Editor’s Note: Along with free winners posted in his weekly pieces, Jim Kruger has also produced a 10-3 (73%) run the last two weeks in college football. Don’t miss out on his picks this week. Click to win!
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.
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!
