Indigo week 5

Season so far

Over/Unders    3-12-1.......average score 38 points/game

Home favorites 3-8 ATS

Home dogs......2-2 ATS

American college football, week 1

Plays:

1)  Oregon State +7

2)  UTSA +5

3)  Army +2'

4)  Florida Atlantic +23'

5)  Navy +2'.....this is a play against Marshall who has a new coach, and being an away favorite his first game is a very negative situation.

Week 1 NFL

1)  Cardinals +3

2)  Eagles +3'

3)  Patriots -1'....got this a couple of months ago,...still like it at -2'/-3

4)  Browns +6'

5)  Steelers +6'

Steelers and Browns fall into the same situation to fade teams that won 13 or more games  the season prior, (this year that is the Packers, Bills and Chiefs) playing a team that made the playoffs in the first four games of that team's season in all situations except as home dogs.

I thought about fading the Packers also, but their first game is at a neutral site, which often throws a monkey wrench into past historical success in other situations.

CFL "experts"(?) picks.

Montreal, Saskatchewan, Calgary.

I am deleting my Stampeders pick -6 this weekend.

I'll keep my Alouettes pick.

Makes me like my Bombers pick even more.

Weekend's plays:

CFL Yards per pass.  Over the course of a season, the correlation between winning and yards per pass attempt  prowess is very high.  The teams that throw it and defend the pass well equates to winning AND most importantly, to covering spreads.

Let's look at CFL teams season-to-date yards per pass attempt stats and see how those teams have performed against the spread.

                      Offense          Defense           Differential         ATS record

Edmonton         8.3                  6.2                2.1                     1-2

BC                   8.8                   7.2               1.6                      3-1

Sask                8.1                   7.2               0.9                      2-1

Winnipeg         7.8                    6.8               0.6                      2-2

Calgary            8.2                   8.8               -.6                       2-2

Toronto            5.9                   6.9               -1                        2-1

Hamilton         5.2                   7.2               -2                        1-2

Montreal          6.8                    9                -2.2                       1-2

Ottawa           5.6                     8.6               -3                        1-2

Normally in a contest the higher yards per pass attempt differential team covers about 80% of the time...so far this season it has covered about 55-60% of the time.  This lower percentage will increase as the season moves forward.  At the  halfway point of the season, it is commonly advantageous to fade the team with better average yards per pass differential team.

Thanks for the college plays Indy...  

No worries Brewski.

Adding to my ncaa football picks.

6)  Arizona +12'

7)  Indiana +4

8)  Ohio +2

1)  Oregon State +7

2)  UTSA +5

3)  Army +2'

4)  Florida Atlantic +23'

5)  Navy +2'

Awesome, Best Wishes 

Good fortune buddy!

I am traveling to Vegas today.....have not yet made a wager on my Bombers' play.  LIne is moving....big and/or respected money has moved that line up to 5' at pinnacle.....Sasquatches have revenge for losing in the playoffs the previous season on their home field to the Bombers 13-20 giving two and a half.

Let's see if we can't get the Bombers getting 6 or more at the myriad of books around town. Pinnacle has the line juiced at 5', and usually the other sportsbooks fall meekly into line with pinny.

I'm still liking the champs getting the points.....should be a defensive slugfest.

Deleting Arizona +12' in NCAA football....did not realize this game was at a neutral site.

Apologies if you made a play.

Als pour it on!

Add to the list of old standby quarterbacks whose CFL careers are almost over....BLM, Masoli and now Matt Nichols.

1)  Als -3' winner

2)  Als/RBs UNDER loser

________________________

3)  Bombers +5

4)  Bombers UNDER 43

5)  Argos +3'

6)  Argos/Tiger Cats OVER 44

7)  Stamps/Elks OVER 42

We have a couple of hours before Army/Georgia State starts.

We'll some musing and thinking out loud here.  The professional handicappers and those on forums  rarely will give their train of thought on why they pick a particular game....I've always found that to be curious, because some want to learn.  It is the "man behind the curtain"  mentality, that the more mysterious they are, the greater their  mystique  By what happens on our CFL forum, as well as the NFL and NCAA FB forums it seems that "just give me the picks, Man!!" is the modus operandi of the sports handicapping world.

I don't agree with it.

There was a guy named Richard Dennis who the movie Trading Places was based on, who said he could teach people to be successful stock market investors...his partner scoffed at this idea and they made a bet.  They'd advertise for a bunch of novices in stock trading world and train them, to see if they would be successful.  A lot of them became so.

When others asked Dennis if he wasn't scared that his methodology would become common knowledge and his advantage in trading the markets would become moot, his legendary reply was, 

"You could publish my trading rules in the newspaper, and it would have zero effect on my advantage."

THAT, was an amazing statement....and what transpires in the sports betting community is this.  Sports bettors think that if their secret sauce  gets out to the public is gonna ruin their chance of getting rich.  

And by the way, one of those original trading traders (they were called the turtle traders) has published those original trading rules online for everyone to read and use, for free.

In the CFL before this season, the simple statement I made this year, and every year is  that UNDERs and underdogs have dominated early in the CFL season for many years and  is a definite trend.  How many people have followed it as it could have been followed, including me?  Underdogs are 10-6 ATS and the away underdogs that I mentioned as the best part of the trend are 8-3 ATS.  Unders are now 12-4 ATS.....yet, those that are betting are looking at individual matchups and going with their gut.  Technical handicappers, those using their left brain,  make up maybe 5-10 percent of the betting population. 

Going with their gut, which is a right brained decision making process makes up the other 90+ percent of the betting population and that seemingly makes you more macho or more like a real bettor.  In actuality, using your right brain is used more in the everyday world by women than by men.

I mentioned earlier in this thread that the frequency of running, or rushing attempts, correlates to  covering football games in the sports betting world.

Hence today, I am playing two military academies that run the ball a great deal.  Both of them have other angles that support their being played today, so I have not one, but two things going for me in those games.

Could they both lose? 

Yeah, they definitely could,....however we are making decisions not for today, but for over a long period of time,....even a rigged set of dice or anything else with a 60% probability of hitting can lose twice in a row in a small sequence of time.  We are not making decisions based on one day only but on making a percentage play that over time will produce a positive result, over months and years.  Those in the sports betting world should be having that rationale, but that rationale is the exception rather than the rule.

So, if Navy and Army lose today for me, will they have been;  a)  bad bets?....or b)  the percentage play?

If you answered A, you are the Joe SixPack  of sports bettors....if you answered B, you've gotta chance.

We could also look to fade those teams that don't like to run....by looking at statfox or teamrankings we can see the teams that had the least amount of rushing attempts....two of those teams are Purdue and Mississippi State who have a pass first mentality.  Another probably team like this year will be Marshall who is going to a spread attack....first time head coach, instituting a new system.  Even the genius of Mike Leach really has struggled in implementing his pet air raid attack his first season.

We'll keep an eye on those games where we think one team will be running the ball a lot more than their opponent and will be underdogs.

Most bettors don't have a methodology.

On the NCAA football forum there is a handicapper there  who has that methodology.  

I find it fascinating.....we as bettors always hear about betting against the public....this guy has researched it (immense respect for that!) and has a system of determining who to play based on line movement and amount of money bet.

It would be similar to someone who ignores "fundamentals" and just reads charts in stock market investing.

The bettor's handle is HooAlum,....check him out.

I like the talk out loud strategy to teaching thought processing.  We were taught the strategy when teaching special needs kids when I was a much younger man.  I like that you incorporate this strategy since I am special needs in capping.

Haha.....we all have our little deficiencies.

I checked that guy's thread out , you can find most of that on you tube but I can see where your coming from , like you when you put your lines out don't you like to see what the difference is at first and come game day?(That's when I say do I make a play now or wait) Like this week my big difference was the Mon line(an AF and I was about 4.5 difference so it was more looking, a wait) and some on the Ham line. Makes a difference are you the bettor or the book. It's neat to watch how some either bet or make a line. 

Good work and good luck, I9.

Enjoy Vegas 

Well Hoody, you one of the few handicappers here or maybe the only one that has a systematic methodology who also puts it out there for everyone to see, and your results last year speak for themselves.

Plays: 

1)  Tiger Cats -3' winner

2)  Tiger Cats UNDER loser

3)  Bombers +5 winner

4)  Bombers UNDER 42' winner

Bombers' defense dominates from start to finish.

Continuing on with this HooAlum talk, he is giving his knoweldge and expertise to the forum, which is admirable and rare.

If we wish to receive blessings we must first be a blessing to others, which includes God and/or the universe.  It is a spiritual principle that to receive (whatever you wish to receive) you must first give it to others.  In the Bible there is the spiritual principle of the tithe....God commanded the person to give a tenth of what they made to the temple so that the full-time  servants of the temple, the Levites could eat and be sustained.  In Malachi 3:10 He says that those who do the tithe will have so much blessing that there won't be room to store all of what He gives back........God says to test  him on this, the only time in the Bible that God says to put him to the test.  The commanded tithe is no longer in force despite what Christian preachers have to say about it. Instead of a command, giving is a purely voluntary exercise for both person and Gentiles.  (Don't believe me?...ask a rabbi if the tithe is still commanded.)

What is it you wish to receive?.....then first give it away and you will receive back in multiples of what you gave.

And, if/when we give, and it doesn't have to be money,...it can be service, mercy, compassion or anything else,  , we are not to make it public knowledge.  In the Bible it says that the giver tells everyone that he gave X to Y....then that is the all the  blessing that they will receive.  So when you see on television a corporation like All-State Insurance that says "We gave 50 million dollars in scholarships to needy students in the last 10 years", or whatever they say, the effect of the gift is negated by them deciding they need to tell everyone on television about it.  Make your gift a secret.

So, sermon over.....the CFL forum 99.9% of the time is uplifting and the people here that stop by give encouragment  to others...maybe it's a Canadian thing, I don't know.

Let's talk about cash cows and money drainers for a sec.....

My cash cow this season in the CFL is the Toronto Argos.  Cash cows are typically not the best team, but teams under radar of both the bookies and the general public...often they have been an awful team that strikes gold with a new coaching hire and quite often they discover and/or develop a hidden talent to play quarterback.  I think Toronto is going to continue to cover games for quite awhile...this week there are some very negative angles gong against them, but there also some excellent angles supporting them too.

In  NCAA football my cash cow is Rutgers University....new coach and Rutgers has been terrible for a long, long time.  In the NFL I am not sure yet....got my eye on the Jets and the Panthers.

Then the money drainers...in the CFL it'll be the Ottawa Redblacks,,....LaPolice is supposed to be an offensive guru, but he does nothing to accentuate the ability of the  players on offense that the Redblacks have. 

It is like he is trying to mold the players to a system instead of he himself finding what his players do best and giving them the lattitude to do those things.  I don't see it changing this season for the Redblacks.  

In the NCAA  the money drainer this season it is obvious....the Nebraska Cornhuskers.  They seem to do everything wrong, most of the time. 

The money drainers are fade material most of the time.  The good thing about the Cornhuskers is that the public are constantly hearing about Frost's stellar record at UCF and about how he  is the local Nebraska boy that did good, etc., etc.  And, his quarterback, Adrian Martinez is a terrible decision maker and a bad passer who costs his team games, and his backers money.  A perfect scenario for our purposes!  

Find yourself a money drainer or a cash cow or use mine, and ride them into the ground.

Plays:

5)  Argos +3'

6)  Argos OVER 44

7)  Stamps OVER 42

My text was altered by the little editor sitting in the covers' forums that we really don't know about.....

substitute "Hebrews" for when the word "person" appears.

Looking at college games lines for next week.......

There is a college game two angle that says to fade an away favorite that lost their first game straight up....I can see two teams that this correlates to.

Both Temple and Houston are away favorites that lost their first game straight up, though Houston has some opposite, positive things in their favor.

Game two is typically the toughest week of the season for me.....so tread carefully this coming week in college football.

Early leans.....Akron, Buffalo and Rutgers.