 This is covering the spread part of the Fandall podcast network College football bowl season is officially here because we have got bowls coming up at this week Which means it is time to break down the bowls from a betting perspective from a bowl pool perspective by talking to whoever then Dr. Ed Feng will get his thoughts on bowl pool strategy We'll talk about some game He likes this for this bowl season and get you ready to fill out those bowl pools wherever you are doing So this is covering the spread right here on the Fandall podcast network and number fire calm My name is Jim Saunas. I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire calm Joined here as mentioned by dr. Ed Feng you can find his work at the power rank calm and Ed bowl season is upon us How are you doing today? I'm doing well. It's been pretty busy week with the World Cup and bowls going on but Got some nice products out for my members who are getting into bowl pools. So I'm pretty excited about that Yeah, we are recording right after the end of the Morocco versus France game We're gonna break down France versus Argentina on Friday after the player prop show with JJ Zachary So we'll get Ed's numbers on that matchup should be a pretty fun one. I think it's gonna be it looks pretty tight So it should be fun. The semifinals were a delight to watch as well So we'll talk about that on Friday after we talk to JJ over there before talk about college football Ed obviously the big news in college football this week was the passing of Mike Leach and Like I said on Tuesday, there was always a quote and People would like hype up the quotes about Mike Leach and you go and you're like, okay, you know, like he probably overhyped in this And you watch the actual video. It's like, oh, no this is actually just because everyone said and then you watch the offense and how like innovative it was and you see the Like the the fingerprints of Mike Leach offense is everywhere when you watch whatever level of football may be So many lasting impressions and memories of you from Mike Leach Yeah, I certainly respect all that he did for football and in the innovation on offense I was kind of wondered why I didn't go to the NFL as an offensive coordinator because I thought that would have been particularly interesting I had a chance to talk to him at the Sloan Sports Analysts Conference one year and I don't really remember what I asked him. I'm sure it was very intelligent, Jim, right? He came back. I love these important questions that never yeah, I Do remember his response. He was like very like he just started he just started calculating Oh, he had 15% possessions per game and and that would lead to this and that would lead to that And I believe this was like over a decade ago. Yeah, it was a while. So Yeah, he seemed just like he did, you know, like me and he seems like It's a pretty interesting. I mean, he's obviously a pretty interesting guy. Yeah, it's very sad that he has passed Do you get many college coaches going to Sloan because I don't recall what the one year I went I don't recall any college Coaches specifically being there, but I could have just overlooked it Yeah, that's a really good question. I know that I mean, I know Bill Conley had to push for a while to get a college football panel Oh, actually, yeah, I mean sometimes you do I talked to James Franklin there okay, and he was on a panel he was actually on that panel with Bill and I don't know. I don't I don't I don't understand why people don't think Franklin's a good coach even independent like I talked to him and we had a really nice conversation about strategy and You know, there was a decision he made in the Penn State Michigan game that we chatted about Yeah, you know, he was he was like, oh if I had to do it again, I would do this because of this Right, and I mean the man wins football games. Yeah, I mean recruits very well Yeah, what recruits very well like crude very well. Yeah, he wins a lot of football games I've also talked to Kevin Kelly there So he was the coach at Pulaski Academy where they always went for on fourth downs and O's tried on side kicks So you definitely see a lot of interesting people at Sloan Unfortunately, I don't know if I'm gonna be the expert at that anymore. I haven't been since the pandemic. So that's the COVID incident since the COVID incident Since since parking my rear end in the smallest room in Boston With cigar smoke in March of 2020. Yeah, I haven't been back since I don't blame you But hopefully we'll get back there at some point too and hopefully get talked to to pick the brains of more people Like Mike leach just innovators people who are very thoughtful about this stuff because we can always learn stuff from them as we learn from Mike's lead if we didn't learn we at least got a good quote for sure from Mike leach We'll talk about college football bull pools What we want to do from a strategy perspective for those and also talk about some bets that ad likes for this bull season in just one second But first a reminder to make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast tomorrow We have our NFL week 15 preview with Ryan Williams on Friday As I mentioned, we have JJ Zachary some of the player props and Ed will be back here talk about the World Cup final Get those shows right as they're posted by subscribing to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast But also over on the Fandall YouTube page looking to get more out of this NFL season Well now is the perfect time to download Fandall America's number one sportsbook because new customers getting no sweat first bet up to $1,000 that's free bets back if your first bet doesn't win just download the Fandall sportsbook app It is safe secure and super easy to use And you can bet on everything from the money line to touchdown scores to over others Plus Fandall is even even lets you combine your bets for a chance at a bigger payout But the same game parlay so don't miss a chance to get your first no sweat first bet up to $1,000 and free bets when you join it Fandall make every moment more this season with Fandall of official sports betting partner of the NFL must be 21 plus and president select states first online a real money wager only Refund issued is not withdrawable free bets that expire in 14 days Restrictions apply see terms at sportsbook. Fandall calm gambling problem call 1 800 gambler or was it fandall calm slash RG and Arizona 1 800 next step or Texan acceptify 3 3 4 2 in Connecticut 1 8 8 8 7 8 9 7 7 7 7 or visit ccpg.org Chat in Indiana 1 8 109 with it in Kansas in Wyoming 1 810 5 2 2 4700 in Kansas KS gambling health calm in Louisiana 1 8 7 7 7 7 0 stop In Maryland md gambling health org in new york 1 8 7 7 8 hope and wire text open y or in west virginia Go to 1 800 gambler.net Now let's dig in here to the college football bowl season We'll talk about betting specifically later on but we know a lot of people are doing these bowl pools We're picking every game whether it be against the spread confidence points and stuff like that I think the most common one like them to default in the espion is still the confidence points We'll start off there and talk about overarching strategies now you've done research on this You kind of think through these things when we discussed in the ncw tournament show What key thing should people keep in mind when making picks if we assume it is a confidence pool Yeah, you said the key thing there jim you you want You can't make contrarian picks if there's no confidence pools Yeah, it's a little bit hard to explain without showing you a visual of how the variance changes with win probability for a single game, but Basically, you need to change the confidence points in You need to change the confidence points in order to have kind of a lower expected value pick but a higher variance In in your bowl pool results. So that was one of the things that I guess it's been a while since I did that research, but It's an important thing, right? I mean you you can only kind of be contrarian if you change those confidence points if you take an underdog Pick them to win, but you have to move the confidence points so Yeah, so that's that's kind of what you want to do I mean a lot of the ideas are very similar to your march madness pools You again, you're trying to go for slightly lower expected value But higher variance and and with that higher variance strategy you have an opportunity to overtake other people and Yeah, again the strategy, you know, I if you Just want to win a pool It's best to get in a small pool 10 or less is probably the best and you can use use the favorites use my numbers Use the markets do whatever you can probably just pick the favorites and and you'll be pretty good to go there That's actually one of the other things that I was just Uncovering for a podcast on my on my on the football analytic show people are really bad at picking bowl games Like surprisingly bad You see a lot of crazy things out there And I don't think that has changed much So you can really take advantage of that, but you're just using just using analytics or the markets and But if you do end up in a bigger pool in intermediate-sized pool probably 30 or more You do want to go contrarian. So you do want to you do want to find some games in which Too too many of the people are picking the favorite and then you can pick the underdog Hopefully the underdog has a high win probability as close to 55 Excuse me as close to 50% as possible And you can really get some value that way and the the thought process there is When you are correct about that game you are gaining more points relative to the field by having a higher Point total assigned to it. Is that kind of the correct raising behind that? Exactly? Yeah, you're going to assign, you know, maybe 40 points to that, right? So one of the top totals that you can on the espn pool Um, and we can talk about an example of that, but essentially if that underdog wins at 48 or 47 percent You're going to get 40 some points that you know, maybe only Maybe only one uh one out of four of your opposition is going to get and that's going to give you an edge And the key thing is that espn lists the pick percentage for every single game Like for the mcw turnip pool, you have to go to a different page and like, you know Toggle back and forth to see the advancement odds But on the espn page, it shows you that miami has been picked 12 percent of time versus uab at 88 percent It shows you right there Um the splits and that makes it a lot easier to use as kind of a guard rail for deciding When you want to be contrarian, but as I'd said be Mindful of your pool size because you might not need to get weird. Exactly. Everyone else is just bad at it. Exactly Now the other thing that's important in these ball pools is opt-outs because that's going to change a lot of things Um, so they might not always be announced By the for all games by the time people are filling out their pools And a lot of them will have like later locks where you're not locked into your picks all at once You can move things around later on. Yeah, but should that play a role in the way people play these trying to I don't know if predict is the right word, but how do you account for opt-outs and filling out one of these ball pools? Right. So In my bowl report for people who want to get in pools like I actually just make adjustments So for example, Wisconsin and Oklahoma State both had their quarterbacks hit the portal Graham mertz and and uh, spencer sanders, which I'm not surprised about mertz. I'm a little surprised about sanders and So, I mean like, you know, the market's at one Wisconsin by one So I essentially made that the lowest confidence game Yeah, so you definitely want to make some kind of adjustments for that And I definitely do that in some of the products I have on my site As far as later opt-outs, I think the smart thing there is to just make those decisions later I mean those games don't walk until they kick so you can actually move them around Based on late news. I think one you want to follow is Alabama and whether uh, Bryce young and will Anderson jr. Play I'm thinking they don't but we'll see. Uh, you know, we're not going to find out about that for a while So that's definitely one to keep an eye on Are you lowering the confidence points on those later bowls in order to like account for that because like you There's less variance of the earlier games because we should have a better idea who's going to play But also then you might be putting higher confidence on games that Might actually be more volatile. We just are trying to bank on More certainty versus less uncertainty later on or more uncertainty later on more uncertainty later on Yeah, I mean, I feel like you should have plenty of I mean, you should probably have a distribution of You know, some games with high confidence points and some games with low confidence points And you should be able to move things around Based on those opt-outs Okay, now one thing you mentioned is as the pool size gets to around 30 or so That's where you start to potentially deviate a bit try to find those contrarian picks where you're getting points And other people are not getting points. So let's assume that I am Stuck ed. I cannot get out of this larger field pool. It's about 30 or 40 people Which contrarian picks do you think might be intriguing for those bowl pools if people find themselves in that situation? One thing one game my analysis pointed out was georgia southern versus buffalo Georgia southern is a pretty interesting team because they had a pretty epic win over nebraska earlier this season clay helms the coach there coming over from usc and I'm not sure if that's affecting the win probability or what the public pick rate is with this game So georgia southern hasn't been particularly good since then they went three and five in the sun belt And they have an identical six and six record Against the buffalo team that they are playing. So my numbers have it really close and But 75 of people on espn are picking georgia southern. I can only speculate about whether A lot of that has to do with that win over nebraska or maybe that was so long ago I think that's off. That's one example of a game that you might want to pick go contrarian My win probability has buffled at about 48 to win that game So there's there's potentially a lot of value there And circling back to our previous conversation What you're saying here is you would put buffalo not only as the winner but also with a decent number of confidence points on that Because you think the public is Is pretty far off in their their pick percentage versus what your numbers say Yes, you have to change the confidence points So to make something hot to take advantage of being correct. Yes. Yeah, okay So georgia southern versus buffalo the one at his pinpointing there that game is on the 27th for that one And again, like i'd said 76 right now the picks on georgia southern over at espn now One other cool thing espn is doing this year is there allowing you to make picks against the spread For these bull pools as opposed to doing it based on confidence points and stuff like that and I think this is great You're just kind of picking every game straight up. So this is a new format I believe I could just be wrong on that because I didn't play last year But you probably done a lot of research on those but it let's say apathetically you get tossed into one Ed don't have time to research for it How are you tweaking your approach for that kind of format? Right, I mean you're still trying to use analytics and um, you know, use your numbers and use your best handicapping You know, unless you want to seriously handicap 43 games You're probably going to be leaning a lot on some kind of objective system So are you do you get a choice with confidence points there? I'm pulling it up right now just to be totally safe and nope You're just picking against the spread no confidence points. Just who gets the most right Yeah, I mean, I would definitely start with you know, my numbers and kind of sort by the the change in Between the spread and and what I have and then then obviously do, you know, some homework, right? I mean, I have Tennessee beating Clemson, but headed hooker is not playing So probably requires a little bit of adjustment there depending on what you think is going on Obviously Clemson's in an interesting situation because They're starting the freshman quarterback in that game who came on Late in the last game. So a lot of stuff to do there Kind of an infinity of things to look at if you're seriously going to handicap all 40 some games With a lot of uh transfers. I have found that You know interim coaches don't matter much. Uh, this was also an old study But it didn't find that you perform too much differently You know, this matters for a team like Purdue In which you have problem decided to head off to Louisville So the interim coach bowl, he mean Yeah, is that Wait, which one? uh the Fenway bowl, um because Louisville is facing Cincinnati in that game. Um, It's just a delight across the board Yeah, there's some quarterback things with Louisville as well. So Yeah, there's there's no shortage of work for you for you to do if you truly want to do it against the spread pool Now the fun thing with those is that ESPN also does list the pick percentage on those so you can kind of know Where I think where people are going there you might not need to get as contrarian because If people are bad at picking straight up with confidence points, they'll probably be worse picking against the spread Um, just because inherently it's more of 50-50 toss up if the spreads are you know sharp Um, so you might not need to get as weird there I feel like my inclination at least Based on my feelings around this. I feel like I'd be inclined to just try to go the best against spread as I can I'm not sure how contrarian I need to get in that ed I guess it's a tough tough dilemma there. I feel like the bigger the pool you probably do have to get weird at some point But um, it's a tough tough one not knowing a lot of research on that Right, I mean again I think this idea that like you really can't change your variance by taking contrarian picks so You know, just just go with the team that you think is likely to win I mean, there's no confidence point now all the to turn and to really use that so Um, I would just I would just go for favorites And if you want to get some actual money down and not just via the bull pools or the spread picks Let's talk about uh, some bull bets available over at vandal sportsbook ed He had all these games at your disposal where you're seeing value right now Yeah, let's go. I mean, it's kind of weird that I'm going to go to the national semifinal But I'm going to go there and uh, I just think george is too much of a favorite in this game A lot a huge amount of respect for this georgia team and they're they're obviously really really good I just feel like the uh, the markets are kind of over waiting what happened to ohaha estate at home against michigan We talked about this on the show before um I mean honestly ohaha estate kind of dominated the first half and michigan was able to stay close because they hit a couple big plays Michigan was able to dominate the second half and then also break some some big plays to kind of pull away at the end I think we're forgetting. Well first in that game. I mean, ohaha estate had a much better success rate than michigan in this game Uh, there's a huge random element and explosive plays and um, you know Is ohaha estate's defense going to adjust and and not give out that many explosive plays to georgia That's the more likely scenario. You're going to see a lot of regression there And and also like let's not forget ohaha estate has the best one of the best pass offenses in the nation Jack Jackson smith nijigba is not going to play I think the story is that he could not make it back for this game So he decided to go to the nfl But again, it doesn't really matter because they have so much talent on that side of the ball CJ stroud is going to be playing they have everything to play for And uh, so I bet ohaha estate plus seven. I'm not sure if you can still find that number Um, I make it, you know, my model has had these two teams very close for the the entirety of the season When you look at some metrics based on just, uh Metrics from the current season The like just data from the current season like the max I can find for systems that I respect is like georgia by five So still a lot of value, uh in terms of I think there's value in in ohaha estate plus seven For the reasons I mentioned it kind of reminds me of last year with uh georgia they played a game against alabama in the uh In the sec championship game And georgia got smashed right and it was a combination of explosive plays by alabama um And then georgia played really well those last two games against against michigan and alabama and ended up winning a title so um Not saying that's gonna happen again with ohaha estate Actually kind of hope not but I think everyone's overlooking how good this team is Well, you think too like the last time we saw how estate was that game So that like that second half is burdened in everyone's mind. It was a very Well televised game a lot people saw it a lot people talked about after the fact Uh talked about it leading into the uh college football playoff selection committee So it's burdened people's brains. Now the number is six and a half right now minus 105. They would fan to a sports book Um, I believe the best you can get is minus 103 at bat rivers at this point So you're not going to get a seven anymore. We can still get six and a half at minus 105, which is not that bad either So I think there's still value there if you've got it Again, if you said the strongest you can get to based on any like number you respect is five, there's still value there. It seems like I believe there's value. I I would bet plus six and a half. I'm I'm happy that I caught the sevens knowing that Yeah, I mean, I think it's going to move that way. I don't I don't know I don't think six and a half will be around like right And with the jackson smith and jigba thing. He didn't play the entire year basically so anything any numbers you're running based on 2022 Ohio states include five receptions first smith and jig for the entire year So it's not as if this loss deviates them from their baseline during the year It's kind of like what they wore the whole year Which is it's thanks not to give an upgrade that he'd bring because he's amazing But you know, he's been gone the whole year effectively. Yeah, exactly The other the other thing to mention about Ohio state is they had that performance against northwestern Where they won 21 7 and it didn't really look good Stroud had like 76 yards passing They had 76 yards passing because the winds were 30 miles per hour in that game So there were there's some kind of extenuating circumstances around that as well I also thought that game is interesting because they started to run Stroud more in that game And they haven't done that a whole lot and we talked I don't I think it was recently about how You were into a rushing quarterback in a high-leverage game. You thought they were rushing prop was might have been Might have been the actually it was McCarthy against Ohio state Yeah, and we saw Stroud run a lot in that northwestern game I think that's on the table in these playoffs as well He didn't do it against michigan at all but like that was like he's not a runner, but like He was good doing that in that game and I wouldn't be shocked they tap into that again here Yeah, I mean the whole playbook is on the table against Georgia, right? I mean you're gonna bring everything out and maybe maybe running stroud isn't in the initial playbook But maybe that changes based on how things go Stroud didn't run against michigan because he he got he had like all day to throw In the first half there was absolutely no reason to run him Um with McCarthy. He actually is a runner. He's he's a tremendous athlete You probably saw that when he came in. I mean if you still had the george michigan game from last year on the semifinal like when he came in He he really showed his athleticism. He is an athlete and Michigan really didn't I mean they essentially didn't have to run him all here I mean, that's essentially what it came down to right um, and then when it's Ohio state, obviously that all changes Um, that's going to continue to change. Um And yeah, that's that's definitely a threat Yeah, I I expect michigan to do that. Maybe not against tcu depending on how the game's grip goes But certainly whoever they play in the final he He will run for sure Speaking of uh, kade mackenor. Did you see this quote from him today? He was on a podcast talking about the Iowa offense and he said Please keep saying it's the poopiest. I'm gonna you know amend this Please keep saying it's the poopiest offense in college football. Please just think we're gonna be so poopy next year Please and it's like, you know, I will uh, that's I you had to beg but I'll do it, you know Dude, does he realize like uh, sam leport or leport or whatever that He's not gonna be around next year Their whole receiver room left. They're all gone. I mean, I don't blame him honestly like I mean, he'll probably have some he'll probably have some good. He'll probably have a good line I just I love the confidence. I'm sure I can I'm sure I can find worse I'm sure I can find worse uh teams Yeah, uh, than Iowa, but still I mean for a power five program I respect the confidence. I respect the confidence. That is for sure All right, that is all that we have here for today on this college football bowl version of covering the spread But like I said, I'll be back with us on friday talk about uh, france versus argentina ed I'm gonna release you to go do some research on that study up and we'll talk to you again friday But before we do so, uh, I do want to give you a chance to plug all the stuff you got going on over at the power Bank because it is a busy time of year for you not just with the world cup But also with this college football stuff. What's going on for you there? Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for asking Uh, you know new members of the site this week obviously get all access to all my bowl stuff But I'm also having a drawing for uh, a copy of net gains the book by ryan ohanlon I think it's an it's excellent. I think it's an essential read for anyone interested in analytics or soccer Either one independently So, uh, you can check that out at the power rank net And also there, I mean if you're not up for getting a membership for the year You can grab the bowl season report. It gets all my predictions as well as all my bowl pool advice So again, you can check that all out at the power rank net I will be searching for a bowl pool after this to see if I can find one that I like and we'll Be cooking up that and using ed's numbers trying to make those picks successfully find ed on twitter at the power rank Check out the football analytics show as well and find ed's numbers at the power rank net as he said I am on twitter at gymsonus Well, we'll talk to you once again tomorrow to break down nfl week number 15 ed is back with us on friday Talk world cup. We'll talk to all of you then this has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network