Weekend Wesults (a day late - switched with UAD this week!)

Thanks for your patience with us flip-flopping these articles this week - with all the coaching changes (and more coming! Amazing!), we wanted to get our two cents - or rather, our two senses - in as quickly as we could! Besides, both the NFL and CFL had thrilling Monday night games to wait for the conclusion of... Anyway - on to our results!

So, our Canadian Football League predictions: Toronto over Ottawa (28-23) from last Tuesday; Hamilton over Saskatchewan (34-20)…Calgary holds off Edmonton (holding our breath on this one – 30-27)…BC to defeat Winnipeg (in Vancouver, not a stretch: 20-14)…and Montreal catches Toronto on six days rest (28-27, despite the Argos being favored otherwise). OOPS!

Results? 2-3 straight up (got the first two right), 4-1 against the spread (missed the last one). OVERALL, 37-28 straight up, 37-26-3 ATS.

Next, our National Football League predictions: Houston (+0.5) upsets Indianapolis Thursday night…on Sunday, Atlanta (-8) covers against Washington…Cincinnati (-3) covers against Seattle…Green Bay (-9.5) covers against the Rams…Philadelphia (-4.5) covers against New Orleans…and Buffalo (-2.5) covers at Tennessee. On the flip side of that coin, Cleveland (+6.5) beats the spread against the Ravens…Chicago (+9.5) stays close to the Chiefs…and Jacksonville (+2.5) at least covers against Tampa. In the late games Sunday, Arizona (-3), New England (-9.5), Denver (-5.5), and the Giants (-7) all win by more than those spreads against Detroit, Dallas, Oakland, and San Francisco, respectively. Finally, on Monday night, Pittsburgh (+3) upsets San Diego.

Results? Nailed 8 out of 14 completely (Green Bay, Philly, Cleveland, Chicago, Arizona, New England, Denver, and Pittsburgh, thanks to the wildcat Deveon Bell!); also picked winners Atlanta, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and the Giants; only missed two games completely – Houston lost to Indy, and Tampa covered against Jacksonville. So, 8-6 against the spread, 12-2 winners. OVERALL, we’re 52-24; against the spread we’re 49-27.

With our college picks, there are so MANY that it’s too time consuming to list all the wins and losses we went through, but let’s give you the overall breakdown…

There was a large group of games where we felt that the favorite would not only win but cover the Vegas spread… Of those 38 games, we went 19-19 regarding that particular call against the spread, and seven of those 38 actually lost their games (so we were 31-7 with those straight up).

Then, we had a list of 17 games where we thought the underdog would at least beat the spread and (in some cases) win outright:

Within that group, we correctly called four upsets (out of five predictions – VERY nice!) – Wisconsin over Nebraska, U Conn over UCF, Rice over Florida Atlantic, and San Diego St over Hawaii. Overall in this group, we nailed 16 out of 17 winners (16-1!) and went 9-8 against the spread.

Finally, we predicted margins of victory for all 54 FCS games last weekend, and nailed a couple right on the number: Bethune-Cookman Thursday night over SC State, 17-14, and Western Carolina over Mercer by three as well.  Overall, we got 38 winners (don’t know how pleased we are with a 38-16 record on this…), and there were 20 of those games in which we got within ten points of the actual score, which actually is pretty good! Some of the games, though, really caught us by surprise – Rhode Island shutting someone out? (20-0 over Delaware!) UC Davis winning and Montana losing? Maine and Richmond beating Albany and Elon surprised us, Central Connecticut beating ANYONE surprised us (35-33 over Bryant), and the Big South (where we PROMISED no upsets!) saw lowly Gardner-Webb upset a Liberty team we had picked by 19!

So, on the whole, our college football predictions looked like this for Week 5: Straight up, we went 85-24 all across the board this weekend (47-8 in the FBS alone), and against the Vegas spread, which is just for FBS games, we went a pedestrian 28-27. For the season, we are 448-117 overall and 240-215 ATS, with 2 pushes. That’s down to 79% straight up and still at 53% against the spread. Not as impressive as the rest of our body of work this year!

As for our competition success, in our NFL “Pigskin Pick’em”, we are in the top 10% out of 500,000 entries in the straight up competition, and in the top 1% (in fact, the top thousand entries) in the competition against the spread!

For the college pick’em game, as you might expect from our struggles above, we’re not nearly as high, although we ARE in the top third of the 250,000 entries at 68+%! So, room to improve!

(And don’t forget that we ended the AFL season in the top 1% for finals and 5% for the season!)

Finally, for the Canadian Football League “Pick’em” prediction contest, we’re still in the top fifth, continuing to sit right around #2000-#2500 out of 14,000 (somewhere between 80-85%, depending on how we do that week)!

So, we may not be perfect, but we’re WAY better than average on all fronts!

Good review of where the colleges are...

As is often the case, ESPN is on top of the college spring practice scene, and more importantly, where teams are leaning as we look ahead to the fall. This piece by their Pac-12 man (and college go-to-guy!) Ted Miller does a great job surveying the landscape and looking at the BIG PICTURE in FBS football, as of March 2015!

Also, Heather Dinich writes a really great piece about where the current thinking is regarding out-of-conference scheduling - why the Big 12 schools are taking a risk (SMU, Lamar, and Rice? Really, Baylor?), while the Big Ten has the right idea (in my mind) with their 1910 plan - 1 major non-conference game, 9 conference games, 1 championship game, 0 FCS patsies scheduled. 

Perfect. 

No one's demanding you play a top ten school every week, big boys. Remember, there is no preseason in college football. Your first warm-up game counts! When Boise played "at" Ole Miss in August last year and lost, that game counted against them - it took a semi-perfect run of the table in October and November to get them back into New Year's Six contention. You lose that first game, you're in trouble - so if your first game is against the Little Sisters Of The Poor, Ohio State, I'll grant you that. 

Just not the other two non-cons, okay? Play real teams.

Finally, there's a nice piece (also by Heather Dinich) which discusses the College Football Playoff system's successes and failures last year with the movers and shakers, decides that the former far outweighs the latter (and that they were burned by the constant 'tinkering' of the BCS formats), and that there won't be any changes in the near future to the CFP process. Four teams. Committee, some advance polls (maybe slight adjustments as to the when and how often), and no changes. The key word in the article is patience.

It's college bowl season!

Sorry for the delay in this post: real life intervened. But, here are the 38 scheduled bowl games and their predicted outcomes, not just from Following Football but from Sagarin, ESPN, and Vegas:

Dec 20:                                          ESPN             SAGARIN           VEGAS           Following FB
Nevada v LA-Lafayette:              Nev by 4        Nev by 1.4           Nev by 1.          ULL by 1/2
Utah St v UTEP:                            USU by 13  USU by 8.8.    USU by 10.     USU by 12
Utah v Colorado St:                      CSU by 3.      Utah by 5.6     Utah by 3       CSU by 1/2
W Michigan v Air Force:             WM by 7.      WM by 0.5.        AF by 1.5.       AF by 6
Bowling Green v S Alabama:     BG by 1         SA by 2.4.           SA by 3.            SA by 1/2 

Dec 22
BYU v Memphis:                            Mem by 7.  Mem by 2.0    Mem by 1.5.    Mem by 3

Dec 23
Marshall v N Illinois:                    Mrsh by 7.  Mrsh by 12.5. Mrsh by 10   Mrsh by 4
Navy v San Diego St:                    SDSU by 1.    SDSU by 3.1.       SDSU by 3.     Navy by 1

Dec 24
C Michigan v W Kentucky:          WK by 13.     WK by 5.0.     WK by 4.      WK by 5
Fresno St v Rice:                            Rice by 8.     Rice by 2.6.    Rice by 2.5   Rice by 1/2

Dec 26
Illinois v Louisiana Tech:            LT by 11.       LT by 9.1.       LT by 6.          LT by 4
Rutgers v North Carolina:          NC by 3.          NC by 2.7.         NC by 3.            Rut by 1/2. 
N Carolina St v UCF:                    NCS by 1.      UCF by 3.3.      UCF by 2.         UCF by 2 1/2

...and we'll pick up the second week later in this week. But for Bowl Season, we're scoring a little differently...or at least, a little additionally! We'll ALSO keep a tally of which of these four highly esteemed methodologies picks the highest number of game winners, straight up. To the victor belong the non-existent spoils! 

Week 12 tiers and rankings, part 2...

TIER G: 41. Utah St (9-3). 42. Washington (7-5), and Chris Petersen is not far from where his previous team resides! 43. Cincinnati (7-3). 44. East Carolina (7-3). 45. Iowa (7-4). And yes, there are only five in this tier - we're dividing where the natural breaks are!

TIER H. 46. Memphis (8-3). 47. Tennessee (5-6). 48. Boston College (6-5), after a great game at FSU. 49. North Carolina (6-5). 50. Penn St (6-5), and promise for the future. 51. Kentucky (5-6), and what happened to a promising season.... 52. Oklahoma St (5-6), and we could say the same for the Cowboys!

TIER I: 53. BYU (7-4), after beating down a winless FCS team. 54. Air Force (8-3). 55. California (5-6). 56. North Carolina St (6-5). 57. Central Florida (7-3).

TIER J: 58. Northern Illinois (9-2), but not like they were! 59. Pitt (5-6), with a win they HAD to have. 60. Rutgers (6-5). 61. Oregon St (5-6). 62. Navy (5-5).

TIER K: 63. Virginia Tech (5-6), after a terrible loss against Wake in 2OT. 64. Western Michigan (8-3). 65. Michigan (5-6), in Hoke's last season. 66. Nevada (6-5). 67. Louisiana Tech (7-4). And so ends the mid-level teams...and so begin the mediocre ones,,,

TIER L: 68. Bowling Green (8-3). 69. Georgia Southern (8-3). 70. Northwestern (5-6). 71. Virginia (4-7). 72. UL-Lafayette (7-4). 73. Houston (6-4).

TIER M: 74. Rice (7-4). 75. San Diego St (6-5). 76. Illinois (5-6). 77. Texas Tech (4-7). 79. Fresno St (5-6). 80. Temple (5-5).

TIER N: 81. Arkansas St (6-5). 82. Central Michigan (7-5). 83. Washington St (3-8). 84. Western Kentucky (6-5) and still climbing! 85. UTEP (6-5). 

What games are on tap for Week 12?

Of the sixty FBS games this week, the Las Vegas/Reno casino bookies, the folks who make their living by predicting the (perceived!) outcome of the games agreed with the predictions we made based on the tiered rankings we posted on Sunday.

For the record, we predict the outcome of games as follows: Count the number of tiers that the two teams differ by. So, for example, if one team is Tier B and the other is Tier G, there is a five tier difference (C, D, E, F, G) between them. Then, multiply that by 1 1/2 points for the neutral field advantage the higher team would have. Finally, give the home team an extra three points (if they're favored already, add three to the spread; if they're the underdog, subtract three). There's your prediction. (We've been known to adjust for unusual circumstances: when BYU lost their all-star QB, for example, the tiers had not adjusted for that at the time. Similarly, there might be motivating factors - rivalries, etc. - that urge us to change the spread - but we rarely do! More often than not, what you see is what you get...WYSIWYG!

Here are the games that have a significant difference between our forecasts and theirs:

UMass @ Akron Tuesday ... we say Akron by 3, they say by 7 1/2. They win. Akron 30, UMass 6. 
Kansas St @ West Virginia Thursday...we say K-St by 1, they say WV by 2 1/2! Our point! K-St 26, WVU 20.
UTEP @ Rice Friday...we say Rice wins by 2, they say Rice by 9. They lead 2-1. Rice wins big, 31-13.
Fordham @ Army Saturday...no forecast from Vegas because Fordham's an FCS school, but we believe they should be favored over Army by a point! Army 42-31.
Eastern Michigan @ Ball St... there are a bunch of routs forecasted where the point difference between a 25 and a 35 point blowout is pointless to quibble over, but in this case, we're going to point out that we see a six-point win for Ball St, and Vegas sees seventeen! They were closer - it was 15. So they lead us 4-1 now...
Maryland @ Michigan... We have the Terps by five, Vegas has Michigan by 4.5! We cheered Maryland's late TD for the win, 23-16!
Florida International @ North Texas...we think it'll be FIU by two; they see UNT by 2! They were on again! UNT 17, FIU 14!
"The Big Game"! Stanford @ California...the home of the greatest, most controversial play in college football history in 1982. We have Cal by 3 1/2, they have Stanford by 6. We were doubly afraid of this one, with all our Berkeley relations...but it was Leland Sanford Junior University with the 38-17 win. Vegas up 6-2 now.
Florida Atlantic @ Middle Tennessee...We see it as even; they have MTSU by 6 1/2! We're counting this one on our side - one is closer to "even" than it is to six! 35-34, Blue Raiders.
Oklahoma St @ Baylor...Another potential blowout, but our spreads differ significantly - we see Baylor by 11; they think the Bears will win by 27!  They'd have been spot on if Baylor wanted to run it up...49-28 in bad weather. 7-2, casinos.
Missouri @ Tennessee is the last game we'll compare - we have Mizzou by 1; they think the Volunteers win at home by 3 1/2. Missouri wins, 29-21, so we go into Sunday down four with four to go. Dormie at 7-3 down...

On the pro side, there are only four games to compare:
Cleveland @ Atlanta... We think Cleveland by 1; they see Atlanta by 3 1/2. And thanks to some terrible clock management, we were vindicated by the Browns' last-second field goal.
Cincinnati @ Houston...We think the Bengals win by 1; Vegas says Houston by 1 1/2. And the Bengals won comfortably. Two for two today - we still have a chance!
Arizona @ Seattle...We differ on the effect of the home field: Arizona by 2 on our board, Seattle by six on theirs!
Baltimore @ New Orleans  on Monday night...We call it even; they see the Saints with a 3 1/2 point advantage at home. Looks like it may wait until Monday night to determine whether we win or lose!