2020 Lock Of The Week - Week 5

I'm going to keep picking VaTech, ULLAF and Marshall games after they were bounced from the Top 25 until they lose a game.  I'm sure VaTech will be in the top 25 eventually.

Virginia Tech	11.0	Duke
BYU	24.0	Louisiana Tech
Florida	18.0	South Carolina
Texas	11.5	Texas Christian
Tennessee	12.5	Missouri
Pittsburgh	14.0	North Carolina State
Alabama	18.0	Texas A&M
North Carolina	14.0	Boston College
Cincinnati	21.0	South Florida
Oklahoma State	22.0	Kansas
Memphis	2.0	SMU
Georgia	6.5	Auburn
Central Florida	21.5	Tulsa
Mississippi State	17.0	Arkansas
Oklahoma	7.0	Iowa State
LSU	21.0	Vanderbilt
Clemson	28.0	Virginia
Kansas State	2.5	Texas Tech

A short line here for various reasons:

• letdown after Oklahoma
• COVID depth issues
  
• K-State penalty issues
• Tech really should have beaten Texas last week and left all sorts of points on the field even before their collapse

But that last point means there's also a letdown effect for Tech and they have the worse defense of the two.  I think the line gives great value here, and the math I look at agrees.

Last week: Baylor -17.5 v Kansas (correct)

Lock 3-0

Season overall 14-21-2

2020 Lock Of The Week - Week 4

 After 18 games to choose from over the first 2-3 weeks, a whopping 19 this week.  And no need to go off the grid to find value (not that there are any this week).

Oklahoma	28.0	Kansas State
Florida	14.0	Mississippi
Auburn	7.5	Kentucky
Central Florida	27.5	East Carolina
ULLAF	11.5	Georgia Southern
Pittsburgh	3.0	Louisville
LSU	16.5	Mississippi State
Texas	18.5	Texas Tech
Cincinnati	13.0	Army
Oklahoma State	7.0	West Virginia
Georgia	28.0	Arkansas
Alabama	27.5	Missouri
Texas A&M	30.5	Vanderbilt
Miami (FL)	11.5	Florida State
Tennessee	4.0	South Carolina
Virginia Tech	7.0	North Carolina State
BYU	14.0	Troy
ULM	10.0	UTEP
Baylor	17.5	Kansas

I'm still not trusting my model consensus.  It continues to be very bearish but with a wide solution of margins, and I'm just not going to blindly lean into 11 underdogs picked under those conditions.  So when in doubt:

Baylor -17.5 v Kansas

Just fade a really bad team.  And Kansas is pretty bad, remember Baylor was only getting 4 against a Houston team with a really bad defense.

Last week:  Western Kentucky -14 v. Liberty (correct)

Lock 2-0

Season overall 7-11

2020 Lock Of The Week - Week 3

 

Oklahoma State	23.5	Tulsa
Pittsburgh	21.5	Syracuse
ULLAF	17.0	Georgia State
Appalachian State	5.0	Marshall
Notre Dame	25.5	South Florida
Central Florida	7.5	Georgia Tech
Louisville	2.5	Miami (FL)
Western Kentucky	14.5	Liberty
Baylor	4.0	Houston
North Carolina State	2.0	Wake Forest

Baylor -4 v. Houston

Not sure why the money came in on Houston to move the line down 2.5 points from the open.  Dave Aranda's first game as head coach maybe.  Otherwise, having a good QB up against a bad defense at home seems like a comfortable win to me, and the numbers I look at are in good agreement with that.

Probably won't be the first pick I make that gets cancelled.  The numbers like

Western Kentucky -14 v. Liberty

so let's go with that, I guess.

Last week Florida State -13 v. Georgia Tech (correct)

Lock:  1-0

Season Overall:  3-6

2020 Lock Of The Week - Week 1&2

You spend the better part of two seasons looking at metrics that seem to lead to more informed choices and it gets torn asunder by a pandemic.

But it looks like I don't have to do HTML coding for these simple posts, which is cool.

SMU	22.5	Texas State
Memphis	19.0	Arkansas State
BYU	1.5	Navy
North Carolina	23.0	Syracuse
Iowa State	11.5	ULLAF
Notre Dame	20.0	Duke
Clemson	33.5	Wake Forest
Texas	43.0	UTEP
Florida State	13.0	Georgia Tech

Florida State -13 v. Georgia Tech

I usually don't go fishing for lines off of the top 25, but there were so few games out there this week that I did.

Not exactly certain about this pick for a variety of reasons (and if I had done a pick last week I'd have locked up Navy, whoops), but the computers seem to like Tech here so that's what I'll go with.  Probably due to the coaching transition at Florida State and these new offense installs seem to take a few series to get in rhythm.

I'd also fade UTEP hard even if 43 points is a lot for a first game after a strange offseason.

Last Season's Lock:  7-7-1

Last Season Overall:  133-129-4

2020 Predictions

Anything happen since last we spoke?

So the usual off-season timeline is to create the season template in April and do predictions in August.  My thought after April was that all that work was probably for naught.  And so it was.

Pac-12 and Big 10 were first out of the blocks with their revised schedules, and they were the first edits to the template.  That too was a waste.

Games were still being added as I was doing these predictions, adding to the complexity, all the way up until yesterday when Notre Dame-Wake Forest became a true road game for ND.

And it still all looks so weird.  We always knew that the non-conference schedules inflated these win totals, but how much has been made very clear.  And despite what the increasingly out of touch pundit class claims, there's no chance conferences will ever try to do more than 9 conference games for that exact reason.  I look at a lot of those SEC schools who would have gone 5-7/6-6 (2-6) but are going to end up with 2 or 3 wins total.

If anyone tries to make a go of it in the spring, I'll add their ratings in after the fact.

If the Committee doesn't pick a Group of 5 team for the playoff this year, they never will.  These predictions lend themselves to an easy selection:  Alabama, Clemson, Memphis & Texas, with the only point of "contention" would be over an undefeated AppState.  A weak schedule compared to the other candidates is where they would fall short.

2019 Predictions Revisited

Missed by ~1.9 games per team again.  Keeping it under 2 is the goal.

Was wildly off on Louisville again.

It sure seems like there were a lot of teams packed into that 4-7 win range than usual but I'm sure it's around the same as most seasons.  That's usually the hole in my predicting game, being more aggressive on how many truly bad teams there are.