 but wins the Mountain West, they have a very good shot. The committee showed this week that they’re fond of the Broncos. Even if Army were to upset Notre Dame, Boise State would still get in as an at-large if they won out. They would simply replace Notre Dame.
So, five units here, to add some on the safe side. We’re uncomfortable with how reliant our portfolio is on BYU to make the playoff. If it works, great, but we’d like some more security within our diversified assortment.
Pick: Boise State to make playoff –225. Low confidence. x5
Super Bowl
FPI’s showing value on Baltimore here, and by placing two units on them, we can make the Ravens a profitable outcome for our portfolio, joining the ranks of Kansas City, Detroit, Buffalo, and Philadelphia—i.e., all the betting favorites besides the 49ers. We’re in good shape. (Speaking of Philadelphia: We’re putting another unit on them, too.)
Pick: Baltimore to win +800. Low confidence. x2
Pick: Philadelphia to win +1600. Low confidence.
NFC
These next three dig our 49ers liability deeper still. Should we be concerned about that? Maybe. The 49ers could surprise us. But at this point, there’s a high chance that if the Niners do come back and make the playoffs, they’ll have to play at Ford Field in the Divisional Round. I’m not sure the Niners are better than the Lions even when the Niners are healthy. It’s not a firewall, exactly, but it’s a pretty good blockade, especially with all of the Eagles, Commanders, Packers, Falcons, and Buccaneers also profitable NFC outcomes for us, and the Vikings only narrowly unprofitable.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +750. Low confidence.
Pick: Green Bay to win +1100. Low confidence.
Pick: Atlanta to win +1800. Low confidence.
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How we do this, and how we’re doing:
Single-game NFL bets: We got smoked on these all year last year, to the point where I think we might’ve even stopped placing them. This year, though, we’re 17–11 so far, up 4.56 units. We lean on FPI to make these picks.
Single-game college football bets: We’re always mediocre on these, but we’ve been awful this year. We’re 29–40–1 so far, down 13.63 units. We’re 1–7 over our last eight. We do use Movelor, our model’s rating system, to guide these, but we don’t always follow its lead. Maybe we should. Or shouldn’t! Maybe we should simply flip a coin.
Single-game college basketball bets: These have been a rollercoaster for us historically, but on the aggregate, results have been negative. This year, we’re betting one or two games a day, at least to start. We may taper that off. We use kenpom heavily. We’re 0–3 on the season.
College football futures: We’re doing two portfolios this year, the first a 150-unit normal futures portfolio like the ones we do for many sports, the second a 100-unit Heisman-specific portfolio. If you’d like to track them, plus our NFL futures, you can do so on this Google Sheet. Our history here is decent. We’ve generally made small profits, but only small ones, and last year came very close to disaster.
NFL futures: This portfolio’s 200 units large. Our history’s ok with these. We’re slightly profitable all-time, but we’ve only done them for two years and we only profited in one of the two.
Overall: Over 13,901 completed published bets, we average a 0% return, weighting by unit (1 unit for low confidence; 2 units for medium confidence; 3 units for high confidence.) Our sports betting history, however, is terrible. We’ve managed to make up for it with strong performance in election bets over the years, but it’s taken a lot of election bets.
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These are for entertainment purposes and are not at all investment advice. If you think you might have a gambling problem, please call 1–800–GAMBLER to learn more and/or seek help.
