Your weekly dose of sports betting tips, news and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern. Even on Thanksgiving weekend.
Michigan at Ohio State – The Buckeyes came into this season with questions on defense, but DC Jim Knowles has fielded the 3rd best unit according to my success rate adjusted for opponent. Ohio State is 6th in rushing by adjusted success rate, so Michigan might not be able to run it down their throats like last season.
Michigan is tops in the nation in rush offense by my adjusted success rate. RB Blake Corum injured his knee in the first half of last week’s game. He came back for a single carry in the second half, and sources expect that Corum will attempt to play against Ohio State.
My member numbers like Ohio State by 6.9 points at home. While most of the market has the Buckeyes -8, sharp sports book Circa is at -8.5 as of Saturday morning.
College football playoff – The loser of Michigan and Ohio State will be a one loss team that failed to make the Big Ten Championship game. Their playoff fate hinges on the results for the next three teams in the college football playoff rankings.
Let’s look at the odds for these teams according to my college football member predictions.
- #4 TCU – A 40% chance they beat Iowa State and then Kansas State in the Big 12 Championship game. Their chance to win two straight goes down if Texas makes the conference title game.
- #5 LSU – The Tigers have had a great season, but they will be about a 9 point underdog to Georgia.
- #6 USC – A 31% chance they beat Notre Dame and Oregon in the Pac-12 Championship game. Their chance to win two straight goes up slightly if Washington makes the conference title game.
This season, The Power Rank member college football numbers have gone 73.8% (481-171) in predicting the winners of games straight up. This is better than the 72.4% of the closing spread from the markets.
United States versus Iran – The criteria for the United States to advance past the group stage of the World Cup is simple: Beat Iran and make the knock out stage. Draw or lose and go home.
Let’s look at two predictors for the United States to win.
- My numbers at The Power Rank give a 40.7% for the United States to win after including the second set of group stage matches.
- The market are more positive on the United States, as Pinnacle has a break even probability of 50.7% for a win over Iran. For the win, loss, draw market, Pinnacle takes an incredibly small hold of 2.8%, which suggests they have found the right price for this game.
Check out my predictions for the second and third group stage matches of the World Cup.
Working at Right Angle Sports (RAS) – Adam Chernoff recently started working at RAS, one of only a few reputable pick sellers, and he noted two things:
- The large team that puts in an enormous amount of work in following 363 college basketball teams.
- The importance of determining the value of a piece of information.
As a quant, I find the second point most interesting. RAS founder Edward Golden discussed the experience necessary in evaluating information on an episode of The Football Analytics Show.
Adam’s tweet thread on working at RAS is worth reading in its entirety.
NFL humor – “Oh, we did. We just wanted to see overtime even less.” Annie Agar rips on the Jets as part of her weekly NFL zoom meeting.
Data driven betting information
These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:
- Valuable
- Concise
- Entertaining
Other emails offer analysis of college football and NFL games that founder Ed Feng has bet.
To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”
Leave a Reply