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 5,976 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.
We’ve got a college basketball pick for tonight, and we’ve got our college football futures for the week. Here’s the context on each market.
Single-game college basketball bets: On the season, we’re 15–9. We’re up 4.62 units and we’re up 24%.
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. 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 –18.21 units, or –6.1%. We’re dipping into the reserve today to help improve our profit probability, which is only 28% now but is better than the 18% it was before these picks were placed. It’s been a bad college football futures season so far, and we’d really like some good breaks this weekend (Oklahoma State or Iowa winning would be game-changing; UNLV or Miami–Ohio would be big; UNLV would help a lot). Still, we’re on track to lose a maximum of 25% of our portfolio, which has long been our baseline for these sorts of things, and is the kind of loss we can handle. Depending what happens with tonight’s rankings, there’s a chance we’ll place more of these tomorrow.
NC State @ Mississippi
There’s a lot of excitement around this Mississippi team in Chris Beard’s first year, with the expectation being that his defensive acumen as a coach will lead to overachievement. The issue is that we’re five games in and the signs of that aren’t all that strong.
We’ll trust kenpom on this one, and we’ll stick with our free throw approach vis-à-vis NC State, the kenpom favorite.
Pick: NC State +2 (–105). Low confidence.
College Football Playoff
We like the value on Georgia, and while we’re nervous about that—our model has higher confidence in Georgia making the field with a loss than we think it maybe should—we have downside on Georgia right now, we have upside on Alabama, and we’re going to put more upside on Alabama in a minute. There are a few ways to try to get a futures portfolio out of a probability hole. One involves stacking up a lot of longshots (that’s what got us into this mess). One involves finding probable things that present good value and betting on them.
Pick: Georgia to make playoff –475. Low confidence. x10
Pick: Georgia to win national championship +235. Low confidence. x10
SEC
Movelor loves Alabama this weekend, because lost in how close the Tide came to losing to Auburn was how unimpressive Georgia looked against Georgia Tech. One thing that helps our gut on these is that Movelor has Michigan more than two points better right now than both Georgia and Alabama. It can’t be too off-base in the pro-SEC direction if it’s giving us that.
Pick: Alabama to win +180. Low confidence. x10
ACC
We have a lot of upside on Louisville, and we’re cashing it in here. No matter what system or market you ask, Florida State’s more likely to win this game, and they’re likelier than not to make the playoff when this is all said and done. This exchanges upside for probability, and it does it at good value.
Pick: Florida State to win –131. Low confidence. x15
AAC
This is a much smaller version of what’s going on with Louisville and Florida State. We have less downside on Tulane than on SMU, and this lets us even that out. These little things push a lot of scenarios upwards.
Pick: SMU to win +160. Low confidence. x2
FCS
Mostly untethered from the FBS bets, we like the value on each Montana in this week’s FCS market. This leaves us pulling for Montana State over North Dakota State on Saturday, while we’re also hoping for South Dakota and Furman to survive Sacramento State and Chattanooga, respectively (Montana isn’t viewed as being at much risk against Delaware, but we of course want them to win as well).
Pick: Montana to win national championship +700. Low confidence.
Pick: Montana State to win national championship +1400. Low confidence.
