Before we get into the picks, let’s take a look back at our performance during the 2013 season, our first foray into college football.
- Big Plays: 25-14
- Other Plays: 27-38-1
- MP Leans: 24-25
Not a very good year by any means, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Variance can be both good and bad. We struggled out of the gate, sitting at 11-24 after five weeks, but our official plays did much better the rest of the way, finishing on a 41-28-1 run. What can we learn? Not a lot from one season’s results alone. But historically, our numbers don’t provide as much value in the first few weeks of the season, as there is a lot of offseason happenings not factored into our ratings that are factored into the market line.
So without further ado, here are this week’s picks. Lines widely available as of 9:30pm Vegas time on Wednesday evening. As always, we don’t factor in matchup specifics, situational factors, weather, or injuries (except QB, and that is a brute force non-specific adjustment). Lines are based on our power ratings, adjusted for pace of play.
Pick criteria: Big Plays have a 55%+ chance of covering; Other Plays are 54%-55%; MP Leans are 53.5%-54%. Note that these probabilites are based on the historic predictive power of MP lines factoring in the closing line. Since we expect movement in our direction generally, these probabilities are conservative.
Big Plays (0-0 YTD)
- Texas A&M +10.5 at South Carolina
Other Plays (0-0 YTD)
- Western Kentucky +7.5 vs. Bowling Green
- Rutgers +8 vs. Washington State (neutral field)
- California +11 at Northwestern
MP Leans (0-0 YTD)
- Southern Methodist +33 at Baylor
