With the college football season at the half-way point and with about a third of the NFL schedule behind us, Harry Bondi digs inside his Handicapper’s Notebook and divulges some key stats, trends and observations:
While NFL ratings are down due to saturation and the U.S. Presidential Election, the games have been closer than ever. According to our database, through Week 6 there have been 50 games decided by 7 points or less. That’s the most since 1990 at this point in the season.
While the games have been close, the number of true “power” teams is the NFL has decreased significantly. New England is far and away the top-rated team right now and then there is a huge drop off, the biggest gap we’ve seen in our power ratings since the Pats went undefeated in 2007.
As for “power” teams on the college level, No. 1 ranked Alabama has 11 defensive or 
special teams TDs this season. That’s more than the Stanford offense has scored this season. Since the start of last season, Bama has scored 21 non-offensive TDs. You would think that with that many “cheap” TDs in their games, the Tide would also be an “over” machine, but they are actually 11-9 to the under since the start of last season. The reason? Nobody is better at grinding a game to a halt and slowing it down offense in the second half with a big lead than Nick Saban. How high is the power rating on Alabama? Well, this week they host Texas A&M, a team that is 6-0 SU, 4-2 ATS, averages 40 points a game and had last week off to prepare. Despite all of that, Bama opened as a 16.5 favorite on Sunday night and it was immediately bet up to 18.
As predicted in August in our annual “College Football Coaches on the Hot Seat,” Purdue has mercifully fired Darrell Hazel, who was No. 1 on our list this year. As we mentioned over the summer, if it wasn’t for a $6.7 million buyout, Hazel would have already been fired. Hazell’s contract ran through the 2018 season, and Purdue owes him $4.45 million. He ends his Purdue tenure with a 9-33 record, and from what we hear it was Hazel’s inability and indifference to recruiting that was the main problem. More than half of the first two classes he recruited either transferred, quit or never made it into the starting lineup.
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Harry Bondi’s “Steam Team” improved its record on College Football Top Plays to 6-1 (86%, +26.5 units of net profit) on Saturday when Colorado (-11) steamrolled Arizona State, 40-16. In the victory, Colorado outgained ASU, 580-199, in total yards and limited the Sun Devils to 50 yards rushing. This was a game that Harry and his handicapping team circled a few weeks ago because they knew it would mark the return of Colorado QB Sefo Liufau to the lineup against a Sun Devil pass defense that is the worst in all of college football. What’s more, the Buffaloes talked all week long about how they had been embarrassed the last three years by Arizona State, including a 54-13 blowout loss last year.
One of my longtime Las Vegas sportsbook director friend tells me that the public has been killing him betting “obvious” NFL sides and teasers. A closer look at the numbers proves his point. Through Week 6, the teams with the better straight up records are covering the spread and the teams with the worse straight-up records are not. The top 5 teams in the Pointspread Standings (Minnesota, Atlanta, Dallas, New England and Buffalo) are 24-5 ATS and 23-6 straight up. The bottom five (San Francisco, Chicago, Carolina, NY Jets and Tampa Bay) are 6-23 ATS and 7-22 straight up.
The Minnesota Vikings are on a 19-3 ATS run under head coach Mike Zimmer, but the value may be long gone in betting the team from here on out. During that 22-game run, the line was between -3 and +3 15 times and the Vikings have only been favored by more than four points three times. With Minnesota right now very much a “public” team, we think the pointspread may catch up to them in the coming weeks.
Speaking of pointspread heroes, despite a non-covering win over UCLA on Saturday, Washington State Head Coach Mike Leach and his Cougars have gone 14-5 ATS since the start of last season, including an 8-1 ATS record as a dog with five outright wins. Incredibly, two of the five non-covers they have had during this run came in outright losses to FBS schools Portland State and Eastern Washington. On Saturday, WSU (-8) led UCLA 24-7 entering the 4th
quarter and gave up a back-door TD with three minutes remaining.
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After Monday night’s embarrassing loss to Arizona, the Jets have now scored just seven second-half points, compared to nine turnovers, this season. The only thing this team has going for it is that it has played the toughest schedule in the league this year, thus far, and it will get easier in the coming weeks. But is it too late? Is this team mentally shot?
At 0-6 ATS, Oregon is the lone college football team without a pointspread cover. We wrote in last week’s newsletter that Ducks Head Coach Mark Helfrich should be canned and we’re now starting to hear rumors that OU may make a grandfather offer to former LSU Head Coach Les Miles to take over next year, if they can’t snag away Lane Kiffin from Alabama. PJ Fleck, the head man at Western Michigan, is also a name that is getting a lot of attention and will likely get a major job before next year.
First-time NFL starting QBs continue to play well – and cover. The group of Trevor Siemian (Denver), Dak Prescott (Dallas), Jimmy Garoppolo (New England), Jacoby Brissett (New
England), Paxton Lynch (Denver) and Cody Kessler (Cleveland) have now gone a combined 17-7 (71%) ATS.
In Georgia, is it too soon to say that Kirby Smart might be one-and-done at Georgia? Bulldog fans are furious this week after Georgia lost to lowly Vanderbilt, 17-16, as a 14-point favorite, marking its second home SEC loss in three weeks, after winning 15 of their previous 18. Georgia outgained Vandy, 421-171, in total yards, but had to settle for FGs on three of its four scoring drives. RB Nick Chubb, a Heisman hopeful entering the season, was held to 40 yards on just 16 attempts against a Commodore run defense that had allowed over 200 yards rushing in three of its last four games.
One of the more painful losses we have suffered this year came on Saturday when South Florida (-20) gave up a TD with 57 seconds left in the game and failed to cover in a 42-27 win over UConn. South Florida held huge advantages in total yards (529-378), rushing yards (316-72), but was plagued by four turnovers. Usually a team that is -4 on the turnover ratio loses the game, but South Florida still managed to almost cover a 20-point spread, which tells you how much they really dominated the game.