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 5,915 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).
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.
Five markets today! Here’s the context on each.
Single-game college basketball bets: On the season, we’re 1–3. We’re down 2.09 units. It’s early.
Single-game college football bets: On the season, we’re 60–55–2. We’re up 0.03 units. That’s profitable.
Single-game NFL bets: On the season, we’re 11–15–5. We’re down 5.28 units; and we’re down 17%. For better or worse, the picks have been doing better lately.
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 25.19 units, or 8.4%.
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 0.42 units, or 0.1%.
New Mexico @ Saint Mary’s
We got beat on this exact kind of pick last night, but we refuse to accept that as a lesson we must learn. Instead, we’re going in on the good mid-major playing the other good mid-major who’s being hyped as a great mid-major. These teams should be very evenly matched. Beating Cal State-Stanislaus by 79 points doesn’t tell us a whole lot, and neither does being picked by some to finally finish ahead of Gonzaga in the WCC. We don’t dislike the Gaels, but the hype seems a little ahead of itself.
Pick: New Mexico +6.5 (–105). Low confidence.
Southern Miss @ Louisiana
Virginia @ Louisville
We don’t like either spread here, and there’s nothing about either total that jumps out at us. Southern Miss is a bad team but has shown sparks of competition, and they’re facing Louisiana’s third-string quarterback. We’re going to take the Ragin’ Cajuns to win, because we do think they’ll find a way, and we’re going to juice it with the Louisville moneyline and hope to dodge any wacky Thursday night bullets there.
Pick: Parlay – Louisiana to win, Louisville to win (–261). Low confidence.
Carolina @ Chicago
I think we have to take the Bears here. I think the Bears are better than the Panthers, and the Bears are playing at home. It’s not a good situation for either team, but the Panthers don’t seem to have any sort of life in them right now. The Bears at least have shown flashes of hope.
Pick: Chicago –3 (–120). Low confidence.
College Football Playoff
If you give us the top-ranked team in the country to make the playoff at longer than even odds, we will usually take it.
Pick: Ohio State to make playoff +115. Low confidence. x2
CFP National Championship
We’re getting 100-to-1 and 200-to-1 odds on a pair of teams that are one-score and two-score underdogs, respectively, to win a game this weekend that will make their likeliest final record 11–1. That might be a playoff record in the Big Ten or the SEC. It often is.
Pick: Penn State to win +10000. Low confidence.
Pick: Mississippi to win +20000. Low confidence.
Big 12
Kansas State beating Texas would have been great for us, but we’re still in good shape, partially because I don’t think markets are grasping how much tiebreakers will favor Oklahoma State if that comes into play.
Pick: Oklahoma State to win +350. Low confidence. x6
AAC
The Roadrunners have put themselves in a position where all they have to do to make the AAC Championship is either win out—twice as a big favorite and once in an upset over a scuffling Tulane—or win twice and get a little help. We’ll jump on board now.
Pick: UTSA to win +500. Low confidence. x2
Big Ten
If Michigan does win the Big Ten East, we’re going to need leverage, and Iowa’s the most likely team we’ll need it on.
Pick: Iowa to win +2800. Low confidence.
AFC North
We’re just placing one future this week on the NFL side of things, but we’re placing it eight times. Our portfolio’s treading water, and that’s fine, but we’d like to raise our baseline. We’ll try to do that here, acknowledging the possibility that it backfires and the bottom falls out on us.
Pick: Baltimore to win –150. Low confidence. x6
