 This is covering the spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Sonnes and Dr. Ed Feng. What is going on everybody? Welcome on into covering the spread. That's right here on the FanDuel podcast, network and numberfire.com where today we are getting you set for the college football conference championship weekend by talking to Parker Fleming and getting his thoughts on all this weekend's big games, the futures market and much more. My name is Jim Sonnes. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com joined here as always by Dr. Ed Feng. You can find his work over at thepowerrank.com and Ed, we talked maybe late September, early October about Michigan and how your numbers had them very high and a lot of your friends, Nan Arbor were skeptical. Maybe worried was the right word. And yet on Saturday they did the dang thing. They beat Ohio State. They are in the Big 10 championship. Are people finally convinced now? I don't know, I didn't really ask cause I was too busy caught up in what was going on on the football field. That's the great thing about the Michigan fan base. There's still probably one person, maybe even more that won a fire-harball right now. I'm just by sheer probability alone. But yeah, it was an epic win. It was kind of definitive in the sense that they were up 15, most of the second half. And thinking back upon it, I think coming into the season, I had some big doubts for hardball getting rid of the defensive coordinator last year. Someone who had had a lot of success at Michigan, but not in 2020, getting rid of his offensive line coach. Another guy would put so many guys in the NFL, didn't really have a good 2020, got rid of both those guys and brought in new younger coaches to take care of those units. And those two units won the game for them. I thought they both played great. So Harbaugh definitely answered some questions with his coaching staff, which is what you need to do. And it's, yeah, I mean, it's kind of, I think when you follow the Michigan program, there wasn't really a thought of like what happens after Ohio State, because that's been a big barrier. And now all of a sudden it's like, well, I mean, it's wild. Like, I mean, if Georgia loses, they're gonna be, and in Michigan wins, they're gonna be the one seed, probably facing Georgia, which they'll be an underdog too. So it's like a whole new, at least for me, as someone who looks at this quantitatively, there's just a whole bunch of possibilities that were not considered before Saturday. Yeah, and it's fascinating. It was fun. My stepdad was here for Thanksgiving and he's a big Michigan fan. It was fun to watch him like slowly realize as the game went along that he could like, uncurl a bit and like be comfortable because like it was a butt whooping. I know the final score doesn't say that, but like watching that game on both sides of the football, there was no doubt Michigan was the better team. And you talked a lot about the receivers for Ohio State. They did theirs. They definitely got theirs for sure. They showed how good they were. They showed how good they were. They were, yeah, they're incredible. But the problem was they couldn't get the ball to them because like Aidan Hutchinson is in the backfield every free can play. And you would actually talked about that a bit in the sense that like if they got rid of the ball, you were concerned, but that if didn't happen enough for Ohio State's perspective. Right. And now all of a sudden Aidan Hutchinson's on the Heisman boards. He was the first overall pick and Dane Brugler's mock draft on the athletic. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty incredible. The whole Heisman thing is actually fascinating to me, right? Because Bryce Young's the favorite and that probably should be except that, you know, they had zero touchdowns before the whatever last however many seconds of that game against Auburn. He did not have a good game. Yeah. If he has a good game against Georgia, yeah, give him the award. Great. Right. You know, CJ Stroud is up there too. He's had a great season, but their narrative kind of ends at this point. So defensive players don't get the Heisman, but there's a path there, which is just wild. Right. I mean, I pulled up the betting odds during the Alabama game when they were down to nothing. And it was, I think that Kenny Pickett was down to 16 to one. He's now back to 20. But like, I don't know. I feel like this is kind of like last year where it was still unknown who might be the Heisman and then Devontae Smith went out and had like a Heisman type game kind of sealed it. But like, there's still a lot to be decided this week. Exactly. And I expect, I mean, I expect Dane and Hodgeson to have a pretty big game against Iowa. Yeah. So, and Pickett's interesting too, because it's Pitt that is not going to make the playoff. Right. So he could have a great game and maybe not even get an invite. I don't know. Yeah. I think that Pickett is interesting because like he's had good numbers this year. They're also playing in the night game. So we'll get that, you know, that national recognition, that national shine. And that game is going to be stupid fun. Like just from like a, from an observer's perspective. So find it very interesting. Oh, and he plays that awful, awful way of defense. Awful, but also like high tempo team where like, there's going to be a lot of points in that game. So I think it's going to be kind of fun. I'm very jealous. My boss, JJ Zachary, he's going to be there. He's a Pitt grad. He lives in Charlotte. So like he's going to be at that game and I'm jealous. The total is 72 and a half. I'm like, I get it. It makes sense. It probably should be there, but it's going to be a very fascinating game. And I think this whole weekend is going to be a delight and start to finish. You hear me? Given I have a 69 and a half. OK, well, we tried. Either way should be a delight. We're talking about the big 10, big 12 SEC championship games with Parker Fleming. You can find him on Twitter at stats. Oh, or you could find his work at CFB dash grass.com also on football outsiders and bet us. We're going to pick Parker's brain about not just this weekend's games, but also what goes into his numbers, some specific metrics he utilizes when trying to make up his numbers and his read on this weekend's game and the futures market as well. We also have an NFL podcast coming up tomorrow to make sure you get that. Make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast. We are on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcast. Your name that we are there. Hit subscribe. And also, if you like what you hear, leave us a rating interview. NFL week number 13 is coming up for tomorrow. Before we do that, before we talk to Parker, got to go back to last week and recap week 12 on the college side of things. Covering the past. Our guests on the college football side of things and the NFL side of things last week was Edward E. Gross. You can find him on Twitter at edwithsports. We'll recap the NFL side tomorrow. Talk about the college football side for today. You can find Edward on Twitter, again on Twitter at edwithsports and also on TVG's more ways to win and NBC Sports Edge. On the college side, Edward is on the over for Ohio State versus Michigan. No sweat there, 64 and a half as, it did go 64 and a half. I, well, I thought that like, once Michigan got the ball back, it seemed like with the way their ground game was working, I thought that that was a good, I thought it was pretty sad at that point. Right. And it was, it was kind of interesting because I ended up, I ended up betting the over after that show, after that show last week. And then I forgot about it. And then someone reminded me about it during the game. And then, you know, it actually didn't go over until Michigan's last touchdown, right? Which was set up by, you know, Big Haskins run. And it almost looked like Ohio State wanted the ball back. Yeah. They, they didn't try very hard on that last touchdown. Yeah, I don't, yeah. So, so that was a, but yeah, yeah, nice one for Edward. Yeah. That one was at 41 points through the third quarter. So I'm not sure why I said there was no sweat, but it was a 41 through the third quarter, 28 points in the fourth quarter. And as you said, the Haskins touchdown there as we're pushing it over. So a win for Edward. And I think doing the math correctly, I think a field goal would have also gotten it 65. Yeah, it would have. So once Michigan got in score position, they were good to go. Either way, a win there for Edward as it went over 64 and a half. The other bet for Edward was on Oklahoma State minus four and a half against Oklahoma. It closed at four, which is exactly where it landed. Oklahoma was actually up 33-24 entering the fourth quarter, but Oklahoma State, they scored twice, took a 37-33 lead with 8-54 left, needed a field goal to get the cover for Edward because they were sitting right on four. Offense did nothing from there and out, but Oklahoma couldn't do anything either. They had a shot to win outright, but the defense for Oklahoma State clamped down. Couldn't quite get the four and a half there, but a pretty stopped performance from the Oklahoma State defense in the second half. And I think Edward was expecting more than the first half. Just didn't quite get it there as they were a bit slow coming around. And I wouldn't be shocked if he bet that at three and a half because that was where it was earlier in the week as well. Bedlam was, Bedlam, that was a lot of fun on Saturday night. I turned it on after halftime. I was like, how, you know, my numbers really liked Oklahoma State's defense. What happened in the first half, yada, yada, yada. And then you get like, you know, a couple of turnovers and then Oklahoma State's defense completely clamped down and then got really lucky not to get a pass interference on that last drive. Really lucky. Yeah. And they pulled it out and now a chance to go to the college football playoff. So that defense being rewarded for its efforts. And we'll talk about that game versus Baylor with Parker Fleming. Once again, find him on Twitter at stats award. Check out CFB dash grass.com for all of his work. We're gonna get his thoughts on the conference championships this week. We'll talk Oklahoma State. We'll talk the big 10, talk the SEC and get his thoughts on the futures market as well. 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In Arizona, call 1-800 next step or text next step to 533-42. Covering the present. Let's bring Parker Fleming into covering the spread now to talk about the conference championships coming up this weekend. Parker, welcome to the show. Awesome weekend coming up. How are you doing today? Man, I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me, guys. What, I mean, yeah, it feels like the stakes this weekend are as high as they've been all season. This is, this is Pete college football and we have coaching carousel going on. I feel like I've been doing college football, you know, 36 hours a day the last couple of weeks. So this is great. I mean, like from Saturday on, the amount of stuff that has happened. Cause it started off with Ohio State, Michigan, obviously, but then like every day since and there's been something big. So if you slept, like, are you just running on fumes at this point? Yeah. Well, so one a mountain time. And so that helps my window has shifted a little bit. I can do the late night shift without actually staying up too late. But yeah, it's been, it's been crazy. We got away a little bit for Thanksgiving and my wife was like, let's go hike a little bit. And I was like, yeah, we just can't go too far out of town cause I need to make sure that I can check in if anything happens. But nothing's happened, right? Totally fine, you know, it's just a very calm college football. Absolutely. Well, let's dive in here. And I want to talk to you about last night's college football playoff rankings in the second, but first let's talk to you in general about your overall process and the way you work as a better and you lean heavily on advanced metrics, tweet them out, view your account, stats of war. And one of the unique numbers you utilize and include on those graphs is what you call ECHL. So I want to ask you, A, what is ECHL? And B, what drew you towards using that metric within your analysis? Yeah. So I am, I like to say that I'm a football and numbers guy. I'm not a betting guy, but betting is a really nice way to kind of put pen to paper and say, let me create a model. Let me create an expectation. Let me compare reality to what I expect. And so, yeah, I like kind of looking at these numbers in kind of a second order way because things like yards per play can be confusing. Things like turnovers are really noisy. And so ECHL is a response to time of possession, which I think is the worst stat in the entire world. And I despise with all of my heart. Not only is it uninformative, it might even be misleading. And so instead, ECHL is a way to kind of make football a little bit more like bowling, right? It's a game of possessions. You get a possession, I get a possession. And you can steal possessions through time, clock management, through on-site kicks, whatever. But generally, ECHL is a measure of game control that looks at a ratio of quality possessions. So a quality possession is defined as a first down across an opponent's 40 where that is the threshold, the structural break where the probability of scoring gets way, way higher. Or it's a big play touchdown. Either way, you get a quality possession. And so what ECHL does is just tell me how much of the game are you controlling? And so that's informative because then I can look at, hey, are you, you know, are you just getting random special teams turnovers? Are you just not finishing drives well? Did you not get any drives at all? It's a one stab that really helps me kind of understand the flow of the game. It's named after the Navy fullback who was on their team. I think 2004 in the Emerald Bowl, they had a drive that was like 16 minutes of game clock. And so as I was thinking of the stat, I was inspired a little bit by the stat Corsi and Hockey. And Corsi is named after a guy with a cool mustache. Like literally it's a coach that has a cool mustache. And so I thought, okay, that would be fun. So I started looking around, figuring out, talking to some folks. And then my buddy, Alex Kirschner, at SplitZone Duo had written this article a while back about Navy. And I just saw that name and I thought, yep, that's going to be it. I'll call it Echol. Well, that's really interesting. And I think that it's cool the way you do that because there is a lot of fluke-ness and that's what a lot of ed stuff focuses on fluke-ness and turnovers and getting short fields and stuff like that. And it sounds like Echol kind of can help account for that. Is that your main goal in this? Yeah. Again, it's to get a better depiction of reality and kind of filter out the noise because you can look at kind of drown per game stats kind of don't take into account how many plays you ran, how many drives you had, right? Per drive stats overvalue kind of the last play of the drive, right? Points per drive even, basically, not all the way, it's endogenous, it's correlated obviously, but basically points per drive tends to lean more on what happened on the last play of the drive. And so Echol is more kind of an in-expectation how many opportunities did you have? And then we can talk about opportunity finishing. And so it does account, if you throw an interception across the opponent's 40 or whatever, you still get credit for an Echol, you don't get negative credit. And then we can talk about, okay, why was this different from reality? As a first blush to the ratio, which is my quality possessions over all the total quality possessions in a game is a pretty decent barometer for win probability, especially because most games have 10 to 12 possessions, maybe eight to 10 if you're filtering out garbage time and junk drives. And so with that, you kind of get a good idea of how much of the game did you control? And if that ratio is way different than the outcome of the game, then you start to say, all right, you didn't finish dry as well or you made these mistakes or a defensive pass interference got you that quality possession you didn't really deserve. So Parker, so Echol is very cool. I'm interested in how that meshes with your final prediction. So on your Twitter feed, we can look at your final prediction. And I know I was not smart enough to read it myself, so I had to bug you on Twitter. The other way to figure out exactly what was going on, definitely all my fault. Andrew, first of all, we had him on last week, he's been tracking this. And anytime your mean absolute errors is better than Bill Connolly's, that definitely makes me take notice. So does Echol go into that? What goes into that final projection that you're doing? Yeah, so the same kind of idea goes into my score predictions and win probabilities. And I do use Echol just again as a measure of game control that kind of helps me establish how much better or worse you were than your opponent. And, but what I focus on mostly what really drives them is these EPA expected points added numbers. And so the elevator pitch for EPA for those who don't know is basically something like yards per play is better than total yards, but it's still confusing because three yards on first and 10 is bad. That's a failed play, right? But three yards on third and one is a great play. And so if you just average yards per play, you're losing information. EPA translates yards to points in context. And so I even go one further and I focus on your run pass splits and I focus on your late and early down splits. And I count for some selection bias in there. A lot of teams will get overweight if they do a good job of converting third and short because obviously a third down conversion is a high expected points added play. But that might not be as informative as to how they're going to perform against another team further down the road. Same with run pass. You may be able to run over a worse team very convincingly but if you're not passing the ball efficiently on the hole, you're not going to be projected to do very well against other teams. Well, I find that early down, late down split interesting because like thinking in the NFL side of things, I know that there's big differences obviously like thinking back to the Eagles and I think it's 2017 where they basically did all their work on third and long and then the chargers early on this year, third and long, they were doing well and we saw regression from that. Is that kind of your goal there to account for teams that may be due for negative regression where they're just kind of playing out of their mind on third and long and trying to account for stuff like that? Yes. And specifically I think about a team like Baylor this year who they hired Jeff Grimes. They've been explosive. They have some really good skill talent and a really well coached offensive line. Their quarterback play hasn't been good but what they've been able to do is kind of milk extra value by going forward on fourth down at a time. And again, a fourth down conversion even more so than a third down conversion is going to be higher EPA. And so in terms of being descriptive about how they want to game, those late down EPA averages are informative. But if I'm trying to predict on average, how well are you going to do? Generally your performance on first and second down those kind of open downs, those kind of what are you trying to do? How good are you at it? Situations are really what's effective in kind of predicting what's going to happen going forward. On these previous I also have early down rush rate because again, your run tendencies and your kind of schematic measures are influenced by context. And so just keeping that on early downs I get a better broad brush of what are you trying to do? How well are you doing it? So I mean, you basically said with the EPA stuff that you're kind of looking at, success rate is better at predicting forward, right? Well, I specifically EPA, I use an EPA based success rate measure as kind of a descriptive, but for predictive I just use the expected points added which is kind of like a, it's like a weighted on base percentage for football. And so it gives you the, did you get a success? And then it also allows for like negative and positive successes. Okay. So when you finally put your prediction together, is it some additive thing with the EPA numbers and the ECHL and stuff or is it more complicated than that? No, I am an economist and I try and be as stupid as possible. And so I try and do done it. What is the simplest way that works? And so there is, you know, there's some endogeneity and so we have to, we can't just, you can't just do a linear model on these things and then predict something that's unbiased. I mean, you'll get, you can do that and you'll get that Ohio State and Alabama are gonna beat everybody, which could be right for a lot of it but isn't useful kind of in the middle. And so I actually do a little bit of econometrics here that is just a little bit of kind of, I tweak the distribution and I do a little algorithm that kind of accounts for run past selection. Heckman 1976, if anybody's interested in that. And I apply those to a model. So for the, you know, for the median sports better, yeah, I just run a regression. But for, you know, if you're interested in more kind of technical stuff, I use a little bit more flatter distribution than normal distribution and I use a kind of a selection process in this as well. Econometrics, the only econ class would not make me want to pull out my remaining hair. So I guess there's some common ground there, which is a good thing. Let's talk about the futures market here because we got a pretty big inflection point coming up this weekend because we don't know yet officially who will be in, who will be out for the college football playoff. And that gives us a chance to potentially buy low on some teams, buy before the spike with this weekend. When you look at the futures market right now, Parker, is there any value to you before those inflection points hit? Well, I think that college football is weird because however you project something, storylines also matter. And so something like Alabama being plus 800 for a championship here is super interesting to me because again, it's kind of like, all right, what's the probability that they beat Georgia? And then if conditional on them being in, the probability that they win is very high because you get a signal there. And so that to me is very, very interesting. And I think that Notre Dame at, I'm looking at Fandle here, Notre Dame plus 3000. I don't love it, but if you believe kind of numbers are like, hey, it's a 30% chance that Oklahoma State, Cincinnati and Michigan lose, they're probably in, they're crazier bets than that, I think. But again, Alabama is probably my sleeper pick there just because the history matters a lot. Yeah, for sure. So let's go on to some of these championship games. So we have Baylor at Oklahoma State, Fandle has Oklahoma State as a four and a half point favorite, total 46 and a half. There are clearly some quarterback issues that are going on here. Jerry Boahana did not play last week, even though Baylor still won. And so yeah, anyways, what do you see in this game? Well, I mean, a great job by Oklahoma State last week, they held Oklahoma's offense scoreless in the second half, and they held them scoreless on nine of 13 drives, that 14th drive was a touchdown for Oklahoma, but it was after an interception, it was a 14 yard field. So I don't know, it's still a really, really great performance by Oklahoma State there. I think that defense is, again, better than anything that Baylor has seen. Jerry Boahana being limited is interesting to me. Of course, Oklahoma State really stopped that offense. On the flip side, Oklahoma State's offense did not look very good the first time they played Baylor. And I think that they've improved a lot, they've gotten a little bit healthier. The issue for me here that stands out about whether Boahana is in or out, isn't necessarily one of quality, although they did look pretty bad against Texas Tech last week on offense. I think Jeff Grimes really has a thumb on kind of a game plan, but against Oklahoma State, I think Gary Boahana's legs and his mobility, coupled with Baylor's really disciplined offensive line, will give them way higher upside just in terms of a complimentary football sort of, their offense versus Baylor's defense. So that'll be interesting to see if Baylor can have Boahana in there and have that quarterback run threat, which just spreads the defense out a little bit to kind of stretch them there. I mean, I discount them almost a touchdown and a half without Boahana in general the last couple of weeks. And against Oklahoma State's defense with how well they've played recently, if Boahana's not in there, this could be not great for Baylor. So we're talking to you on Wednesday and we obviously don't know yet if Boahana will play. So does that impact your view of the betting markets of this game? Are you trying to hold out or do you want to get ahead of things? Think you have a good read on things and try to pounce now before we know for sure the way things will swing at Boahana. Yeah, so I mean, obviously I'm betting on Sundays. And then generally just kind of keeping tab on things throughout the week. If something's interesting, sometimes I'll, you know, if I really like my model, I'll double tap in the middle of the week. But generally with this, given the availability of the data that I have, play by play data, given the performance of my model historically not accounting for injuries and everything, I tend to think this on average kind of washes out. And of course, in situational spots, you can pick there. My model, I would have leaned towards Baylor, or excuse me, leaned towards Oklahoma State before I knew anything with Boahana. And so that would be something that I would be looking to kind of double tap on later in the week. But generally on aggregates, most of the time this works out pretty well with or without injuries, especially when a guy's been out for a couple of weeks. Right, for sure. And I think that makes sense. Go ahead, Ed. I was just gonna say, I think it's interesting that you said it's very obvious to bet on Sundays, which in one hand, which is in one sense, absolutely true. I think I put a couple bets on Sundays, but I usually wait til Monday, which is not really smart. But I don't know if everyone listening is betting on Sundays and Mondays, but that is definitely the time. And the time not to bet is two hours before kickoff on Saturday, where the- Yeah, especially after you've been at the tailgate for a little bit and you have Fando on your phone. Don't do that, don't do the confidence bet. Yeah, and I think it's funny, Andrew, first of all, he tracks closing lines, I think. And so that- I think he gets his market data on Monday, is what he told us. Oh, he does on Monday. Okay, so yeah, I've had a couple different, and there's actually a pretty stark difference in performance for me kind of throughout the week. And so that's why I try and do mine by Tuesday. And then again, these previews that I do are not explicit betting advice. I do not advise anyone to just bet this blindly, but I try and get those previews out earlier in the week just because there is a lot more value to be had, I think. And I think those betting previews are interesting here as we talk about the SEC Championship game with Georgia versus Alabama. Georgia's six and a half point favorite total here is down to 48 and a half. And when you ran your numbers for this game, put them up on Twitter, it showed it basically as being a toss up. And we have Georgia as a six and a half point favorite. So let's talk about the numbers specifically, not you. Let's talk about your numbers. Why do you think they are so high on Alabama in this game? Yes, so there's specifically looking, so I have this projected both over 30. I think there's some pacing issues with the amount of garbage time that both teams have been in. And I'm fine admitting, like, yeah, that's probably something to look into. But in terms of this being a toss up and why I think this is so close, I have two kind of splits. One, Georgia's offensive EPA per pass is second in the nation, but their EPA per rush is 78. And so when you see big splits there, you immediately think selection, what are they trying to do? And they are running a whole lot, 107th in early downs rush rate, that means 107th the slowest. So 61.4% of early downs, they're rushing. And so for Georgia's offense against Alabama's defense, Alabama's defense of EPA per rush is second overall. And so what Georgia has been doing is almost a little bit like a modern version of a service academy where they are running the ball very, very well. And when they're passing, they're making a count, right? And Alabama's offense, or excuse me, defense is really suited to kind of end the rush there. On the flip side, I look at the splits again. And Alabama's offense is 18th in EPA per pass. They're 96th in EPA per rush, but they're 11th in early downs rush rate, 43.8. So they are passing a lot at a high clip. And so that is going to dominate Georgia's defense of excellence because when I account for schedules, no one that Georgia has played has passed at this volume and efficiency that Alabama has on offense. The other thing to look at is that in terms of game control, they've both been really, really similar. I think my favorite stat this season, it's like the opposite of a Bill O'Brien fun fact is against Texas A&M, Alabama had six first downs inside the Texas A&M 20, and they scored 23 total points. They had some serious issues finishing drives. They've gotten better as the season has gone on. And so when you adjust for opponents, when you account for how well they're playing recency and when you account for the run pass splits situationally, Alabama's offense has been playing way better than it kind of looked earlier. And their defense aligns really nicely with what Georgia's trying to do in a way to make them have to earn it. That's really interesting. And I think that like the rationale makes sense there, but now we shifted to you. Do you agree with those numbers? Are you bullish on Alabama here? Cause like there are a lot of times where like, I don't agree with my stuff and I'm not going to bet it. Even though it says, Hey, there's value on like the Vikings or the Charters or whatever. So is it enough where you actually want to make this actionable and get some action on Alabama here? So my prior, before I ran my model was that Alabama was going to cover just because again, college football narratives matter, right? And so this being a toss up has me very nervous, but the line being six and a half point, like if you got this at six and a half points, I don't know why you wouldn't bet that just because SCC championship, the history of these two teams and Alabama playing recently, do I believe that Alabama is going to win? No, I'm not putting any money on the money line. Do I believe that Georgia and Alabama are going to play very close games? Yes, absolutely. Do I believe that Georgia is a touchdown better than Alabama on a neutral field? No, I don't. And so I'm inclined like if you bet Alabama here, you think that their recent play on defense and the way that the rush defense has been playing will be so frustrating to Georgia that their offensive upside will have an, you know, kind of opportunity to lay itself out. I'm inclined to think that way, but I wouldn't do a money line here. I think I would lean towards Alabama if I was going to bet this. Yeah, this is a fascinating game for me because when you think about who has the better coach and the better quarterback, the answers are both for the underdog. You think about who Georgia has played this year and through no fault of their own, Clemson Stinks, Florida Stinks, Auburn Stinks, compared to their usual standards. By my numbers, the best team they've played is Tennessee. And, you know, I mean, my numbers all adjust for that too. I've not bet anything on this game, but it's a tough handicap for those reasons. And I think that all agrees with what you're saying, right? I mean, Alabama's NFL caliper wide receivers are going to be the best thing that Georgia's defense has seen. And maybe they can handle it, but I think that's up for debate. Yeah, well, and Georgia's like an interesting exercise in opponent adjustments this year because their schedule has not been amazing, the offenses that they've played, but they've held opponents to like 28% of their season averages and EPA. And so they're playing really bad teams, but they're just absolutely decimating them. And so that's where you get into these ideas about like, is that exponential? Is that multiplicative? Is that, yeah, like, how do I count for that? It's an interesting exercise and kind of adjusting for these opponents. It certainly is. And we'll see how that plays out on Saturday, but it should be a really fun game either way. Let's talk now about the Big 10 championship game in Indy. It's Michigan versus Iowa. Michigan, 10 and a half point favorite. It was 11 and a half on Tuesday. Now back to 10 and a half. Total here is 43 and a half. And let's talk narratives. You said narratives matter in college football. Let's talk about one here because Michigan just beat Ohio State, obviously a massive, massive win over a big rival. You stormed the field and all that stuff. And it's hard to quantify the psyche of college football players because they're 20 years old and that's difficult. So does that worry you at all with Michigan? Or is this just like talk radio narrative, stupid fodder, or do you think it's kind of legit? I certainly think kind of the let down spot is real and comfortable and is something that happens. But I usually constrain that to the regular season where you win a big game and then you lose the next one or you're looking ahead, Baylor lost to TCU this year in a game that they had no business losing because they were looking ahead to Oklahoma. And so I think that with a guy like Harbaugh, speaking of narratives, who hasn't won the Big 10 since he's been there, who hasn't made the playoff, to have this opportunity here and then to have a pretty dang good chance if you win the Big 10 to win the college football championship, I don't think there's gonna be let down situation here. I think that Iowa versus Nebraska was probably more emotionally taxing on Iowa. They had a couple of field goals early on, had a turnover on downs, had a fumble, or was like, they were moving the ball decently and still got the juice of the comeback in Lincoln. But I think that Iowa's offense has really, really stalled. People have been a lot more guarded about going forward on fourth downs, about special teams, about turnovers. As they've realized, Iowa's recipe is get a short field and ruin your life. The thing that really stands out to me here is that Michigan is living on the big play, right? They on offense, they're moving the ball pretty consistently, 18th in success rate and 35th in EPA. And so the way Michigan's offense kind of works is like, get a little bit, get a little bit, get a little bit and then break one off. For instance, the Penn State game they won with that big play at the end. Iowa's defensive success rate is 10th but their defensive EPA is 23rd. So kind of similar split, they're actually allowing the big play a little bit more than they have earlier in the season. And so again, I think this matches up nicely and the narrative in a game of such big stakes, I think for Michigan is well-defined. I don't know that they're gonna have a letdown spot here. I would agree. I mean, it's hard balls, right? Cause I mean, as far as I have any delusions about they're gonna be in the Rose Bowl if they win. Like I think that Ohio State's gonna be in the Rose Bowl unless Iowa wins by like 50. So I don't even know what Iowa's playing for in this. I mean, obviously to win a championship and that's important, but if we're talking about like narratives and stakes, Michigan has so much more on it for it here. Yeah. And I mean, hardball tends to do pretty well when he's a big favorite as well. So I don't think, yeah, I don't think that's much of an issue, but we'll let Jim talk about it. I had to ask, like I'd kind of do my job as like, you know, let's talk about the narratives here. So 10 and a half is kind of a big number Parker, but as we said, Michigan big incentive to win here. Obviously a very good team. I think we probably overlooked that as well. Any interest for you on this game from a betting perspective? Yes, 10 is a lot, but if you think about the quality of Michigan's defense and the lack of quality in Iowa's offense, you can see very easy how this game kind of gets out of hand or how Iowa gets far enough behind where even if it's, you know, quote unquote close, they can't break that 10 point barrier there. And I think if you're talking about physicality, which you have to when you talk about Iowa football, they played Wisconsin and got pretty outclassed earlier this season. Michigan showed last week that they are a very, very physical football team and they want to be. I wonder if Iowa's success, the teams that they have beaten all have issues kind of on the offensive line, all have issues with physicality. I wonder if Michigan's physicality isn't gonna be the dominating factor here, especially up front, although Iowa's excellent. Like it's gonna be a great matchup, but I do think that this is the most physical team that Iowa has played all season. And so I certainly would be inclined towards Michigan here. Yeah, I think Michigan winning the way they did last week is a good indicator of the fact they can win that kind of game because that's how they want to get to Ohio State. Okay, we got a lot of other games on the board this week, Parker. Any other standing out to you in terms of betting for this week? Man, I really like the spot for Houston versus Cincinnati. Again, if you got this early, you got this 11 some places, 10 and a half. And Cincinnati sure has been playing with their food, but Houston's defense is legitimately good. And we saw Eastern Carolina with way worse athletes than Houston be a little bit disruptive towards Cincinnati. Cincinnati had its special teams touchdown last week and everything. And I think that Houston's defense will be disruptive against a Cincinnati offense that's not as good as the defense. And then Houston, Clayton Tunes has been playing pretty decently. As of late, their offense has a couple of playmakers that are really exciting. I think this will be one of the better games this weekend and I would lean towards the underdog here. Yeah, 10 and a half, big number. And you still get 10 and a half at Fandall Sportsbook. So you can find that there on Houston versus Cincinnati. And should be a fun game. A lot of fun games this week. A lot of big stakes. And we'll be interested to see how it all unfolds. That is Parker Fleming. Check him out on Twitter at stats of war and check out cfb-grass.com. Parker, we appreciate the time. I know it's been a crazy week so far, but hopefully you can rest up the next couple of days and get set for Pack 12 on Friday night and on Saturday as well. We appreciate the time. Good luck to you with your bets this week. Yeah, thanks so much, guys, I appreciate you chatting. Covering the future. Big thank you once again to Parker Fleming for swinging by and breaking down his thoughts on the College of Football Conference Championships. Again, find him on Twitter at stats of war and check out cfb-grass.com. And he talked about EPA stuff. And if you go to cfb-grass.com, I'm a visual person and you can see it with the gradient colors. And it's very good for my dumb brain. And I really appreciate that he does that. And so it's a nice little like visual cue to just get a good overview of EPA stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And then Parker has his own projections up on Twitter, puts together some nice little visuals. I do think there's a lot of value and he clearly has code that generates these things, right? Yeah. But that's a good thing. So yeah, definitely, definitely check it out. Also Parker explaining a EPA. He like, it was like he was copying, pasting the old explainer I'd use for a number fire. Like the third and one was always the exact situation I would use is like the demonstrator of the value of EPA. So that was a good little trip down memory lane for me as well. Let's transition now into covering the future for today and add you are kicking things off by talking about the big 10 championship game, Michigan versus Iowa. What do you see in this game? So I see a game in which both teams have been getting a lot of credit in the markets. And my belief is that only one of the two teams deserves it. And the team that doesn't deserve it for me really is Iowa. They've been tutored on offense this season. When I look at success rate adjusted for who you've played they're 118th in the nation. And among Power Five teams only Vanderbilt at 124th is worse. And they're not gonna take too much solace in the fact that like Indiana is close to them at 115th. Northwestern is close to them at 101st. So they're not good. So that might be masked a little bit because Spencer Petrus came back. He got hurt against Northwestern, missed the entirety of games against Minnesota and Illinois, didn't play the first half against Nebraska, but they needed him. And he came back and led Iowa to the victory. So he was good in bringing him back in that game. He was good in the second half against Penn State, another win that they got. But when you look at the season overall, Iowa's offense has not been good. Both these teams really have great defenses. Iowa ranks eighth in my adjusted success rate and Michigan isn't too far behind at 10th. My numbers like Michigan by about 13 and a half points and I think there's value here at 10 and a half. My only concern is if this game gets really slow the defenses dominate. I think I wrote in my preview that Michigan's offenses, I still consider them a work in progress. Yes, they had a great game against Ohio State but the receiving core isn't fantastic. The quarterback is in his first full year as a starter. They've been able to run the ball, but even in that sense, they're not like top 10 in rushing success right after I adjust. They can be good obviously. My only concern is that the game gets bogged down and then they have a hard time covering. But look, I don't think there's gonna be any kind of letdown factor. I'm not worried about that. And just for some perspective of the jump that Michigan's made, preseason I would have made Iowa a 2.2 point favorite on the neutral site. So Iowa would have been favored. If you just look at the data from this year, Michigan would be favored by 13, which is pretty close to what my primary model has. So vast improvement for that team and I think they do get it done. Not only did it win, but I think they cover. Right, and in Michigan by 13, it sounds like a lot of that adjustment from 2.2 or whatever it was on neutral field came early on this year because your numbers, as we talked about, liked Michigan right away. What do you think was like the key for you in being on then so early? What helped you identify the fact this team actually had the upside to do what they did this year? I think if you think back, like they decimated some, what turned out to be pretty decent teams. I mean, they beat down Western Michigan pretty good and Western Michigan turned out to be decent. They just hammered Northern Illinois and that was a team that had beaten Georgia Tech. Okay, fine, they don't look so good this year, but a team that is in the Mac championship game. So, I mean, I think that's the thing that we've learned from analytics that no matter who you played, if you decimate teams, like you're considered pretty good and you don't have to look further than Georgia to see a team that Georgia's the perfect example of that. When you destroy people, they've made up for their inferior strength of schedule because they've simply destroyed people. So, yeah, you were asking me about Michigan. Yeah, I mean, it's just been a rapid shift. I think the defense has been good. And I did write my newsletter last year that I last week that I did not bet Michigan against Ohio State because of respect for Ohio State's offense and it's interesting to think about, right? Should I have done it? Well, I mean, the simple answer is yes, because it won. Right. But the less simple answer is like, there were clearly sharps that were hammering Michigan. Ohio State was an eight and a half point favorite at some point in the week. And I think Circle was at like six and a half. They were at seven when we recorded on Wednesday. And I think it was at seven at a lot of books on Saturday. Yeah, so I think a close seven and a half at a lot of places, but Circle was like six, six and a half. Yeah. And I think Fandle was on Michigan's side too. So there were clearly sharps that were hammering Michigan later in the week. I still didn't do anything about it, which is my loss, but at least I got the over. So that was nice. There are many bets I've regretted not laying. I will say that. I've regretted laying some bets. So I think in general, a preference towards not betting is probably a good default to have. It is tough when like your numbers say to bet and you don't. But I think for the most part, there aren't a lot of bets I regret not making the most part. So yeah, overall process, why I think that was a wise one. But either way, we'll see what Michigan does this weekend versus Iowa. My mom is from Iowa and Iowa fans, stepdad from Michigan, Michigan fans. So jealous that I'm not there to watch a very tense Saturday night. My cover in the future for this week, we're having Donnie Seymour on tomorrow to talk NFL. And in the spirit of Donnie, I am turning to a team total. I like this week in the NFL side of things that is the Broncos over 18 and a half at minus one 10 versus the Chiefs. And the Chiefs defense has played a lot better recently. But the Broncos offense from an efficiency perspective has been pretty decent. They rank 15th in schedule adjusted passing offense per number fires metrics. And that includes the time when they were without Jerry Judy knew a fan this time, their tackles and things up. The team's EPA per drop back with Jerry Judy is point one, two, according to next gen stats without its point, oh, six. So Judy does make a difference here. So having him plus Noah Fantelevi is definitely a plus to the Broncos offense here. Plus it does seem like both Garrett Bowles and Bobby Massey, they're starting tackles could be back out this week. There was not just McFangio on Monday or Tuesday, saying they could play that'd be a good thing. Because when they were not out there in week 11, the Eagles defensive line really dominated. So that could be a concern against Chris Jones. I think that is some of the ways here. But recording on Wednesday, I think there's a shot they play. If they do 18 and a half is a very advantageous number. Now, again, the Chiefs defense has absolutely improved. We were talking with a whalecapper about how like, hey, are they going to be the worst team in defense all year? And he said, no, you know, probably things will get better because of regression. There are no 18th versus the past. They've gotten a lot better for sure. They did it against Dak Prescott, did it against Derek Carr, their quality quarterbacks. But I do think the 18 and a half number more than accounts of the defensive gains we've seen from the Chiefs defense. So I'm going to go at the Broncos over 18 and a half for my first bet this week and see what happens there. And what are your numbers saying about this game? The Chiefs versus the Broncos on a Sunday night football. Yeah, the Kansas City is up to 22nd when I look at past success rate on defense. I mean, they were by far the worst at one point in the season. So that is certainly some improvement. And that's just I think the typical regression that you expect for for defense that were awful. Like that defense was pretty decent last year. And a lot of the same pieces are back there. And I think they've been relatively healthy. So yeah, yeah, they've been all right. My numbers for the game like Kansas City by about eight, I think that's lower than what the market has. It's 10 or 10 right now. Yeah, that seems that seems like a lot. Yeah. What did Denver do last week? They beat the Chargers in pretty convincing fashion. Yeah, but a couple of defensive touchdowns. Right. It was mostly their defense. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I like Denver's defense all year. Right. It should be a fun game. Yeah, I feel value on the spread, too. But like, you know, try not to root against Patrick Mahomes. That's that's I've bet against Kansas City a lot. Like in the past since the Super Bowl on, I have bet against it a lot. I think in this spot, I prefer to go with the team total just because I'm a little, a little scared, a little scaredy cat. But I think that the team total is the more advantageous number here in like my number show value in the team total they do in the spread as well. I just think this is the better route for betting it right now. It's also interesting that my my model is showing a lot of value on Kansas City while they were struggling. And now it's going back to the way it usually is, which is the market gives them a couple more points credit. Yep. My numbers have said to bet against them a lot. And I've obliged eventually. I don't like talking about it publicly because it scares me. But, you know, I think here I will do so with the Denver offense. That is all that we have for today. Again, as I mentioned, Donnie Seymour swinging by tomorrow to break down NFL week number 13, we will talk about that Broncos versus Chiefs game. Get his thoughts there and other big NFL week 13 games to get that. Make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast while you're there, hit subscribe and leave a rating and review. Big thank you once again to Parker Fleming, our guest. Check him out on Twitter at stats award to find all those graphics for the game breakdowns can find his work again at CFB dash grass.com as well as football outsiders and bet us. Ed, what is going on this week over at the power rank? I had Mike Craig on football analytics show. We talked a lot about college football, championship games. And then and then college basketball. So it was nice to kind of give his approach on college basketball, which is actually less quantitative than it's been in the past. So Mike's approach sports better. And it's always interesting to get his opinion on things. Also, sign up for my free email newsletter. You can do that at the power bank.com. I write up games that I have that. And then we also I work at Edward E. Gross to Polish Seven Nuggets Saturday, which is a curated list of sports betting tips and news. So you can get that at the power bank dot com. Loved Mike when we had him on covering the spread last year. So looking forward to checking that out by searching for the football analytics show you can find Ed on Twitter at the power rank. I am at Jim Sonnis, J. I. M. S. A. N. N. S. You can also follow the fan dual podcast network at fan dual podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your college football bets. We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to talk some NFL. This has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network. What's up, guys? This is Jordan Spieth. If you're watching this video, please like and subscribe to the fan dual YouTube channel.