Another week gone by, and another week I get to try to explain the poor performance of Massey-Peabody's college football picks. We don't have the three seasons of documented profitable performance in college that we do with our NFL plays. This is our first season picking college games, and this is not the way we hoped to start.
However, we have a model that we are confident in, a model that has done well in out-of-sample backtesting, a model that's been on the right side of the line moves, a model I still put my own money behind.
One of the trends I've noticed is that we do seem to like a lot of big underdogs. The way the model is created, we have ratings for each team in a few different statistics (play efficiency, rush efficiency, play success, scoring efficiency). It's explained further in my "Introduction to Massey-Peabody College Football Ratings" post.
While there are some reasons to believe our predictions may not be as accurate for high point spread games, this does not mean we expect our plays in large point-spread games to be unprofitable. In fact, we empirically correct for any biases based on the magnitude of the point spread. However, we are going to (a) use a higher threshold for picks with big point spreads, and (b) look at the pace of play in these games, and see if it could be a reason why we're showing value.
There's a good chance we don't get back to 50 percent on the season, due to the hole we've dug ourselves. But my expectation going forward is that our plays will be profitable. We only pick games that we are willing to bet ourselves, and we've still been predominantly on the right side of the line moves. As is our credo, we will continue to look value process over outcome.
Here are this week's plays. As usual, injuries are not considered. Plays are based on the Massey-Peabody ratings, and lines are from the South Point as of Thursday morning.
Big Plays (5-7 YTD)
• Pittsburgh -5.5 vs. Virginia
• Oregon State -11 vs. Colorado
Other Plays (6-17 YTD)
• Texas State +11.5 vs. Wyoming
• Central Michigan +24 at North Carolina State
• Florida State -21.5 at Boston College
• Notre Dame +3.5 vs. Oklahoma
• Stanford -10 at Washington State
MP Leans (2-2 YTD)
• USC +6 at Arizona State
• Arizona +10 at Washington
• Vanderbilt -20.5 vs. UAB (19.5s still available)