Dr. Ed Feng

How to beat college football bowls without doing any work

As a busy professional, you want to win your college football bowl bets without putting in the time. With a career and life, there are only so many hours in a day.

In addition, handicapping bowls has become a much more time intensive process the last few years. You need information on opt outs and injuries that can change by the hour.

With the evolving college football bowl landscape, no one will give you a bigger edge than Right Angle Sports (RAS). They have army of veteran handicappers and researchers that dig out every relevant nugget of information.

As an example of their process, consider Washington versus Texas in the Alamo Bowl last season. On the RAS podcast, professional bettor Eddie Walls noted all the opt outs for Texas, which included two running backs, three edge rushers and a cornerback. Texas had also signed the 3rd best recruiting class, which suggested even more opt outs.

In contrast, Washington had zero opt outs. In addition, QB Michael Penix seemed pumped to play in his first bowl game. Eddie liked Washington +3.5 at the time of the podcast, and the market moved his way to close at +3. Washington covered by winning 27-20.

At The Power Rank, I have traditionally put out a bowl product based on my predictive analytics. However, the opt outs make accurate quantitative predictions very difficult. The 2023 bowl season is not my strength.

For the 2023 season, the Right Angle Sports college football service is 67-47 with 3 pushes for +15.3 units. The bowl service offers at least 10 plays, and these plays might start as early as tomorrow (Monday, December 4).

Purchasing the bowl service also helps my business at The Power Rank, as I am an affiliate partner. Check out the Right Angle Sports bowl service (then click on the College football tab).

5-Nugget Saturday, December 2, 2023

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

Looking for smart betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor.

NFL tackles and assists prop – Ryan Noonan of 4for4 Football has hit on 62.5% of his tackle props the past two seasons. This week, he likes Los Angeles Rams S Jordan Fuller against Cleveland for a number of reasons.

First, Cleveland averages the most offensive plays per game this season. This creates an average of 70.2 tackles and assists (TAs) per game, 14% more than the league average. Cleveland’s defense is the driving force here, limiting teams to a league-low 4.4 plays per drive.

Second, Fuller gets another boost here due to the Rams home scorekeeper. Rams games have averaged a high assist rate for three straight seasons, with an assist per opportunity rate 6% higher than the NFL average. The Rams get an even higher assist rate compared to their opponents for these home games.

Even though Joe Flacco at QB for the Browns projects for fewer plays, Ryan’s model projects 6.9 TAs for Fuller. There is value on Jordan Fuller over 5.5 tackles and assists, +110 at DraftKings.

Follow Ryan Noonan on X and catch him on the Move the Line podcast for all of his insights.

San Francisco at Philadelphia, NFL Week 13 – On an episode of The Football Analytics Show, NFL data scientist Ben Brown likes the Eagles at home in this marquee game on Sunday.

Ben has Philadelphia as better than San Francisco by his metrics. In addition, he notes that Philadelphia leads the NFL in expected points added when behind this season.

For San Francisco, turnovers are potentially an issue, as QB Brock Purdy has made an interception worthy throw on 3.4% of his pass attempts (2.4% NFL average interception rate). Ben likes Philadelphia +3 at home versus San Francisco, and the member numbers at The Power Rank agree (Eagles by 0.7 points).

College football playoff semi-final spreads – Chris Andrews, sports book director at the South Point in Las Vegas, has a list of point spreads for potential games. Highlights include:

Michigan -7 vs Washington. This spread will be less after Washington’s strong performance in a win over Oregon on Friday night.
Georgia -15 vs Florida State. Combined with my member numbers, this suggests the adjustment for the absence of Florida State QB Jordan Travis is about 5 points.

Chris’s numbers also imply Georgia -3 vs Michigan. Follow Chris on X for all of his bookmaking insights.

No SEC teams in the college football playoff? – For this to happen, Alabama must beat Georgia. Otherwise, Georgia makes it as an unbeaten SEC champion.

To have any chance to lock out both Georgia and Alabama, these three teams must also win (win probability is from the FanDuel moneyline on Friday afternoon):

Michigan, 94%.
Florida State, 52%.
Texas, 85%.

There is a 15% chance that these three teams and Alabama (36% probability) win.

Michigan and Florida State would automatically join Washington in the playoff. Then, the committee will have a long conversation about whether Texas, Alabama or possibly Georgia gets the last spot.

It is impossible to predict the behavior of a room full of people who scream bloody murder at the word algorithm. Let’s assume a coin flip between Texas and Alabama, which implies a 7.5% chance the SEC gets left out.

Yesterday, FanDuel also had two prices for this set of playoff teams: Michigan, Pac-12 champion, Florida State, Texas. The sum of the break even probabilities was 5.4%.

NSFW football humor – We take a break from our regular programming of Annie Agar and SEC Shorts to bring you this child from Philadelphia.

Philly Kids being raised Right @BarstoolPhilly pic.twitter.com/kDd9UDUEYa
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) November 26, 2023

If you think this is an AI generated deep fake, then you haven’t been to a game in Philly.

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

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 and a sample of predictions usually saved for paying members of The Power Rank.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”

Oregon vs Washington, Pac-12 Championship Game 2023

By Dr. Ed Feng Leave a Comment

These are two teams headed in opposite directions since their regular season meeting, a game in which Washington won by 3.

Washington remains undefeated, but it has been a struggle. They beat Washington State by 3 last week as a 15 point favorite. This win made their record 7-0 record in one score games this season, an unsustainable rate.

Washington’s offense is still elite with QB Michael Penix and NFL caliber receivers like Rome Odunze and Jalen McMillan. The defense has actually moved up to 37th in my adjusted success rate.

However, Oregon has simply dominated teams since the loss to Washington, both on the scoreboard and by success rate. Let’s look at two examples:

Oregon clobbered Utah 35-6, and they had a significant advantage in success rate (60.3% to 31.8% for Utah). Utah later gave Washington all they could handle in a 35-28 game.
Oregon dominated rival Oregon State by a 31-7 score last week. The prior week, Oregon State took Washington to the wire in a 2 point loss. Oregon State had a 41.1% success rate compared to 34.0% for Washington.

In addition, Oregon QB Bo Nix is the favorite to win the Heisman (-190 at DraftKings). A signature performance in the Pac-12 championship game would seal the win.

In my aggressive model that tends to move on recent performance, Oregon is first in the nation, ahead of Georgia, Ohio State and Michigan. This model has Oregon by 12.5 points over Washington at neutral site.

I know this seems crazy after Washington closed -3 at home against Oregon. However, the Ducks have dominated.

There is no longer Oregon -9 like I recommended to members of The Power Rank on Sunday night when the member numbers were posted. But I would still take Oregon -9.5.

Here is a sample of predictions available to members of The Power Rank.

CFB. Florida State will beat Louisville by 3.3 points at a neutral site. This prediction doesn’t account for the absence of Florida State QB Jordan Travis. Backup Tate Rodemaker had a 32.0% passing success rate against Florida (39.7% college football average). A proper adjustment probably puts this close to a pick.

NFL. Houston will beat Denver by 1.3 points at home. In the preseason, my numbers would have made Denver -4 on the road. Houston has exceeded expectations though, and data from the current season would make Houston -7 at home. Both my prediction and the market (Houston -3.5) split the difference.

NFL. Kansas City will beat Green Bay by 6.3 points on the road. Green Bay QB Jordan Love has been great in 3 of the past 4 games, but against lesser defenses (rank by my adjusted passing success rate).

Los Angeles Rams, 15th.
Los Angeles Chargers, 26th.
Detroit, 31st.

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

This article was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter at noon Eastern on Thursday, November 30, 2023. The market has moved since then.

This newsletter is a free service that strives to be:

Valuable
Concise
Entertaining

Every week, I send out 5-Nugget Saturday, my curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor. If you’re looking for action on a weekend, this is the service for you.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”