 This is Covering the Spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Saunas and Dr. Ed Fang. What is going on everybody? Welcome on in to Covering the Spread. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast Network and NumberFire.com As we are getting you set for week 8 of college football with Edward E. Gross and so break down his favorite bets he likes for this weekend. My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com joined here as always by Ed Fang at thepowerrank.com. You can find Ed on Twitter at thepowerrank and we are on to week 8 of college football already. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Looking forward to another awesome week and yeah, hanging out and talking some football with you. Yeah, we have Northwestern vs Ohio State this Friday and in order to avoid having to watch that game I'll be going to the Syracuse pit game on Friday night instead because I have no desire to watch Northwestern get slaughtered and it was on national television. It's now on BTN because the World Series game got rained out on Wednesday. So at least it's not going to be in front of everybody but the Big Ten Network is still in enough households where it's going to be bad. So I'm actively avoiding it. This is the first college football game I've gotten to go to this year. I know you go to a lot of Michigan games but I'm pretty excited to get out to the little carrier dome. Yeah, absolutely. What's it going to be like in late fall in the carrier dome? They don't heat that thing. It's better than September. I'll tell you that. I cannot physically get myself to go to a game in September because I just can't. It's heated pretty well though because we went to Women's Basketball and Men's Basketball last year and they keep it pretty solid and they're actually doing renovations. So I think in 2021 they're actually going to have air conditioning there. So we're catching up with the, I guess, 20th century finally getting AC in the carrier dome. Well, I mean, but most of the big events are going to be fall-ish, winter, right? Right. And I think that they're doing it partly so they can have like concerts and stuff there during the summer. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, so it like makes sense, but like it need to actually get me to go to, because we're still in Syracuse for like three more years or so. So like I'll go to games in September once they have air conditioning but I refuse to go until the AC is in there. But it should be a pretty fun game against Pitt. I love college football. I actually go into the games and stuff. So I think it'll be a delight. And again, it means I don't have to watch Northwestern, which is a plus. We're going to talk to Northwestern today with Edward Egros. You can find him on Twitter at EdwithSports. He is on TVG's More Ways to Win. If you are a cable, someone who sells cable, you can find TVG there and watch Edward on More Ways to Win. He also teaches an analytics course at SMU. He hosts a Cowboys podcast called Cowboys Deep Cuts on Vocal, which I'm sure is lively after the past couple of weeks. And we're talking about a new podcast he has called Hazard Play, which is where they gamble on terrible games, which should be pretty fun. So we're going to talk about that with Edward and talk about Week 8 of college football, get his thoughts on this week's big SMU game and other big games across the Week 8 slate. Tomorrow is our NFL podcast. We're going to have Gail Alexander on to discuss week number seven to make sure you get that podcast in every podcast that we have here at Covering the Spread. Make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, literally wherever you get your podcast, you can find Covering the Spread. While you're there, please leave a rating and review as well. Before we bring Edward on though, let's take a look back at last week when we talked with Bud Elliott of Banner Society about Week 7 of college football and go back through what we learned in that week. Alright, last week on Covering the Spread, we had Bud Elliott of Banner Society. As mentioned, you can find Bud on Twitter at BudEliate3 and we discussed taking OU-11 against Texas and OU got the win in that game, but Texas covered. It was a seven-point game. Ed, you mentioned the over on 76 points for that one. It did close at 79, so you got the closing line value, three points, but that one 61 points and I think Jalen Hertz kind of being a little erratic played a role in that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, oh, you could have scored a lot more points. I mean, they had a couple red zone turnovers that prevented them from scoring more. I feel like they actually did what they should have to have hit the over 7.7 yards per game, but Texas didn't really hold up their part of the deal. Right. They, you know, I think heading into that game, we didn't really know what to think about Oklahoma's defense, hadn't really played anyone, and I thought Texas had been good, minus a little bit of a hiccup against West Virginia the week before in terms on offense, but yeah, the Texas offense wasn't particularly good. 4.2 yards per play, 3.3 yards per pass attempt. So maybe rethinking, you know, maybe this Texas team is not very good on either side of the ball. Yeah. It remains to be seen. We were talking about the OU defense, and I believe you said they were 60th in your adjusted success rate model and have they moved it all based on that Texas game? Oh yeah, they're up to 30th now. Which is a little bit about, you know, the small sample size of 5 or 6 games in college football. So yeah, I mean, you know, they look a lot better. I mean, is 30th where, I mean, are they going to perform like that if they reach the playoff and get to a legit offense? Right. Remains to be seen. Interesting. All right. Other games we had on here, we had Bud mentioning Penn State minus 3.5 against Iowa. That would close at Penn State minus 4, so half a point of value there, and we did cover with a 5 point win, 17 to 12 on the road. Really good win for Penn State. We'll talk more about them with Penn State as well. Can I stop you real quick? Yeah. The call in that game, John O'Neill, the ref, it was a touchdown for Penn State. On the replay, it was clearly a touchdown. One of these plays where he's stretching the ball out and the ball is over the goal line before his knee hits and inexplicably gets overturned. Yeah. Which is the opposite of what you expect. What? If it was called a non-touchdown, you'd be like, oh, okay, they didn't seem enough to overturn it, but seeing it overturned is a different thing. Yeah. Exactly. Having the right call and making it the wrong call. Yeah. It was kind of unbelievable. John O'Neill is a guy that is talked about in the Big 10 as one of the worst refs in the history of humanity. And then later in the game, I thought there was a pretty clear textbook targeting on a Penn State defender, which was also overturned, which of course affects the Michigan game last week. Right. Just the randomness of sports, and when you throw the refs in there as well, it gets even more insane. Absolutely. And there's a lot of college refs, which means they can't all be good. That is for sure. We had Bud mentioning in Florida, plus 14 against LSU, and bookmakers nailed that one. It was a push. I wound up being 42 to 28. And LSU, I think we're seeing a larger sample on them that, and I'm having a really hard time not getting excited about them. Like, Joe Burrow is really good, man. This is fun. Yeah. No, he has been really good. And I think it's just kind of remarkable. I mean, I think it's the most unexpected thing we've seen in college football, maybe minus how bad Michigan's offense is. There was kind of no reason to expect him to kind of blow up. It's not like they changed the coordinator. They did bring in a coach that has kind of helped them modernize what they're doing. But for him to go from guy I didn't really think to lead an FBS average pass offense to one of the best in the nation is remarkable. Ohio State having Dwayne Haskins and Joe Burrow in the same quarterback room for a little bit. Pretty impressive. And then to go to Justin Fields, that's stupid. That's really cool. And I should mention in Bud's defense, there was a pass interference in the end zone on an LSU cornerback. That was not called would have given Florida a shot at scoring a touchdown to cover the game. When Bud was talking, he bet it because of the number. It wasn't some huge fade in Florida. He just thought it shouldn't have been 14. And it might have been exactly 14. So worked out pretty all right, actually. His analysis was spot on. We had the under on Texas Tech against Baylor. When Bud mentioned it was 58 and a half. It actually finished at 63. So very close loss there. Houston plus seven and a half against Cincinnati. And Cincinnati won that one. Houston's a hard team to figure out right now. I know that Bud had a weird game with them against North Texas too. So he's probably not very happy with Houston. But USF BYU, Bud actually nailed both things here. He wanted USF plus six and a half and the under on 53 and a half. And he actually said USF could win that game outright. And they did. That game actually closed at BYU minus four. So we got two and a half points of closing line value there. USF did win outright, just as Bud said. And the under did hit with a total of 50 points. So even with some weird things breaking against him, I thought Bud still had a good week there. So interesting way for college football. I thought you learned a lot about a lot of teams. But my value learning those things, I think specifically the Oklahoma game, I learned a lot there in a good sense. It was good to see them face a legitimate team. And I feel like they came out looking pretty okay after that. But having learning weeks is always a positive. So definitely a full week last week. Yeah, and it's really going to be interesting in the future because Iowa State also looks pretty good right now. Clearly they do have that loss to Baylor already. But yeah, I mean, they look good on both sides of the ball. So that's a game that I got circled. I'm kind of kicking myself too for not buying into Iowa State because like we talked about the UNI game and how that was like, you know, fluky, like, you know, UNI is a good team. And then the Baylor game, I was interested in Baylor at that point, but like I feel like I should have bought in on Iowa State after that loss. And I didn't, and I'm kicking myself over that. Like it seemed like a good buying chance on a team. But, oh well. I get super on-party play well, so I'm not too mad. Yeah, it was a team that I talked about in the pre-season and you know, I was high on them and so yeah, kind of my closing line and that was like, you know, can they get a big 12 title before Matt Campbell runs off to a bigger program. So we'll see what happens. Or the NFL, because there was talk about that last year too. We're going to bring on Edward E. Gross in just one second, but if you want to get in on the action, check out the Fando Sportsbook and place your first bet today. If you lose, Fando will give you a refund of $500 in psych credit. Visit sportsbook.fando.com for more details, terms and conditions apply. Must be 21 plus and physically present in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Let's bring on Edward E. Gross. Now again, he teaches over at SNU and analytics class there. You can find him on TVGs, more ways to win, and on the Vocal app with his podcast, Hazard Play and Cowboys Deep Cuts. Follow Edward on Twitter at EdWizSport. Let's get his thoughts now on Week 8 of college football. Let's bring on Edward E. Gross back here to cover in the spread, Edward. You are now part of the Three Timers Club, just you and whalecapper here, three times in covering the spread. So welcome to this honored circle. How are you doing today? I'm doing very well, striving to be part of the Five Timers Club, which I assume has no members, but ready to skyrocket at any moment. We will get there eventually. And I would assume you would be part of that group for sure. Now Edward, you've got a new podcast on Vocal, and it sounds like it appeals to me, because we were talking about this before the show. I'm a connoisseur of terrible Nicholas Cage straight to Netflix movies. They're really bad, but they're really fun. And you have a podcast on Vocal now where you talk about gambling lines for atrocious games. And I want to hear more about this. So how did this idea come about, and what all goes down here? Well, as you guys probably know, I am a connoisseur of iced coffee. And so if you ever want to brainstorm with me on anything, just find me at a local coffee shop, and then I'll start talking like nobody's business. So my buddy Ted, who's the programming director over at Vocal Media, he came up with this idea because he loves B-movies and B-movie podcasts. And he knows that I'm obviously big into sports, big into gambling. And he said, what if we marry the two ideas, a B-movie podcast with gambling? And I said, Ted, you're an absolute genius. Let's make this happen. And so my buddy Will Chambers and I started putting together hazard play where we find games that may not necessarily are, they may not necessarily be headline grabbers necessarily. They may not have the teams that grab the headlines, but you know what, they're fun to gamble on and they're fun to discuss. Last week, we had a really strong expose on UNLB at Vanderbilt. Unfortunately, our SEC bias crept in the wrong time and the rebels absolutely trounced us. That's tough, but I get it. It's difficult. I feel like the Washington Miami game last week would have been like prime. Like that's like as like a DFS player and someone who likes betting, like that was a game only betters could love. So I feel like it makes sense in that perspective too. Absolutely. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at Bowling Green at Notre Dame. Other college football podcasts or football podcasts, they want to break down and debate the best team in college football. No, no, no, no, no. You want to debate the worst team in college football. I think that's really where the market is. So is it UMass? Is it Akron? Is it Bowling Green? These are the conversations that we want to share with our listeners. Yeah, I mean Bowling Green actually got to win the other day. So I got to go with UMass. I just looked up my numbers real quick. So I'm going to tune in when you guys talk UMass, which I presume will be sometimes soon. Very, very soon. They may be also part of the five-timers club at some time. Well, Edward, on a more serious note, I guess, you mentioned on Twitter that you use a model that leans on statistically significant variables. So when we're trying to look at college football games, maybe slightly better games. What are some of the key stats that you focus on when you're trying to determine which team has an edge in that matchup? Well, it's interesting to me because I find that this is the time of year when we can talk about strength of schedule perhaps more than at any other point in the year. Because obviously, early in the season, you just don't have enough data points to really get a good idea of who is good. And then later in the season, you have too many data points to where, you know, the strength of schedule starts to even out up to a point. This is the time of year where I think it's absolutely imperative to look at strength of schedule and then adjust what your expectations might be. And I think the Red River Showdown from this past weekend was a perfect example of this. So Oklahoma really hadn't played anybody up to that contest. Kansas, Houston, UCLA, none of them have really done anything up to this point, whereas Texas, that was a much better strength of schedule. Obviously, we know what LSU was capable of. Even playing Oklahoma State turned out to be a really good win for the Longhorns. And I think it's one of the reasons why Texas was able to cover that 10 and a half spread because, yeah, both offenses were really, really good, but Texas had actually played a couple of teams, played them close or beaten them, and they were a little bit more battle tested. And I think this is really important in this overall statistical assumption that I have that if you are playing against mediocre teams, you should absolutely be trouncing them. You should not be playing close one possession affairs with that mid-tier or even the low-tier. And yes, Oklahoma's blowing out teams for the most part, but Texas was also doing the same thing against better competition, and it turned out that those teams were a little bit closer than maybe some realize. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've talked on the show about understanding that great teams obliterate bad teams, and I made a little bit of a mistake of not taking Wisconsin's first two games as seriously as maybe I should have before the Michigan game. So I apologize to all the listeners for that. But yeah, definitely a point I would absolutely agree with. So Edward, go ahead. Well, and I was also going to say, in terms of other variables, obviously passing yards for pass attempt, passing matters more than running, with maybe a couple of outliers in there, but passing obviously matters. Overall team record against who you're facing, how many yards you're giving up per play, those tend to be the biggest factors for me. Excellent. So Edward, you actually had talked about SMU on the show before. You follow this program pretty closely. You were pretty high on them. They've been doing pretty well this season, and now they have a huge game against Temple. What are you thinking about this game, and can they cover seven and a half points? I absolutely believe the Mustangs can cover seven and a half, and I know some of the concern may be what SMU was not quite able to do against Tulsa until you got to that third overtime, but for some reason Tulsa and SMU just play closely. I don't exactly know why. Tulsa has not been very much with that program the last few years, but here we are. But SMU is coming off a bye week. Temple is coming off a very thrilling victory over Memphis, and I'm always curious to see how a team performs after a big game or prior to a big game. And I think there is some real volatility there, and I don't know the Temple football program enough on the inside to know exactly how they're going to respond after a close exciting win against Memphis. But still though, SMU has had the tougher strength of schedule. Recruiting rankings come in around even between both programs, but what SMU has done to separate themselves is mastering the transfer portal. Yeah, the recruiting rankings aren't necessarily great over the last few years, but they've gotten a lot of talent who have experienced playing college football or at least been a part of a bigger college football program like Shane Bouchel, the quarterback. So I look at what SMU has done in terms of not necessarily gaining the system, definitely using it to their advantage, and I think the Ponies can cover this easily. Do you think that they have a shot to run the table? I mean, you look at the schedule and they've got games that aren't easy, but it's also not the most difficult schedule ahead. So can they finish this thing off? I think they can finish this thing off. I mean, Memphis is going to be a big concern for me. I mean, they're a team that I really, really like. And there may be one or two other places where they might trip up, but I mean, one or two losses, I think that's a reasonable expectation at this point. Alrighty, let's move on here to a couple other games to keep an eye on for this weekend and get Edward's thoughts here, starting off with Baylor against Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State favored by three and a half here, and the total in this game up to 66, initially with 64 and a half, and Baylor's defense has held up pretty well this year despite some tough opponents. They're operating at a slower pace than previously, but the total has risen to 66. So where do you sit on that number at 66, Edward? Well, Baylor plays one of the slower paces in football, just in terms of offensive plays per game. You mentioned that, but Oklahoma State's one of the faster ones and Charlie Brewer has a solid total QBR, but it's not great. Spencer Sanders is in roughly the same situation. He's in the top 50, but he's really more of a running threat. So it eats up clock despite any offensive plays. I'm still a firm believer defense is volatile to where you cannot really count on it week after week. Baylor certainly did a great job against a solid Iowa State team, but Oklahoma State has had a much tougher schedule and it's still hanging 30 to 35 in pretty much all of their games. And so this total has been interesting because at 64 and a half, I felt very comfortable going with the over. Now that it's at 66, if you're going to go and take the over, you better go ahead and do it now because if the market continues to rise, then you may be too little too late. Well, before I move on and talk about the spread of this game, you mentioned that defense is less sticky. Does that mean that defense is something you would have in your model but de-emphasize when you're talking about statistically significant variables? Is defense at least not as much of a factor as offensive stats? I would agree with that. I think defense still belongs in pretty much any prediction model. I don't think you can just get rid of it outright, but also be aware that it's probably not as statistically significant as say some other variables, definitely passing yards per attempt and yards per play, all of those things I think matter a heck of a lot more in strength of schedule as I've talked about a few times now. I think all of that's far more important than say any defensive metrics you have, but I mean you can use, you know, to get the stat parlance here, you can use backward selection or stepwise selection and defense is probably still going to remain in your model and if it does, I think to me that says it is important and something else too real quick. You look at the national champions over the last several years, almost all of them have had great defenses and they've gone up against good offenses well and so I think especially more so in college football than the NFL, I think defense does matter. It's just more volatile from this point. Sure. Interesting. Edward, let's move on to the Pac-12. Arizona State at Utah. Utah is almost a two touchdown favorite here and the total is at 48 and a half. Utah has been pretty good except for a loss to USC, but it's pretty much done what they had to with for everyone else. What do you see in this game? Well, first off, I have Oklahoma State covering that spread, by the way. I think Baylor is going to get that first loss there as much as I like Baylor a lot. I don't see them running to the table in the slightest. But as far as Utah, that one loss that they had to USC, I think was a complete fluke. It may have been the one game where USC had its quarterback situation completely figured out with Matt Fink. Also a short week for Utah on the road at a tough Coliseum and I think this is one of the reasons why the Pac-12 has struggled getting a team in the playoffs because all of those big programs are usually having to play on the road on a short week and oftentimes that's been a humongous indicator for how flat that they may have turned out or they may have looked in that contest. And so when you see some of those tendencies, I can understand why a team might drop one or two because of that. But I think if that weren't the case, then Utah would probably be undefeated right now and we'd see a much larger spread for this game. So do you think that that USC loss is going to give us value on Utah broadly? You know, just people looking at that game kind of wondering what happened. Do you think that that allows us to be broadly into Utah going forward? I absolutely do. I wish more people would think of it that way. I'm not sure everyone does. I think they sort of look at it on a very surface level mentality saying, well, USC and just from my understanding as far as like how the committee might look at it and how pundits look at it, I think what they do is they just look at it very surface level and say, well, USC only has four wins this year and Utah lost to them. So how good can they really be? Well, look at the extenuating circumstances and I would hope that committee members are able to do that. I know some pundits don't do that. This is all about making us smarter, right? But I look at that situation and go, if you look at the extenuating circumstances, I think Utah could and should still be considered a possibility for the playoffs. It's just tricky because we don't necessarily have that depth in terms of the conversations that we have. Right. And keeping context in mind, I think is key, whether it be whatever you're doing, keeping in context or keeping that context in mind is going to allow you to see that that USC game was not representative of what we should expect from Utah going forward. I think that just paying attention and knowing the context around games like that is always going to give you such a big leg up. I completely agree with that. And I think going back to this game, here is an opportunity where Arizona State has won a lot of close games. And so they may be a little bit inflated in terms of their overall value. But you look at the rankings and they're both top 20 between 11 and 20. And so this may be an opportunity for Utah to take advantage of the lack of complexity saying, OK, if we can blow out Arizona State, a team that has a really good record up to this point, then maybe we can prove ourselves when that lack of complexity hurt us against USC in terms of a resume. All right. Let's move on here to Michigan at Penn State. Finish up with this one. Penn State a nine point favorite at home against Michigan. The total here is 45 and a half. And Penn State had its first, I would say, really legit test last week facing Iowa. They got a win on the road there by five points. So let's talk broad here. Look at Penn State relative to the Big 10. There's a lot of good teams in the Big 10. Where do they stack up for you relative to those other teams like Wisconsin and Ohio State? Well, let me first start with a hot sports opinion by May. I think the Big 10 has more teams that could potentially make the playoff than any other conference in America. Yes. And I've got three of them. Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Penn State. I think all three of those could very well make the playoff. You know, Anarchy can certainly open the door for a third SEC team to be part of that conversation like a Georgia or a Florida. But in that conference, only Alabama and LSU are really getting my attention. Like Lacy Lee to get two in is the SEC. But defensive ratings certainly have helped some of those Big 10 performers. You know, something else too. I mean, Sean Clifford has done very, very well at Penn State. And this is a guy who I think, you know, yeah, he may not have had too many opportunities. It may have been a little bit inconsistent. But this is a guy who if he has a humongous game against Michigan, we could be talking about it very differently on the national stage. Interesting. Any thoughts on the spread in this game? It's Penn State minus nine. And Michigan has won three straights. And, you know, it doesn't seem like they've cured all the issues they had initially. So any thoughts on this game here with Penn State favor by nine? Well, what do you think, Ed? Do you think Michigan has cured all of its offensive struggle? I do not. I do not feel like... I mean, it's interesting to watch the games because you look at the stats from the Illinois game and overall for the game, they look pretty decent. But it's one of these things where they got off to a really good start. They're up 28-nothing. And then all of a sudden the defense implodes against the backup quarterback for Illinois. And it's looking like, you know, the season is done if they can't pull this game out when it's 28-25. And then, you know, things go back to where they should have been. No, everything is not cured. It's been really interesting to watch the coach speak come out of Ann Arbor and Jim Harbaugh saying, you know, I mean, if he has to prop up his quarterback by saying he's been the best quarterback on the field in every game this year, then so be it. But, you know, I mean, no, they haven't cured all that. I mean, I do have hope for the defense. Hopefully it was just a fluke eating last week. But just, you know, the offense has been bad in particular. I mean, you know, they're in the hundreds when I look at adjusted yards per carry in terms of running the ball. And that just should not be the case with the talent they have on that offense. No, exactly. I mean, I think the receiving court with Michigan should be right up there with... I mean, they're not Alabama, they're certainly up there in terms of, you know, what they've recruited and the talent that they've certainly shown us, you know, in spurts here and there. I actually think defensively both teams are about the same. I think Penn State's defense and Michigan State's defense they certainly grayed out very similarly. So I'm not so concerned about that. To me, I think, you know, what we're seeing from Shay Patterson is just, you know, I don't know what to expect out of him from week to week. And I'm not sure that he understands exactly what he's trying to run. So there's a real concern for me there. You know, you could argue that offensive efficiency for Penn State's like a good 10 points better than Michigan. And so if it spreads at nine, then I like the Nittany Lions there to cover. Interesting. Does the volatility of Shay Patterson make you reluctant to dabble in markets involving Michigan? You know, I'm in the exact opposite. I love dabbling in Michigan as far as the markets are concerned. I mean, you know, we... it's not a good stat necessarily to use an analytics saying, you know, Jim Harbaugh is one and nine against top 10 teams. I don't necessarily like using trends like that because everybody is one and nine against top 10 teams for the most part. But at the same time, I think when it's just so consistent year after year, at some point, that may be a trend you just have to listen to. I mean, maybe it's not something that you can use with data or prove with data. But if it keeps happening time and time again, then there may be something to it that's infrastructurally concerning. Interesting. Edward, any other bets that you like for week eight that you want to talk about? Absolutely. Florida giving six against South Carolina is one that I really love, I think, aside from the talent disparity based upon recruiting rankings. I'm always careful when teams are coming off those physical contests against really tough opponents. I'm not sure exactly how they respond the following week, and this is something that I would love to be studying empirically. But there are two SEC teams that I think can just beat you up, and then you don't know exactly how they're going to respond the following week, Alabama and Georgia. And so you have the psychological let down beating a top three team on the road, but then you also may have the physical let down because they're just so big, so powerful. And then Florida, yeah, they came off a tough road loss at LSU where they lost by a couple of touchdowns, but still a solid football team. That defense is still great. They just came up against, you know, a top three, top four quarterback in college football. Also, pass yards per pass attempt, even though Florida has had this sort of quarterback carousel, there's still 25th in that department. That's still really, really good. But Gamecocks, there are 125th. So that disparity alone tells me that I think Florida should handle this pretty well. Interesting. Any other games that stand out to you is you're mentioning like these games where you're coming off of a big game, maybe leading into a big game. What's interesting to you is being in interesting spots for this week? Well, Jim, I think this is a great opportunity for us to talk about the Northwestern Wildcast. Our shared passion. Exactly right. This all helps us come together. Right. Friday night at Northwestern Ohio State. So Ohio State gets Wisconsin the following week. Ohio State short week on the road. Yeah, it's a 28 point spread, but Northwestern, you know, played Wisconsin fairly close. Not exactly sure what you can surmise from that because Northwestern's offense has not been particularly impressive. But, I mean, if they did well against Wisconsin after they came off an emotional win against Michigan, then to me, I look at that and go, well, Ohio State has to prepare for Wisconsin. This whole notion that coaches say we take it one game at a time. It's balder dash. It's not true. If you know you have a team that you're going to mop the floor with, then you're probably going to go ahead and I could definitely see that happening. I don't think Northwestern is going to get the upset necessarily, but can they keep it within 28? I'm going to talk about this game in our final segment because I want the under on that. And I think that if you're going under on 49.5, plus 28 makes sense. So I think they're just going to slow this game down, make it as ugly as possible and that lends itself to a tighter spread and a lower total. So I think I'd be, I can't physically make myself bet anything associated with Northwestern because it scares me and it makes me so sad. But I think that it does lead into plus 28. Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And I think sometimes what I like to do, and maybe this is just the journalist in me, but I love looking at the spread, looking at the total and seeing if I can come up with some sort of narrative and seeing, you know, in terms of the narrative, what makes less sense total spread, whatever it might be. And I'm with you completely. I think if you have that total combined with that spread, something just doesn't seem quite right. And to me, I'm going on the notion that Ohio State, you know, blowing them out doesn't quite work for me. I think slow, ugly, what you're saying makes total sense to me. And I think Northwestern keeps this within four scores. Alrighty. That's all we got for Edward Egros. Again, follow him on Twitter at EdwithSports. You can find him on TVG is more ways to win. You can also find him at SMU if you happen to be in the area down there. And then check out his podcast on Vocal. Hazard plays when we were talking about before and also Cowboys Deep Cuts. I'm sure a very interesting podcast to listen to, given how the past couple of weeks have gone. Oh boy. Oh boy. I can't imagine what you're hearing down there in Dallas on radio and stuff. But Edward, we appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us here today and we'll hopefully have you on again soon and get you into that four-timer club. I can't wait. I can't wait. I'm prepared. Covering the Future One final thank you to Edward Egros for swinging by and spreading his knowledge for Week 8 of College Football. And after we ended the call with Edward, we actually talked about the Cowboys and how interesting things are down there right now. Before we get into Covering the Future, Ed, I personally am not that worried about the Cowboys. Interesting. Thinking about the context around the games they lost. They lost on the road to the Saints. Makes sense. The defense have been balling out. I mean, Breeze wasn't there. I mean, does it make sense? I mean, I think they were favored. Right. But the Saints look pretty good with Bridgewater. I mean, they've done well. And they've done well since then, too. Which I think further validates that. They had the loss at home against Green Bay, in which Tyron Smith did not play and their right tackle, Lyle Collins got hurt during the game. And Green Bay is a good team. They're 5-1 now. I liked them to win the Super Bowl. They're now 11-1, I think, because the last I saw at Fandall Sports Book. So that number's been going down. And then they lost against the Jets. And people look at it and say it's a winless team. They were 7-1.5 favorites. It was Jerry Jones' birthday. All those things that make people freak out. But like, we talked about covering the spread last week. Both I did and Rob Pizzola we wanted the Jets plus 7-1.5 because that was a bad line. So I think that people are freaking out when I think there's legitimate causes for concern. But once Amari Cooper's back, Tyron Smith's back, Lyle Collins is back. I kind of don't think it's that bad. Am I dumb? I'm not sure, but it's interesting that people are freaking out now instead of when they sign Zeke to that insane contract that's going to hold back the franchise for however many years. It looks even worse with how Dak Prescott is playing because it decreases your ability to a re-sign Dak Prescott or re-sign Amari Cooper. And that passing offense looked really good. I think that it's like you can have opinions about Zeke and say, oh, he's very good. He's not a disagree. He's a good running back. But the reason that we are opposed to paying running backs like that is it decreases your ability to improve your passing game. And when you lose a guy like Dak Prescott or Amari Cooper, that's going to have an impact at some point. So I think that I would agree with your sentiment there. We'll take a look at covering the future in just one second. But first, Ed and I always preach searching for the best value in betting on games. Well, look no further than the new odds comparison our engineers have developed over at Numberfire.com. Oddsfire is the premier odds comparison experience across major bookmakers in the regulated U.S. market. Compare odds, quickly identify the best value and even examine first-party fan dual data all in one place. Never settle, always get the best odds. Check out the experience for free now on Numberfire or at Oddsfire.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Let's take a look at covering the future now. Ed, starting off with you, you want to focus on a game that I was tempted to put in a rundown with Edward and didn't wind up getting there because I wanted to discuss the Utah game, most of that was the one I was deciding between with this one. But you want to talk Washington against Oregon. What's your lean in this game? Yeah, well, just a quick backstory. So in 2014, I was writing for Grantland and one of the things I wrote was about Chris Peterson. I kind of cast my doubt about whether he could go to Washington and be a good coach. I was a little concerned that his success was more tied up in the success of the program at Boise State. And, you know, it was fun. I actually got to go, you know, Boise State radio reached out to me and I got to get on a show with Ian Johnson, who was the running back in the Statue of Liberty. He proposed to his girlfriend after. Exactly. So that was fun. But, you know, the prediction didn't really turn out to be that great when Washington broke through in 2016 and made the playoff and it pretty much been the bully in the Pac-12 North over the last three years. So I bring this up because it was one of my lessons and, you know, I didn't have any specific data on Peterson and yeah, you know, it wasn't one of my best takes. But I feel like, you know, I try to learn my lesson from these things and I still believe in this Washington program. They've had kind of some critical losses over the last couple of years, but they've been really good on both sides of the ball. And I almost talked about, I think it was Washington was minus six at Arizona State, Arizona State last week and it was almost a game that I talked about. I feel like that line wasn't high enough just because Washington had had one of their losses against Stanford, which was very inexplicable in my mind. But I still believe in this Washington program and Oregon has clearly come on and they've done really well. They rank really well in my defense, particularly on past defense or second in the nation in both yards for play, adjusted for schedule and yards for pass attempts also adjusted for schedule. But I think making Oregon a three-point favorite is just too much and especially on that number of three. My numbers make it Oregon by a point and a half, gives them a lot of credit for what they have done this season. At the beginning of the season, Washington probably would have been about a three-point favorite. So that will show you kind of the shift that we've had over the course of the season. And I think there's a couple other reasons why I would lean towards Washington. Oregon lost one of their top targets, Jacob Breeland that tied in last week in the game against Colorado. They're already not particularly stacked in terms of targets. They're targets on offense. The guys that are helping Justin Herbert run that passing game, and their passing game hasn't been particularly good. Also, when you look at the numbers from this season, you have to account, I mean my numbers don't explicitly account for this, but Washington played Cal when they had Chase Garber's at quarterback. And Oregon got Cal last week when they had Modster the backup, who's just not particularly good. So that's another little thing that suggests that the number should maybe favor Washington a little bit more. So especially at that number of three, I'll take Washington plus three at home. So what are your thoughts on that Stanford game? Because we were talking with Edward about the Utah game against USC, and how it was a fluke. Do you view the Stanford loss for Washington, because you know Stanford really well, do you view that as being a fluke too as something you will kind of write off? I think they say like the sun shines on the dogs you're in some days. Yeah, I do see that as kind of a fluke. I think that's pretty much the only game where Stanford's defense has reared their head all season. I'm still obviously happy that it happened, but yeah, I definitely see that as a fluke. And I think you just have to give Washington credit for being a program. And they're a program that usually especially last week, they tend to get it done against lesser teams, and now they're at home, I mean they've had this probably circled on their calendar since the pre-season as one of the big games that's going to determine the Pac-12 North. I think they show up I think they have a better coaching staff than Oregon and a lot of Oregon fans would agree with me on that so I just like Washington in this game. Alright, so Washington plus three the number for Ed, I want to talk about Northwestern and I don't talk about Northwestern very much because as far as my betting perspective but I think I have some insights in the way they want to handle games like this one against Ohio State and I feel pretty good about the under here on 49.5 points and it actually did open at 48.5 so it has gone up since things opened and I think that's the wrong way and there are a couple of reasons for that. The first one is that Northwestern's defense kind of isn't bad they rank fifth in defense of S&P plus or SP plus according to ESPN's Bill Connolly. So the defense has been good so far. The offense has been abysmal, they're 124th on offense in SP plus. So there's this weird split but both those numbers play towards the under. Ohio State's defense is elite upfront, they've got guys like Chase Young who can wreck a game in a hurry and Northwestern's biggest issues have been on the offensive line. It looks like they're going to get their left tackle Rashawn Slater back this week but he was banged up before their buy, he didn't play that Nebraska game and even with him being back, I'm pretty sure that offensive line is going to get destroyed here. So in order for this game to hit the over on 49.5 and he's probably going to have to score a bit given how good their defense has been and I'm not really sure that's going to happen and the other thing here that's at play for me is that we know or at least I think Pat Fitzgerald realizes he's over matched and when he's playing teams that are much better than his, he slows things down quite a bit and he's probably going to do that again this weekend. We saw him do exactly that against Wisconsin. There was the reason that Northwestern kept that game close it was because they played this hyper frustrating terribly conservative offense but it made it be a close game where they were a major underdog there and I would not be shocked if I would be shocked I guess if they didn't do that here. So Northwestern's defense, better than perception, their defense is terrible and they're probably not going to do a whole lot offensively and I would assume they're going to try to slow things down here. Ryan Fields' grass may be a foot long on Friday night for this game they've done that before they're probably going to try to slow things down because Northwestern shockingly not the most athletic team so when you have that speed discrepancy you grow long grass and I think they're probably going to do that this weekend and that should slow things down even more. So I think the under is in play here at 49 and a half it could go up so I don't think you have to grab that number right now but I do want the under here but there's a lot of anecdotal stuff in this specifically with the pace and I think that because I've had to watch Northwestern football for the past nine ish years I feel like I've got a good feel on when Fitz is going to slow things down but are you willing to do that? Are you willing to go out on a limb based on your feel for a game or do you want more numbers to back something like that up? I mean I'm usually going to lean towards numbers that's definitely what I want to do but that doesn't mean that football things don't matter and if you know the smart thing to do is to slow this game down and that makes a lot of sense. The thing I'm intrigued about this game is who's going to be in the crowd? It's a Friday night game usually there'll be a decent set of Northwestern fans but usually these big fan bases tend to bring a lot of fans whenever they go out to Northwestern it's not that far from Columbus so for a Saturday game maybe a little bit more even crowd but are the Ohio State people going to come out on a Friday night? So I think that'll be interesting to me. If you made me set a total like an over under on percentage of fans Ohio State I'd say 64% 60? I would say like 40 it's a Friday night. I know but people don't go to Northwestern games even when it was that game back in 2013 the Caine Coulter quarterback sneak game where they almost beat Ohio State in that college game day and Mike and Mike in the morning were there and I got no sleep for like an entire week even in that game there were still a lot of Ohio State fans there like the student section was the most packed I've ever seen in my entire life but even for that game I'd say probably like 40% Ohio State and for a one in four team and given how national Ohio State is I feel like it's going to be I'll say 64% is my final number 64% in favor of Ohio State So we'll have to do some digital digital image recognition to figure out how right you are I would say below 50 but and they had to actually like change around the way they configure the seating in the stadium because they switched to Northwestern's sideline arrangement so Northwestern would be on the other side normally it used to be where the visiting team was the sideline that the cameras would see like head on they changed that because it meant that the home fans would be sitting where the camera is so it doesn't make it look as bad like it makes the crowd look more purple than it actually is desperate times desperate times but I'm just glad I can't watch this game that's all I got you never know you're going to be sitting in the carrier dome and all of a sudden it's going to be 14-14 in that game and you might have to leave and go find a television you never know when the first chink in the armor might appear in the Ohio State machine it's very weird how different I feel about this game from the Big Ten championship game last year this is a very different Northwestern team and it makes me quite sad that is all we have for today though back again tomorrow to break down with Gail Alexander of Eason he'll swing by to break down his favorite bets on the board make sure you get that by subscribing to covering the spread on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Stitcher wherever you get your podcasts you can find covering the spread and again while you're there please leave a rating and review because it does help us out quite a bit and where can people find your work and what do you have coming up this week on the football analytics show yeah, I wait I'm at the Power and Gun Twitter so you can almost follow my stuff there and I'm at thepowerrank.com is my site for better football predictions through data and analytics sign up for my free email newsletter you can get a sample of my best predictions and some write-ups on some teams and yeah, the podcast isn't quite out yet but I'll let you know about that tomorrow and there are free rankings as well on the Power Rank too so if you haven't thought about a subscription yet and haven't thought about diving full in you can get a free look at them and some teams that are free have been helpful in my research too so I recommend those I mean the rankings are the points based thing the team rankings that I first developed if you really want to get a taste for my best predictions the newsletter is the way to go just because it does differ there was a time where you could just use points and algorithms and get pretty close to the best prediction but that's not the case anymore if you're just looking for a quick little breeze and grades out, I found them very helpful so check out those over at the Power Rank I am on Twitter at Jim Sonnis J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S got a DFS podcast coming up tomorrow for week 7 of the NFL with Brandon Kudula you can find that on the Number Fire daily fantasy podcast feed and again back against tomorrow the NFL podcast here as well big thank you to our producer Calvin Theobald for running the video side of things for today thank you as always Cal thank you to Edward Egros jumping by and talking about college football for week number 8 and thank you to all of you for tuning in for today and hopefully tomorrow as well good luck with your week 8 college football bets we'll talk to you again tomorrow for some NFL ones this has been covering the spread right here on the Fanduo podcast network