 This is Covering the Spread, part of the FanDuel podcast network. Our first full slate of college football for this year is finally on the horizon. It is week number one. We're going to break it down from a betting perspective with Dr. Ed Feng and Parker Fleming to get you ready, what should be a fun slate of college football. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Join here as I am every week to break down college football by Dr. Ed Feng. You can find his work at thepowerrank.com. You can find Ed on Twitter at thepowerranked.com. Happy New Year to you. How are you doing today? I'm doing pretty well. I started college football, but I'm sure I'm not doing quite as well as you were doing on Saturday in Dublin, Ireland. Yeah, the the concessions could not take credit cards. They could not. It was a cashless situation, so it was free concessions. They ran out of beer, so I had to have like a weird gin and tonic and wine combination, which was odd to say the least. But hey, the truest gift was served up by Scott Frost. So truly grateful that I had an absolute blast in Ireland. Shocked that he got on the plane afterwards. But hey, you know, after throwing his entire staff under the bus, just great stuff all around. I had a blast. So happy back. But honestly, exceeding all expectations, the stadium is sweet. Dublin is cool. People were awesome. Nebraska fans are really cool to us, too. So I had a great whole time. Yeah, that's what they say. Yeah, I'd experienced that in Lincoln, too. Like they I was at the game where they won on a Hail Mary against Northwestern, and they were like, as we're leaving the stadium like, oh, have a great year, guys. Well, I was like, all right, this is kind of weird. I appreciate the Midwest niceness, but a little honestly, they were great, though. So a huge fans and Nebraska fans. And I hope that they have better fortunes going forward. I'm actually a Parker Fleming on the show for today. We had Parker on last year as well, previewing. I think it was the the conference championships, I believe you can find Parker on Twitter at stats. Oh, war. You can check him out. All of his work, his fun graphs at CFB dash grass dot com. You can also get his betting insights at the bet US college football show over on YouTube. Parker, it is a delight to have you back on the show for today. How are you doing in week one? I'm doing I'm doing great, man. I snuck in a little week zero vacation last week. Got to go out in the mountains and hang out and just, you know, post up at a cabin and watch some games kind of unencumbered by responsibilities. So that was really nice, feeling refreshed, feeling ready for this season. I was going to ask you about the free concessions. That was my that was on my list because I know you're at the game. I can't believe they gave it away. I was at the Alamo Bowl in like 2015 and they ran out of concessions and they were like, we're just not serving anything anymore. Like we just not like our cards aren't working, but we're not giving you anything for free. What? That's wild. Like, it's like I was kind of annoyed because like I was there before kickoff and I was like, you know, I got to the front of the line and they were like, hey, our, you know, as the lines going really slow and I miss like interest and I love like watching interest. And I wanted to like see the teams on the field and I was like annoyed that I missed it. Then we got to the front and they're like, hey, it's free. And I was like, OK, I'm OK with this now. I can live with this. I also got to miss the first Nebraska touchdown. So the feeling of dread was like I watched it on a screen in the concession line. So honestly, it couldn't have worked out any better. Again, I'm not going to recommend necessarily like a tiny whiny and a gin and tonic at a football game gin and tonic. Otherwise, yes, at a football game, maybe not. But, you know, it was it was great. A lot of fun out there. Again, cannot say enough good things about the Nebraska fans. They're legitimately extremely cool. And again, I hope they find better fortunes. I mean, it was fun. It seriously takes a serious level of I don't even know how to say it. A serious level of awareness, goodness. Yes, to what? Oh, and nine and one score games now since beginning of last season. Yeah. And there was the stat that they were like they had a positive point differential across their past nine games, despite winning one game in that time. That was also against Northwest and we can ignore that part. Right. But like you add in like the honestly, the onsite kick was fine. I don't I'd have no objections to that. I had nothing to do. I actually I actually do have a really strong objection. They were just philosophically in terms of like win probability. I think at that point, they were up so much that they they were the favorite. They were the favorite going in. The game was playing out about like what the expectations were. And onside kick is not like going for it on fourth down. It's not like, you know, it's not like going for two or something. It is a high variance, low probability event. Right. And it felt a little bit to me like Scott Frost was trying to just put a feather in his cap by doing something funky after all the talk of special teams last year and it just bit him in the behind. And so I don't necessarily like I understand. Hey, you're right. It it can be a surprise. Like that's it. That's an actual strategy. And the fact that it went poorly is not what I have the expectation or the problem with. It's that low probability, high variance. When you're the favorite, minimize variance, dude. Write that bad boy out, go home, take the W, Scott Frost. And it seems like he was not content to take the W that was given to him. That's a very fair point. You should be going for low variance when you are a almost to touch on a favorite, I guess, not a close, but like at one point and you're up by 11 to scores. That does make sense. You know, going with the lower variance approach. Eddie, do you have something there too? But that requires understanding the word variance, which I'm not sure actually happened or happens much in the world of sports. And I would just like to say they still should have won the game. Yeah. Even after it goes wrong, you're still up. So I don't know. I think, I mean, Northwestern, I mean, Jim, you got to be thrilled that five hundred and thirty six yards are however many was, you know, after how decrepit the offense was last year. I remember like when I saw only five hundred and twenty nine of those came after the catch on screen. So, you know, they had seven honest to God yards and the rest of it was just Nebraska not tackling. Right. And like, I remember when Helinski, like he he led this like celebratory like post on his Instagram page, then he won the job. And like, I root for him because, you know, like the stuff he's gone through, I want him to be successful and, you know, have a good time. But it's like, do we really want to run it back? You know, do you want to go for like this again? Or do you want to like go for a retro freshman and see what happens there? And I was like, OK, you know, whatever. But like, he kicked butt, man. I know a lot of it was because the offensive line is good. Like you said, the yak was good, bad tackling. But like they were great. So it was a lot of fun. It was fun to see a lot of purple weird. Like there were more fans there than there would have been at the game. We're in Evanston, which is super, super odd in the ratio is better than it would have been in Evanston, too. 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So what process do you go through in formulating those preseason priors with your model that you use each week? Yeah, I feel like I've explained this a lot this year just because people are asking so much more about this. I think that kind of has betting has gotten popular. People are a little more skeptical of early season data. And I think the big selling point that I have is every model has to start somewhere, right? If you don't have preseason priors, you're saying all teams are the same. That is actively and aggressively wrong, right? And so my preseason priors might be wrong, but they're going to be at least in the right direction better than just saying all teams are the same. So the way I do that is just a combination of coaching continuity, recent performance and some of those returning production numbers like Bill Coney does such a great job putting those out and letting people use them. And those aren't necessarily my ideal, but in terms of what I have time and what's feasible and what does pretty well for me historically, those those let me kind of link coaches and seasons and teams across seasons. So all I do is just kind of have an effect for the coach and effect for the program because there's a lot of unobservables about a program that can kind of speak to development cycles, how some Northwestern is a great example. You know, I'm not projecting them to be at the top of the big 10 every year. Every year, but every two to three years, we should expect their talent to kind of coalesce at the top of the development cycle. So I take that into account and and it's been a little nice. It was a little weird with the COVID year and kind of the eligibility last year. It feels like we're a little bit returning to normal with being able to project those. But I will say I toss those out pretty quickly. I phase them out as probably a better word. I let teams tell me who they are, but just trying to link teams year to year gives me a little bit more of an expectation of a team who performed last year and either did or didn't change their coach and has this much returning production generally performs this well the next year. So with the coaching continuity, like how much have you found that that matters? Honestly, yeah, it's not as much. I know there are people who do like individual coaching effects and I don't know how well those are identified. I there's a lot going on in that coefficient. The coaching to me did did significantly improve kind of the year to year. I really thought that with like the unobservable of just the team, I would kind of capture that. But including a specific coaching effect and a specific coaching continuity just wasn't the same coaches last year. That is obviously a little bit collinear with your returning production and with how you did last year, right? Like worse teams are probably not going to have coaching continuity unless they're developing upwards. So in terms of total effect size, not great, but in terms of making me feel good about it, not, you know, not just throwing random numbers out there and reporting random numbers like their actual effects. I think having it in the model, one improves my performance, but two helps me better understand what the other effects are saying as well. Yeah. And not to beat Scott Frost like a dead horse, but he did make some changes brought in Mark Whipple from Pitt, which was something that like, are you considering how good Whipple was at Pitt or is it just like binary? There's no continuity. So that's an effect. How good was Mark Whipple at Pitt? Because you argue, yeah, like looking at Kenny Pickett's development, you know, he had like a QBR sub 60 for three years and then had 99.1 in his fourth year. The year that he had the bullet in the coffin of a wide receiver and he had Bryn and Mary and as his inside wide receivers coach and Pat Narduzzi actually let them pass the ball. And the ACC had a really down year. So I mean, there's there's a lot going on and moving all that to say by by accounting for head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, by having that year over year and by having that by school. I mean, it's not a precise estimate. I'm not I'm not really ready to say, you know, Mark Whipple is worth 1.724 wins or whatever. But to say, hey, generally, I expect some aspects of this performance to carry over and in the case of Nebraska to kind of positively regress, help help help them positively regress from some of the the flukiness of the special teams and the offensive inconsistency in the one score losses. Is that something you want to add in eventually, like having an effect for each coach? Because I know that like there are we talked to Drew Dinsik, Whale Capper about the NFL stuff when John Gruden got fired. And he's like, OK, like this actually is worth like a negative for their team. And that would work for yours as well, because the continuity thing is also a factor there as well. But is that an aspiration for you long term to have some sort of like effect? Or is that not entirely realistic to to be able to separate, parse out, you know, cause and effect on that kind of stuff? Yes. So my background is causal inference. And I get very skeptical. Yeah, I'm well positioned to answer that question, basically. Yeah, I don't want to say anything negative about people's methods, like stuff works and there's good insight to get even from correlational data in terms of the additional predictive power in understanding how a team year to year is going to go, especially given that like phasing out those predictions pretty well, pretty easily. I don't know there's additional power from the coaches and teams I've talked to. I've done a little bit of modeling to identify coaches who are out performing as potential hires. Again, some of that work is just let's let's put some numbers behind some some preconceived notions long term. Yes, absolutely. Man, if I could if I could wrangle my team of interns and get them to get the data, some of that is just, you know, managing the data and making sure that I could stay on top of all that. But it really I think the aggregate team effect and the year over year effect really captures that. And then teams kind of tell us who they who they are. OK, so we talked about my purple. Let's talk about your purple quick before we dive into the the the big games in week number one. We got TCU facing off against Colorado. TCU 13 and a half point favorites. Parker, you don't need to give us like betting analysis here. I just want to know what's the vibe heading into 2022 for you and TCU? It feels like, of course, for people who don't know, Gary Patterson coached there forever. It kind of spiraled out of control last last fall and he he was stepped down or was asked to step down, depending on who you ask. And said it takes over. I linked it to being akin to being in college and having a real grinder of a semester. And you know, it's like November of a semester where you have two eight a.m. and really a lot of homework and it's rough. And you think, man, come January, I'm going to get my life together. My first class is going to be at 10 a.m. I've got optimism and have social life. I'm going to get better grades. It's going to be awesome. There's that like width of freshness that TCU has not had for years. And so I think even stuff like Gary Patterson was very, very cagey about letting other teams see what practice was going on. And Sonny Dex has had, you know, open practices, had videos of players. They're they're telling jokes with each other while they're sitting in the ice baths after after practice. And that's all new to TCU fans. So there really is this kind of jubilance, this excitement and hope that like it's OK to root for a team and it can be fun. I think the expectation is that the offense should be, you know, really, really good in terms of efficiency, really bad in terms of sequencing last year should be much more potent this year, even if the defense is a little rockier, I think given the way that TCU has been the last couple of years really inconsistent on offense and defense to varying degrees, scoring a whole lot of points will go a long way towards making fans in Fort Worth really happy. If Sonny Dex can get to a bowl this year, I think TCU fans are like, yeah, man, that's great. We're going in the right direction. It's awesome. So I asked for a vibe check and got a literal vibe check. I appreciate that, Parker. That was good. No, it sounds pretty good. Let's talk about some games, Parker. So we have Oregon traveling across the country to go play Georgia, I believe it's in Atlanta. Georgia is a 16 and a half point favorite. Actually, the market looks like they're moving a little bit towards Oregon. Total is 53 and a half. You have any opinions on this game? Yeah, this is a game that I think that Georgia is quite a bit better than Oregon. I know that they lost a lot on defense. They lost some of those receivers on offense, but they also lost a lot coming into 2021. And the way that they did their offense last year really set up Stetson Bennett to just toss the ball to big wide receivers. And this year, they're just going to set him up to toss it up to big tight end. So a lot of leeway for their offense, I think this year, one reason that I'm skeptical of this game, of betting Georgia in this game is we saw them last year do the minimum to win and then turn it off. Think about the Arkansas game, they scored on like the first three possessions and then they just cruised. And Oregon, I think is younger and maybe a little more hungry in terms of we really want to get those reps, we want to play 60 minutes. Whereas Georgia says, hey, we just want to win, get the resume item, move on to the SEC schedule. I'm worried about a backdoor cover for Oregon here just because 17 or 16 and a half is so much and Georgia has been shown to kind of take their foot off the foot off the pedal as they have a lead, as they slow down the offense, as they minimize variance. So I'm reading between the lines here, you're just super into a bow nicks negative game script narrative here. Is that correct? Yeah, you know, I just have that image of him against LSU just running back and forth across the field six times and then throwing a touchdown. Just can't escape it. Yeah, one big thing to look at is, I mean, Oregon's rushing defense, I mean, they're defensive at all, but especially with some of their injuries and the way that Utah was able to exploit them, their rushing success rate, I have them at 93rd in non-garbage shine last year, 90th in points per at goal, points per quality possession. That's that I look. So they're going to they're going to have to show me something on defense for me to be confident in betting them to cover here. Bet on Oregon to cover is a lot more of a bet against Georgia, just putting their neck, putting their foot on the neck of Oregon for 60 minutes than it is any kind of faith in Oregon being physical or being able to stop Georgia's rushing attack. So it sounds like this is more of a stay away for you. Is that correct? Yeah, I don't have a strong I don't have a strong lean here. Yeah, just just doesn't don't see a lot of value in like 16 and a half, 17 points on week one between two two-power vice schools. We'll see what bonus can do in his return. The long way to return the SEC that we were all waiting for for so long. We got Utah at Florida, also on Saturday, Utah, two and a half point favorites. The total year is fifty one and a half. And interesting year for Florida. We get a full year of Anthony Richardson at quarterback. Let's go back to last year. What did you see added in last year and did you what you saw inspire confidence for Florida this year enough so to potentially bet them against Utah or what's your read on this game? Yeah, I think that looking at what Florida wanted to do last year was kind of a situation where they I'm trying to be diplomatic. They had a coach last season who had some very strong normative commitments about what a quarterback in his offense should do and wasn't necessarily able to cater the offense to the quarterbacks that he had on his roster. Whereas Billy Napier, you look at what he did with Levi Lewis at Louisiana. Year one, Levi Lewis trying to throw that deep ball was kind of erratic, wasn't really good at it. The next year, they brought his A dot way back and said, hey, we're going to we're going to ask you to do some different things. We're going to move you around. We're going to play action boot a little bit and give you some space. I think Napier is a lot more well suited to kind of shaping an offense around Anthony Richardson rather than trying to put Anthony Richardson in a Nick Fitzgerald sized hole or something, whatever you do, whatever metaphor for a Dan Mullen quarterback you want to look at. Not a not a huge sample size. So I try to think about quarterbacks in terms of base, right? And just say, hey, what's an average season? How many snaps do you have? That's how much I think about deviating from that shout out like Kevin Cole does that for draft position and quarterbacks. I like to do that with recruiting and quarterbacks. And and so, you know, only only 74 dropbacks. One of those was kind of thrown to the wolves against Georgia where it was just like, dude, we're just going to roll you out there and and see what happened. So I think that the upside for Anthony Richardson is a little more pocket presents than Emory Jones, little less erratic decision making. So I won't necessarily say anything about their relative processing. But in terms of being wild and letting things spiral, I mean, he had five turnover worthy plays, 6.5 percent. Like four of those were against Georgia and I'll let you really, really good defense as he was really young. I don't think he's going to be anywhere near as erratic. And so you start to talk about a vision for Florida. You say an offense tailor made for a quarterback who's going to not minimize who's going to minimize the stakes and then on defense, you have a really, really athletic, a really high athletic floor. I don't know, you know, don't know what they'll necessarily gel to be, but the athleticism is there. I wanted to ask you guys, are we sure that Utah is that much more physical than Florida? Are we sure about that? I mean, they look that way against Oregon last year for sure. They did. They did. I just think that's something that's taken for granted in Florida's like Florida's run defense, 76, the EPA per rush last season. A lot of that was I hate to use the Q word about college athletes, but like a lot of that was some quit and some some early issues where they just got run over. I really think that Florida could could be surprisingly physical against Utah here. So Utah is getting a lot of love this this early preseason. I forget how high they were in the preseason AP poll, but they were high. I presume a lot of that is because cameraizing took over the quarterback position and that that program really took off after a bad start last year. Are you buying the hype with with the youths? I feel like every year we get one of these teams. It was like 2020 Iowa State this year. It's 20. It's it's North Carolina States and it's or excuse me, it's 2021 Iowa State. They thought that 2020 was going to carry over a ton of returning production. It's North Carolina State this year. It's Utah this year. I don't necessarily want to put them in that in that realm, but I do think that what tends to happen between, you know, January 10th and September 1st, when no meaningful football is played, there is kind of an an attempt to artificially raise the ceiling of a team. Do I think Utah is very good? Yes, I have them more in that like nine win range than I do flirting with the playoff. One of the big reasons for that is my model rewards early down passing. That is how the modern elite of college football wins games, right? That's how your Ohio State and your Alabama are winning games. They're going to pass. And if you let them run against you, like if you can't physically stop them running, they're going to do that. But they have that ceiling of being able to pass Utah. Fifty first in EPA per pass, 24th and passing success rate. They're passing game with not very explosive. They were ninth and third and fourth down success. So a lot of that came late, came from camera rising, kind of running around extending plays with his legs. I need to see more from the pass offense because Utah is not going to be able to line up and just run run their way into the playoff. They're going to have to find some some passing to distance themselves from opponents and avoid stumbling. So we're skeptical of Utah broadly. Is it enough where you can talk yourself into Florida plus two and a half? Or is it more so a hesitancy to lay the two and a half with Utah? What is not a super, super easy spot? I almost would feel better if Utah was a I feel better betting Kyle Whittingham if he was a dog in this game. I don't think Florida and points is indefensible here that you got to think about the humidity. You've got to think about traveling across the country. You've got to think about the swamp as an environment and a really difficult road environment for whatever that means. I could see this being close, especially because, you know, Billy Napier's Louisiana teams ran as much as anybody last last year. I imagine they'll try and run here. Seventy fifth for Florida in rush rate over expected last season. That'll only increase and Utah was seventy first in rush rate over expected. So you could see, you know, slow game, Utah loses its legs at the end. Just because of a little bit of it's hot, it's Florida, it's swampy, literally and metaphorically, I think Florida covering in a close game is not is not a reasonable bet here. Excellent. Let's move on to Ohio State and Notre Dame. So this spread is 17 and a half right now. I'm pretty sure it's all 14 and a half, not too long ago. So big move there. You have so many narratives. Ohio State with presumably one of the most amazing offenses. But what's going to happen on the defensive side of the ball? Notre Dame is going to probably bring an amazing defense, but don't really know what they have on the offensive side of the ball and new head coach. What do you see with these two teams? So a friend, a friend sent this to me and I'm totally ripping it off of him. But 17 and a half year, Ohio State could score 42 points. Do we think Notre Dame with a first time quarterback and not a lot at wide receiver is going to be able to put 24 on a Gemnoles defense? Obviously, there's some talent maybe that they want to arrange better on Ohio State's defense side of the ball. But still, Gemnoles is as good at anybody at game planning, at disguising pressures and really putting his guys in a position to succeed. You look at the level of talent that he added Oklahoma State and the way those guys developed. I mean, Malcolm Rodriguez might start as a first year rookie. I kind of out of nowhere for the Lions, just some excellent talent there. And Ohio State, of course, obviously has those athletes. The flip side is the one big weakness for Ohio State's defense was pass coverage. Notre Dame last year wasn't wasn't really thriving on the pass. They really high really high success rate, but lower EPA. So not a lot of explosive pass from them, not no run game to speak of. I think that we're looking at a season where Marcus Freeman is trying to show proof of concept and showing that the floor is not falling out with Brian Kelly leaving. So I like Ohio State in the spot. I liked it at 14. I bet it at 14 a couple of weeks ago. I think someone someone on our show earlier today commented that they got in like 11 in earlier this spring. And so I love that 17 and a half, especially with the hook, makes me nervous. A backdoor cover isn't out of line for Notre Dame, especially because kind of similar to what I was saying about the other game, you talk about GameScript with Georgia and Oregon. Notre Dame is going to have a lot more to play for, I think, in this game. And so there could be, I mean, 17 is just a whole lot of points, especially with the number of possessions that a quick scoring Ohio State defense is going to have. I would lean towards bleeding in the backdoor cover. But we're going to learn a lot about what kind of season Notre Dame is going to have pretty quickly here. Notre Dame's fifth in the preseason AP poll from what you were saying about Marcus Freeman, it sounds like you you think that's a little bit too high. Yeah, I do. I do just because it's it's like I like Tommy Reese. I like Marcus Freeman. I think that they've got a good vision, but, you know, that neither of them have been elite coaches in terms of total program development. And so I would almost give Brian Kelly a longer leash there to say, hey, you've got some turnover in your program, but you know how to ease that in. Marcus Freeman, for his greatest, he is a defense of mind and how smart he is, right? He's still going to learn about what it means to be a coach and what it means to be a coach in one of the most scrutinized positions in college football. So got to adapt for some learning curve there. I think just with a lot of turnover, that really makes me a little bit nervous. Yeah, for sure. I mean, he was produced linebacker coach in 2015, so me, York Ryzen, and he certainly deserves it with what he's done at Cincinnati, but I think there's there's a lot on his plate this year. For sure. And no tougher tests and going to Columbus for that first game. We'll see how they do in that one. OK, let's open up the board here, Parker. Any other games sending out to you is being good betting values for this week. Week number one in college football. I love SMU covering 11 versus North Texas. I know that's crazy to hear to hear a TCU guy say, I love SMU in this. But SMU has won six out of the last seven games. They would have covered 11 points in every single one of those games, except the loss. The loss was when Chad Morris left and Sonny Dyches first year, late transition, not a lot of structural continuity here. You get Rhett Lashley, who's familiar with SMU, having been the offensive coordinator there, you get Tanner Morki, one of the more talented quarterbacks in the nation, returning Rashi Rice, a really, really explosive wide receiver. Last week, UNT really one dimensional on defense. They tried to pressure Gavin Hardison in UTEP. He beat them long a couple of times. They shifted to dropping eight and gave Hardison time to work. UTEP just doesn't have the receivers to find anybody underneath. SMU is going to their schemes, going to have layers. I think this would get point C and out of hand. It wouldn't surprise me to see this move in SMU's favor as well. The total 68.5, I think that comes down to more of what you think that UNT is going to do. I'm not super optimistic. The way they played last week, they had two short field scores. I discount that in my model just because that's really not something the offense controls. And you look at, you know, they had a fumble on the goal line. And UTEP dropped a touchdown. UTEP had two scoring opportunities where they got zero points combined. Some things outside of North Texas is control kind of helped them. I had that game closer to like 26-21 in terms of my model. And so I think SMU could absolutely boat race North Texas here. Eleven points seems like an easy barometer for for them to get by. It does sound like, too, you might be looking towards potentially a team total under on North Texas. Potentially if that situation that's not up at Fandall right now, but could be an outlet for you as well. So SMU minus 11 and a half standing out here for Parker. Ed, you mentioned Clemson last week minus 21 and a half. It's now minus 22 and a half before we head out. I did want to let you, you know, give you the floor to any game sending out to you for week number one, besides that Clemson game? Yeah, I mean, one game I'm finding interesting. And I got sent out to my newsletter is actually Old Dominion plus seven and a half at home against Virginia Tech. So I have this I've Virginia Tech favorite, but only about four and a half points, Virginia Tech is, you know, kind of starting over, getting rid of Justin Fuente and and and and bringing in and Brett Pry there and, you know, Old Dominion. I'm not really convinced that Hayden Wolfe. He came in in the middle of last year and I'm not convinced, you know, looking at the numbers, I'm not convinced that they're going to be great, but they they're certainly going to be better than their season long numbers suggest. And yeah, Parker's giving me faces. So I'd like to know what he what he thinks about that game. I'm also looking at fascinating about that. Didn't Old Dominion's offensive coordinator stepped away like yesterday? I mean, like two, it was like two weeks ago now at this point. But I know I had that one flagged for two reasons in the opposite direction. Because because I I I had I love disagreeing. This is great. One of us is going to be victorious at the end of this. I think Grant Wells was hurt at Marshall last year a lot more than than it was was known. There were some times where they looked really bad on offense. He's healthy this year. I think that he's actually maybe a step up at quarterback for them. And the flip side Old Dominion with that turnover as well. I think there'll be a little bit of a rough start is there. So I actually like the opposite on that game just because more of the off field stuff there. And I think that the defense for Virginia Tech was was better than kind of the perception last year, probably as a defensive guy, I think they'll be able to to stifle Old Dominion pretty well, especially because Old Dominion's value a lot came through rushing the ball. What what what number do what what did your model have that? Yes, that was my face. I was looking at the screen because I was scrolling for the to make sure that there was the right offensive coordinator that had left. I have this at Old Dominion. Where is it? Is that a weeknight game? It is a Friday game. Yeah. OK. Sorry. I was on the wrong. I was in the wrong folder. Old Dominion is going to be at the bottom. This is great podcasting. I apologize for this. I think the video of you like of you like zeroing in the computer is good, though. I like this. It's good. This is good, like a visual medium. On the bet US show, Gary and Kyle, like all the time, just send me screenshots of my face looking weird while they're like talking because I'm looking up something. I haven't purchased screen caps all the time. It's it's a thing. Yeah. Here we go. I'm in the right thread. I apologize. I need an intern. Me too. You're an intern. Yeah, I honestly I should just do that. OK, I have this closer to I would bet this at 10 and a half of Virginia Tech. I have this like 12 points. The big deal for me there is offensive success rate. Ninety first for Old Dominion last year, 100 in second in passing. And if you look at how their offense functioned 111 points per echo against a pretty weak schedule, 11th in field position, so they were often in a plus situation and could not finish those drives very well, 101st on early downs, EPA, 38th on 3rd and 4th down success. So when you have a split on early downs and late downs, I'd really, really discount teams for being bad on early downs and good on late downs against a bad schedule because that's not very sustainable going forward. So I don't I don't know that all Dominion's offense is going to be able to compete with Virginia Tech's defense. Interesting. Yeah, no, I think my numbers, they were definitely in the hundreds in the offense with the justice success rate. And it looked like, you know, they hit some big plays when they're on that winning streak with Wolf. So yeah, we'll see it. We'll see how it all shakes out. Bad early downs was like the the Chargers like recipe last year. And I think that being skeptical, that makes a lot of sense. We'll see who emerges in the battle of the battle of covering the spread for this week with old Dominion versus Virginia Tech. We got Notre Dame, Ohio State. We've got Oregon, Georgia, and we're out here talking old Dominion, Virginia Tech. I got to love that. Check out Parker on Twitter at stats, a warm nation. Check out his website to CFB dash grass dot com and check out his other betting insights that you ask the college football show over on YouTube. Parker, we should appreciate the time. Good luck to you this week and hopefully we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks. Yeah, guys, I appreciate being on here and you guys having me always happy to chat and yeah, best best of luck with your with your bets this weekend. Enjoy the enjoy the slate. Thank you. And we also want to give a big thank you to Dr. Ed Fang, find him on Twitter at the power rank at the power rank dot com. Ed, I appreciate it. Good luck to you in week one as well. Thank you very much. And where people find all your stuff like your you're talking about your the member pick that you sent out where people get all that. Yeah, so the sports betting newsletter is at the power rank dot com. Check that out. But this week is actually the twenty twenty two preview series on the football analytics show. So we do a daily episode. I do a few Edward DeGrasse does a few. And it's a really good way to kind of dig in for the season. We cover both college and NFL. I've given my three overrated teams for college football on Monday. You probably guess what one of them was based on the conversation during the show. But I've actually had six years worth of data and again, about two and three. Right over that time period. So check that out at the football analytics show. You can get that wherever you get your podcast and you can also find it on YouTube. All righty and find Ed on Twitter at the power rank. I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis and J. I. M. S. A. N. N. E. S. Make sure to subscribe to covering the spread. We are now once again daily and we'll have NFL shows coming up next week. Another MLB show coming up on Friday to get you into your weekend. Have a fantastic day. We'll talk to you all once again tomorrow on Friday to close out the week and find out with some major league baseball. This has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network.