In last week’s college football article we looked for teams that were out of a normal routine, having a change in their pattern. The results were very good as the two teams I wrote about, Rutgers and Syracuse, were both winners straight-up and against the spread.

This week I am looking for any contrast in two college football teams playing each other and whether the contrast makes a difference in the rate a team covers against the spread. As someone who has been handicapping for a number of years, I usually have a preconceived notion of what the results will be. More times than not I am correct in my suppositions. But, there are times when the results surprise me.

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One situation where the results were contradictory to what I assumed they would be happens this week. The general premise was at this time of the season how would a team who has played one less game year to date fare against a team which has played one more game than the first team. Looking at this week, would a team which has played eight games be more tired than a team who has only played seven games? Would injuries be more prevalent with the team who has played that extra game?

I started looking at teams that have played seven games versus teams that have eight games under their belts. I didn’t want to have the effects of an immediate week off for the team with the fewer games played so I eliminated teams off of a bye week. Just that simple trend alone produced no discernable results. However, if you add a couple of qualifiers you start seeing some better numbers.

Let’s make the team that has tallied seven games an underdog visiting a conference foe. Let’s also add that the team’s next game after this one is a home game. To my surprise, the team that has played the one fewer game covered the spread only 31% of the time going back to 1980. For people who like a more recent sample, over the past five years the visiting team is only 2-13 ATS. East Carolina and Louisville are the teams who qualify under this trend this week.

I am always trying to improve, or sometimes disprove, a trend I have uncovered by using logical criteria as qualifiers. In drilling down just a little further, if you make the visiting team coming off of a loss and the home team’s next game is an away game, the ATS coverage rate of the team who has played one less game is now reduced to 22.7%. Only East Carolina qualifies at this trend, playing host to UAB on Saturday.

As in this case, sometimes the results of a particular situation don’t turn out the way you think they will. That is why I like to look at how the situation in question performed in the past. Past results don’t guarantee future results, but they can be a very good guide.

Good luck this week!