Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00 Happy Wednesday. Welcome to another edition of Behind the Points Spread brought to you
00:00:03 by Bedford Sports. Good to have you along. If you have not liked the DocTalkSports Facebook
00:00:08 page, please take time to do so. If you have not subscribed to the YouTube channel, please
00:00:13 do so. You can get lots and lots of content, which you're really, really going to enjoy.
00:00:18 Rob and I produce a lot of podcasts, Behind the Points Spread, Doc's Diagnosis, you name
00:00:24 it. You can also find Dr. Rob on Twitter @DocTalkSports. You can find me on Twitter @TravisCreates.
00:00:29 And of course, new, new to DocTalk, we are on TikTok. There are three fresh new videos
00:00:35 already up this week. We're TikToking. We're like 16-year-old girls. We're TikToking. That's
00:00:40 right. Hey, this is an interactive show just to let you know. If you want to partake and
00:00:46 ask questions, we'd love to get your comments. And though you can do though, if you are on
00:00:50 Facebook, just use your comment section. If you are on YouTube, you can use the comment
00:00:54 section there. And then, you know what? My son, Owen, his girlfriend, Lizzie, they're
00:00:59 the call screeners, they're the producers. Here's the deal. They're up every single Wednesday,
00:01:05 screening phone calls. And I'm a little disappointed in everybody. Just full disclosure, I'm a
00:01:09 little disappointed in the community here. Nobody's called. We'll take phone calls. We
00:01:14 want your phone calls at 402-543-5556. Again, it's 402-543-5556. You don't want to hear
00:01:23 from me. You want to hear from these guys. Welcome back to Behind the Points Spread.
00:01:27 To my left is the one and only Scott Sprycer, our Vegas insider. He's an Omaha native. Been
00:01:33 in Vegas for like ever now. I don't even know if he calls Omaha home anymore. And then the
00:01:37 smartest guy in the show is the one down there, Dr. Rob Zaduska. What's up, Doc?
00:01:42 How are you guys doing? I'm not sure I'm the smartest guy on here.
00:01:46 Well, Scott, here's the deal. We were talking about gamblers today. Are you guys just all
00:01:53 mathematical savants? Is that what it is? Are you guys all mathematical savants?
00:01:57 You could ask my wife. Savant's probably the word because she thinks I can't do anything
00:02:01 else. So I think Rob is the smartest guy here. Yeah, I mean, a lot of guys are. There's a
00:02:08 lot of guys that still shoot from the hip. They don't tend to last a long time, but they're
00:02:12 sure fun to be around. And then there's guys that jump into the math of it all. And I kind
00:02:16 of do a little bit of both. There's a little bit of the old style of capping that brought
00:02:22 up the likes of Jimmy Vaccaro and guys like that you guys have heard of that have been
00:02:25 doing this for 50 years behind the counters. And then there's also, like I said, the math,
00:02:30 the metrics, if you ignore it, it's going to hurt you because, man, the books are smarter
00:02:35 than ever, which means you got to be smarter than ever.
00:02:38 You know, I ran a business. I ran a coffee shop and I had a POS system, point of sale
00:02:42 system, right? Of course, I thought I knew more than the numbers were telling me. I looked
00:02:48 at the math every day. I'm like, no, I'm going to make this work. I'm going to make sure
00:02:52 this works. And you know what? The math of the POS system was right. And therefore my
00:02:57 business failed. Right? I mean, the numbers don't lie.
00:03:02 It's an interesting balance too, because like I said, I mean, I've worked with guys like
00:03:06 Jimmy Vaccaro for many years. I worked with guys like Vinny Malaiulo for many, many years.
00:03:11 These are old school East coast guys that came out to Vegas many, many moons ago. While
00:03:15 Jimmy's from Youngstown, I don't think we can call that East coast, but you know, they
00:03:19 come out here and they bring that old school thought process, but they've had to adjust.
00:03:23 And I'm telling you, you're left in the dust. Your bankroll fades fast if you don't include
00:03:27 math and metrics in your handicap anymore. And you know, I wasn't a big geek in high
00:03:31 school, man. I just wasn't. But man, I become a geek as I've gotten older and try to increase
00:03:36 my bankroll every season.
00:03:37 Rob, were you a geek at Lincoln East? Were you a geek at Lincoln East?
00:03:41 I'm a geek now.
00:03:43 You are, you are. I will 100% of you. People don't know about you.
00:03:47 I'm not sure I've ever not been.
00:03:50 By the way, before we get started, we do have one comment. Eric says, I'm better off commenting
00:03:54 here. Trust me. He said he just got back from the Omaha Westside Homecoming Parade. Do you
00:03:58 guys drink at Homecoming parades, Rob? Because I know that's where you came from, isn't it?
00:04:02 I did. I did just come from the Westside Homecoming Parade. I was not drinking, but you know what?
00:04:09 People pack coolers, people pack lawn chairs. It's a good time. The Westside crowd knows
00:04:15 how to have fun.
00:04:17 If you want to work directly with Scott Spreicher, here's what you can do. You can text the word
00:04:21 DocTalk to the number 29022 and get a free $60 trial of premium member picks from Scott.
00:04:27 Or you can visit the website docsports.com and sign up for the free 60 on the upper left
00:04:34 hand of the website.
00:04:36 Scott, we started this a couple weeks ago and I'm anxious to do it again tonight. Each
00:04:41 and every week, Rob and I talk about it on the podcast all the time. This show is much
00:04:44 more than about gambling. Sure, we talk about the point spreads, we pick four games out,
00:04:49 but there's a lot of tidbits that you can learn and understand to take in and really
00:04:54 measure how your team is doing. We've done it with turnovers. What did we do last week?
00:05:02 I forget what we did last week.
00:05:05 The end of drive analysis, statistical analysis that Scott had. That was interesting as all
00:05:11 hell.
00:05:12 Tonight, we have a couple different ones to talk about. We're going to start with the
00:05:15 success efficiency rate. You can read what it is. Scott, it sounds complicated. Simplify
00:05:24 it for us.
00:05:25 I tell you what, last week was tough because there was a whole lot of you got to really
00:05:30 pay attention and then you got to really go dig deep. Every Saturday night when the games
00:05:34 are final to keep up with it. That was that finishing drives metric. I'm going to start
00:05:39 with the success rate efficiency. These are pretty simple things to follow. It's all about
00:05:45 teams that move the chains in a consistent manner or on defense teams that hold opposing
00:05:50 offenses from being able to move the chains in a consistent manner.
00:05:55 Basically, success rate measures teams that gain 50% of your necessary first down yardage
00:06:01 on first down. You're getting at least five yards on first down. After second down, your
00:06:06 second down and three are better. You've gained at least 70% of necessary first down yardage
00:06:11 on your second down play. Then of course, obviously it leads to 100% of necessary yardage
00:06:18 to move the chains on third and fourth down.
00:06:20 The teams that meet these, I don't know if you want to call them prerequisites or requisites
00:06:26 or whatever for this metric. The bottom line is the teams that excel in those areas, they
00:06:31 cover the spread. I mean, they normally cover the number, but they more often than not are
00:06:35 going to win football games. I'm going to start with a little theme here and then we'll
00:06:39 finish it up a little bit later. One of the teams that's the best, the Washington Huskies.
00:06:45 Last week we talked about the finishing drives metric. Who was in the top three heading into
00:06:49 this year? The Washington Huskies. They're one of the top teams in success rate in this
00:06:54 particular metric too. What you do to calculate this metric, it's pretty easy. You divide
00:07:01 the number of successful plays, which go by the terms that we just talked about on first,
00:07:06 second, third and fourth down. You divide the number of plays by the terms mentioned
00:07:12 above. This allows you to figure the success rate for both the offense and the defense.
00:07:18 My question would be, what is a good number? If somebody's looking at this, what's a good
00:07:22 number to base these top teams off on success rates?
00:07:26 Well, you're going to have to do it on a consistent manner. For instance, the Washington Huskies,
00:07:31 they're going to be gaining 50% of necessary yardage on first down at least so far this
00:07:35 season, at least 50% of the time, which is pretty huge. They're able to follow that up
00:07:41 with being able to open up the playbook and call different kinds of plays when you're
00:07:45 gaining 50% of your necessary yardage on first down half the time you're out there, sometimes
00:07:51 more. So those are the kinds of teams that I'm looking for. You might be able to find
00:07:55 this on the net, by the way. Football outsiders are the ones that first brought this metric
00:08:00 to the forefront to the public. They're no longer in business. So you don't have them
00:08:05 tracking this anymore, but you should be able to find it. But again, it's not as difficult
00:08:09 as those finishing drive metrics if you do want to track it yourself.
00:08:12 Do you track it yourself?
00:08:13 I do. I don't trust all the sites. There's a few sites out there I trust, but I'm always
00:08:18 worried and I'm not saying they're not trustworthy. I'm just doubting Thomas. I always worry that
00:08:23 they missed something somewhere along the line because it's easy to do to miss, you
00:08:27 know, a couple of the drives of this game and a couple of the drives that game. So I
00:08:31 do it all myself.
00:08:32 I mean, this is one of those metrics that, I mean, as a player, the worst number that
00:08:41 you ever wanted to see was second and 10. That's, I mean, that's, that's a brutal number.
00:08:47 I mean, anytime you were second and 10, all of a sudden it's changing the game plan. It's
00:08:53 changing how you're, what you want to do offensively. I mean, Tom Osborne was one of these guys
00:09:01 who loved the, these kinds of metrics. I mean, he was pretty hardcore about the data analysis.
00:09:08 I was thinking about literally like breaking off and going and finding, I've got the offensive,
00:09:15 the offensive goal board from my senior year at Nebraska. And it's all statistics like
00:09:22 this, but I mean, Osborne always wanted to get five yards on first down every time. And
00:09:29 that was one of those things where even if you go back before somebody was looking at
00:09:33 success rate efficiency as a, as a measurable, that was one of those things that he wanted
00:09:39 to do because if you come and that's why, I mean, in layman's terms, if you're, if you're
00:09:45 a football thing and you're watching a game and you know, I'm going to put Nebraska out
00:09:52 there as the team, because that's kind of the, that's the one that I think most of the
00:09:56 people who are watching this right now are paying attention to.
00:10:01 When you see Nebraska come out and they, you've got Jeff Sims or Hunter Carberg who are not,
00:10:08 they're not your classic pocket passers. We want to see those guys in space, running the
00:10:13 ball. You don't want to see them dropping back to pass, but when they're dropping back
00:10:18 to pass on first down, that's why everybody gets all uptight. They want to see those guys
00:10:23 running because you know, you're going to get some positive yardage. The worst thing
00:10:28 you can see is that pass on first down. It's an incomplete, you're sitting at second and
00:10:33 10 behind the eight ball already. And I mean, I love looking at these kinds of metrics because
00:10:39 these are the kinds of things that decide games ultimately.
00:10:44 It's funny because I think I'm a, Rob, I think I'm a, what do you want to call it? A frustrated
00:10:49 coordinator and I don't know if I could do the X's and O's part of it, but I can certainly
00:10:53 tell in a real quick manner, an offensive coordinator, Hey, this is what this metric
00:10:58 says you've got to do now that you only gained three yards on first down. And, and you know,
00:11:04 there are certain managers who really, you know, a lot of teams, professional teams,
00:11:08 especially everybody now, whether it be baseball or football, you know, they have metric rooms,
00:11:13 so to speak, where guys are punching out numbers to let the assistant coaches, let the coach
00:11:17 know, here's what it says. If we do this, that, or the other, obviously the coach out
00:11:21 here for the Raiders has no clue what a metric room is. We saw that again last week when
00:11:26 he's kicking field goals, needing two touchdowns with two minutes to go. So, you know, some
00:11:30 pro sport or some pro teams still haven't got it yet, but yeah, I mean, I think every
00:11:34 major college, every professional team, whether it be baseball or football needs to have a
00:11:39 room of metric guys who can punch out numbers in a heartbeat real quick.
00:11:44 But I mean, you even see it in basketball too. I mean, one of those things that I think
00:11:49 if you're a basketball coach and you've got a guy who's not a three point shooter, bringing
00:11:54 the ball down the court, pulling up and launching a three, it's like, no, don't do that. Burn
00:12:00 some time, get that ball passed around, get closer to the basket, put up a two point shot.
00:12:08 But I mean, as an offensive coordinator in football, if I'm an O coordinator and I'm
00:12:13 not, nobody's paying me to be an offensive coordinator, first down plays, I mean, depending
00:12:20 on what I'm seeing, I want to put the quarterback out there in a run pass option or just a straight
00:12:26 up run play. I don't want to do your classic drop back passing on first down. I just think
00:12:35 there's too much risk involved that you end up in second and 10, second and longer than
00:12:40 10 if the defense is one of these defenses that's got a great pass rush. I want that
00:12:46 opportunity to at least get a few yards every time on first down, second and nine, second
00:12:53 and seven. It doesn't matter what, anything better than second and 10 is a good thing.
00:13:00 You know, the interesting part, because what does Dr. Tom have his PhD in? I believe statistics,
00:13:05 isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I think the weird phraseology
00:13:10 for it's educational psychology, it's statistics analysis.
00:13:16 So what I hear you saying is that Dr. Tom would have been one hell of a gambler. I know
00:13:20 he hates gambling, but he would have been one hell of a gambler is what I hear you saying,
00:13:24 Rob. Weirdly, I mean, I think he does not want to
00:13:30 hear me say this and God forbid he does, but he'd be great at it.
00:13:36 Not only great at it, but his intuition is so strong and he grew in his intuition. I
00:13:42 think at least from me being a guy who was on the outside looking in, not somebody like
00:13:46 you, Rob, who, who played for him, you better trust your intuition when it comes to key
00:13:51 situations in gambling, just like you got to do it, whether you're on the gridiron or
00:13:55 you're on the baseball diamond or in the basketball court. And what I saw out of Osborne was not
00:14:00 just a head for stats, important key stats, not garbage stats, but he had a head for stats,
00:14:05 but also his intuition was spot on, especially his last decade as a head coach or maybe last
00:14:10 six or seven years. It was, I mean, I mean, but that's one of
00:14:14 those things that took 40 years of coaching to build, to get that intuition. The thing
00:14:20 that made them good for the first, I mean, up until that point, I mean, you can complain
00:14:25 about Osborne in the seventies and eighties, but the fact was you had a guy who averaged
00:14:30 almost 10 wins a year for 20 years. It was all statistics based. I mean, it's our, our
00:14:38 data analysis was all based upon where do you want to be on third down? What do you
00:14:44 want to get on first down? What is your turnout? What's the turnover margin? I mean, it was
00:14:50 all of these statistics played into, and that was something that Osborne just lived and
00:14:54 died upon. Can I just ask a one question about that?
00:14:57 Is there any coach out there right now in college that, that you see that comes close
00:15:02 to Osborne as far as that's concerned, the statistics?
00:15:06 Oh, I, you know, I think any more, all the good ones do. I think if you're a guy who's
00:15:14 got a top five team in college football, there's a couple of things happening. One, you've
00:15:19 got somebody who's crunching the numbers and looking at what's going to be best in any
00:15:27 given scenario. Or you've got somebody who's just, you've got an unstoppable athlete or
00:15:34 at unstoppable athletes. But I mean, if you look at coaches who consistently perform well,
00:15:43 I guarantee you the Nick Saban's, the Kirby smarts, those guys, they've got people crunching
00:15:49 numbers for him nonstop. And it's, it's all situational analysis and they get in a certain
00:15:56 situation and they're going to be calling plays based upon that. Now you've got coaches
00:16:00 who don't do that. And those are the guys who are easy to spot. It's the guys who, Oh,
00:16:07 let's catch the defense self-guard on first down. We're going to, we're going to, we're
00:16:11 going to launch a bomb pass and try and hit, hit, hit the money shot right here. Those
00:16:18 are the guys who are not crunching numbers. I, you never saw that out of out, out of Tom
00:16:25 Osborne first down, he was going to try to get three to five yards with the basic run
00:16:29 play because if, if he was at second and seven or less, all of a sudden the playbook opens
00:16:37 up why. And you get, I mean, for us, you got to keep in mind, I mean, I made this, one
00:16:44 of the comments I made once at a speaking engagement talking about what it was like
00:16:51 to play for Nebraska in the 1990s, third and five was a running down.
00:16:59 I mean, for almost any other college or NFL team, third and fives of passing down third
00:17:06 and five for Tom Osborne, that's still a running down. You statistically, he couldn't make
00:17:11 that with a running play as easily as he could a passing play with how well we ran the ball.
00:17:18 So if you've got third and five and you're looking at that going like, yeah, it's, it's,
00:17:23 it's 50, 50. If we go runner pass here, talk about completely opening up a playbook and
00:17:29 putting a lot of stress on a defense. And that was where Osborne wanted to be. If you
00:17:34 were at third and five or less, man, that the entire playbook was an option for you.
00:17:42 And if you're a defense, because defenses do the exact same thing, they're looking at
00:17:47 all these numbers as well. And they've got statistical breakdowns. Hey, when we're playing
00:17:52 this team this week, if it's third and five or less, we know they're going to run this
00:17:59 one little subset of plays and that's it. That's all we've got to prepare for as a defense.
00:18:06 If it's third and eight, it's this subset of plays. If it's third and 12, you know,
00:18:13 maybe it's this sub, there's only three plays that are going to run if it's third and 12.
00:18:18 So if you're a defense and you're looking at that opponent as a defensive coach and
00:18:26 it's third and five and you're sitting there going, it might be a dive play. It might be
00:18:30 a draw play. It might, it might be an option. It might be an option pass or one of any dozen
00:18:37 play action passes that Osborne had in the, in the, in the game plan for that particular
00:18:42 play. It might be a drop back pass. All of a sudden when you're, you're sitting there
00:18:48 as a defensive coordinator and you're going, holy crap, we've got their entire playbook.
00:18:55 We've got to worry about, and it's third and five. That's a problem if you're a defensive
00:19:01 coordinator. Now, if you're looking at a particular team and you're saying, Hey, it's third and
00:19:06 five. We only got to worry about about eight or nine plays. Well, third and five, you practice
00:19:13 those eight or nine plays and you're ready for it. It's a hell of a lot harder to get
00:19:17 ready for 20 plays than it is to get ready for eight or nine plays. It's harder to get
00:19:22 ready for eight or nine plays than it is three or four plays. So that was Osborne's goal
00:19:28 is that if he could get the third and five or less, he still had his entire playbook
00:19:32 he could throw at you. So what I, what you just said is that Brian
00:19:36 Ferenc doesn't use statistics. That's as you drink a beer. Uh, Brian Ferenc doesn't use
00:19:42 statistics. I got nothing, dude. Well, you, you talk, I mean, in all honesty, I have no
00:19:51 idea how Brian Ferenc does it. It's just, he does it. How's that? He does it. Exactly.
00:19:58 It's it's, that's the key takeaway here. He doesn't. Now it's, I love Kirk. I love what
00:20:04 he's done at Iowa. When Brian Ferenc was the old line coach, they did great. When Brian
00:20:10 Ferenc was the offensive coordinator, not so good.
00:20:13 Not so great. Let's talk about explosiveness. This is a, is another key statistic and metric
00:20:17 that, that you look at Scott, uh, and teams that win the big play battle when more than
00:20:23 80% of the games played straight up. So what, you know, we always hear defensive coordinators
00:20:29 talk about not giving up plays of 20 yards or more. What do you consider big place?
00:20:35 Most schools at the power five level consider a 12 yard run to be a big play at a 20 yard
00:20:40 or more pass to be a big play in the passing game. And I know a couple of years ago, and
00:20:45 it's been talked about online by the metrics guys that Penn state had a different set,
00:20:49 uh, than most schools. I forget what theirs was. I might've been 15 on a running play
00:20:53 and 22 on a pass play. And I don't know how they came up with that. Most schools are 12
00:20:58 yard runs in 20 or more yards passing our explosive plays and how they gauge that metric.
00:21:06 And it's a, by the way, this is my favorite kind of metric because there is a site that
00:21:11 I'm going to give you that folks can check it out. It's called CFB stats.com that tracks
00:21:17 all of this stuff when it comes to explosiveness. They go back probably 10 years. And they currently
00:21:22 this year too, up through this last weekend's games. And that's all you got to do. You just
00:21:26 look for that. You don't have to dive into metrics. I mean, dive into a drive charts
00:21:29 or anything like that. So I love these kinds that are tracked by a trustworthy website,
00:21:34 Rob.
00:21:35 So when you say teams that win the big play battle, win more than 80% of their games straight
00:21:42 up. So 80, 80%, that, I mean, that, that seems like a mind blowingly high number. So my question
00:21:50 is when you talk about winning the big play battle, I mean, if you've got, let's say five
00:21:58 big plays and the opponent's got three big plays, that's winning the big play battle.
00:22:04 Correct?
00:22:05 Right.
00:22:06 I mean, is there a margin of winning the big play battle that you got to hit to hit that
00:22:11 80% metric?
00:22:13 That is a fantastic question. And that shows me that you should be out here plunking your
00:22:18 money down a little bit. I genuinely want to see like, let's say...
00:22:23 He's got a lot of it.
00:22:24 He's staying at Omaha, he doesn't want to give it up, I guess. Not crossing over to
00:22:30 catch up.
00:22:31 I like giving drugs to people. It's a good gig.
00:22:34 You know, it's funny because I, like, let's say you said five big plays. I would want
00:22:39 to see the other team get no more than two big plays. If I had a team that had five.
00:22:43 So if that kind of helps a little bit. I mentioned I was going to keep this theme going for at
00:22:47 least another metric. Guess who's at the top of plays that are 20 yards or more from scrimmage?
00:22:53 Guess who's number one in the nation at plays who are 30 or more yards from the line of
00:22:57 scrimmage? Those boys from the Northwest again, the Washington Huskies. Every freaking offensive
00:23:02 metric that we use. Finishing drive charts from last week, both metrics we've talked
00:23:08 about this week. Washington is either number one or they're hovering around that top 10.
00:23:13 And Penix Jr., the quarterback, looks tremendous in this offense that's being called. And I
00:23:19 just wanted to finish up my Washington fanboy stuff here by saying you can get him a 20
00:23:25 to one to win the national title. Nobody's playing better offensive football in the metrics
00:23:30 I care about the most so far this season than the Huskies.
00:23:33 It doesn't mean they're number one in every single metric, but they're not far down the
00:23:36 list of the metrics where they're not number one, number two or number three. But they're
00:23:40 top of the charts in explosiveness, near the top in success rate, near the top in finishing
00:23:46 drives. I mean, this team's an offensive juggernaut this year.
00:23:50 Did you lay money at 20 to one already? Or did you get them even better than that?
00:23:54 I jumped. I got a little bit higher than I got, like 22 to one a few weeks ago. And even
00:23:59 based on stuff that they were coming into the season with rather than what they had
00:24:03 piled up so far this season. So I did make a little move on Washington to win the national
00:24:07 title. And the cool thing about that is you get to the playoffs if you want to. I don't
00:24:12 generally do this because I feel like I'm chasing if I get a team and I plunk money
00:24:16 down to win the NBA title, win the college basketball championship, the football championship
00:24:20 or the Super Bowl. I consider that to be good money because I've done my homework and I've
00:24:25 used every metric that I care about to come up with these teams.
00:24:28 And I've looked at their schedule, strength of schedule and all of that stuff. So people
00:24:32 will ask me if I get to that final four in basketball or in college football, are you
00:24:37 going to hedge? And I generally say no, because to me, hedging is chasing good money with
00:24:42 not so good money. And why do I want to stay in the good money with, oh, I hope I don't
00:24:47 lose. It's that whole mentality of playing not to win, playing, I mean, playing not to
00:24:51 lose rather than playing to win. So I will stick this one out if they get to the final
00:24:55 four. I did make a bet down at circa about two weeks ago, by the way, just to let everybody
00:25:01 know in case they want to tail me and they're going to laugh at me because this coach never
00:25:05 gets the job done in March Madness. I jumped on Purdue at 16 to one. I put a dime on him
00:25:09 at 16 to one.
00:25:10 Wow. Matt Painter, you're going to Matt Painter bet, huh?
00:25:13 Yeah. And it's scary because their backcourt usually screws up in March Madness, usually
00:25:17 early on. But I did this with Virginia a few years ago when they lost to a 16 seed. They
00:25:22 came back with just about everybody. Tony Bennett's coaching, everybody bought into
00:25:26 it and they were able to win that title. So I did it again a couple of weeks ago when
00:25:29 I was down at the circuit. I thought, OK, 16 to one, I'm going to throw a dime on it.
00:25:34 That's a potential hedge of Purdue gets to the elite eight because, you know, that team
00:25:37 could screw up a ticket in a heartbeat in March.
00:25:41 Hey, we're 25 minutes into the show. We haven't talked about any games yet. Here are the games
00:25:45 we're going to be talking about tonight. We're going to take a look at the Notre Dame Duke
00:25:48 game. Notre Dame coming off a very disappointing and frustrating loss, maybe to Ohio State.
00:25:53 Kansas, that offensive juggernaut that Lance Leipold has goes to Texas. They knocked off
00:25:58 Texas a year ago. The Longhorns look like the team to beat in the Big 12. We'll look
00:26:02 at the Iowa Michigan State game. That's an interesting one. Iowa needs to score points.
00:26:07 And of course, we'll wrap up with the Michigan Nebraska game. So let's let's dive right in.
00:26:12 Notre Dame and Duke. It's a six thirty game on Saturday. It's on ABC. Notre Dame at a
00:26:17 five and a half point favorite, according to Betfred, the over under at fifty two.
00:26:21 You know, I make this line power rated line Notre Dame eight on a neutral field. So then
00:26:25 you got to decide, you know, how much you want to give Duke credit for their home field.
00:26:29 And that's going to be rocking, obviously, this weekend. But listen, I think Duke's a
00:26:33 top twenty five team. I really do. But as my power ratings say, they're lower. They're
00:26:37 towards the bottom of that top twenty five. I've still got Dame in the top fifteen hovering
00:26:41 around the top ten. Listen, here's the thing. I'm watching that game last week. I ended
00:26:46 up going for one and one overall college pro last week. I was a minimalist when it came
00:26:51 to bats. The push that I got in college for one and two. Excuse me for one and two. One
00:26:57 of the pushes I got, which was the one in college, was Notre Dame plus three. And I'm
00:27:01 sitting there. I didn't see both defensive shortcomings in the last two plays. But when
00:27:07 when Ohio State had the ball at the goal line and I'm on the phone with one of my guys in
00:27:12 my little circle of batters, I didn't notice there was only ten on the field for Notre
00:27:16 Dame on defense. But I was saying, man, something doesn't look right. It looks like somebody's
00:27:19 out of place. You know, their their weak side is like beyond weak side right now. And I'm
00:27:24 like, something's wrong here. And I'm like, shit, they're going to score. And boom, they
00:27:28 scored. Now it was close. I mean, they had to review it. Then we find out they only had
00:27:32 ten players on the field. Yeah. And that play before that, we found out later they only
00:27:36 had ten players on the field. The final two plays on defense. And then you heard the excuses
00:27:41 made by Freeman. I just got to say this again. I never played college football, but I've
00:27:47 watched this like a religion for for money purposes, not just as a fan. And I'm sitting
00:27:53 there with my buddy on the phone and I'm going, how in the world did a coach, an assistant
00:27:57 defensive coach in the press box not see there were ten guys on the field, two plays in a
00:28:03 row. Then we hear from Freeman. Well, we knew we only had ten on that last play, but we
00:28:07 didn't want to call a timeout and give him the ball, the half yard line rather than the
00:28:10 one yard line. I just about lost it right there. Not because of pushing money instead
00:28:15 of winning money, but the fact is, in a situation like that, how can you falter like that? And
00:28:20 listen, I think it's almost a fireable offense for a defensive coach sitting in the box not
00:28:25 to recognize this. And if it's not a fireable offense, I think he lost at least seven or
00:28:30 eight of his nine lives if I'm the head coach. So that puts doubt in my mind a little bit
00:28:35 about this play against Duke. What I ended up doing, guys, I played under 52 and a half.
00:28:40 I decided I'm staying away from Dane, even though my numbers say they should win this
00:28:44 game by eight to ten points. I like it a little bit better playing the under in this contest.
00:28:49 But yeah, I mean, I was just, I mean, final two plays of a game. You've held Ohio State
00:28:53 down an entire game and all of a sudden you can't get 11 guys on the field.
00:28:58 Yeah, I mean, it's inexcusable, really. But I do want to say, you know, I don't spend
00:29:03 a lot of time on this, but Ryan Day's reaction to Lou Holtz goes back to what we talked about
00:29:08 a week ago. I think Ryan Day's feeling pressure. I think that was a huge win for him. I think
00:29:14 he's feeling the pressure more than we maybe even thought. We joked about it last week.
00:29:18 I think his reaction demonstrates how much pressure he's on at Ohio State.
00:29:23 100% agree. I'm watching that thinking if he loses this game and loses to Michigan,
00:29:27 he's gone. And then you bring out the Brinks truck to Boulder and you say, Dion, come on
00:29:31 board. We want you in Columbus because you're going to recruit us to the playoffs every
00:29:34 year and coach us to the playoffs every year. And I really thought if he lost that and lost
00:29:40 to Michigan, he's gone. He acted like a fool on the field talking about a 90-year-old man
00:29:44 out there screaming in the reporter's face. I mean, come on. You know, that bothered me
00:29:50 more than anything else about that game was Ryan Day screaming about Lou Holtz. Like,
00:29:55 that's the first thing on your mind after you just won this game.
00:29:58 And who's the biggest Domer fan we know? It's Lou Holtz, right? There's nobody who's going
00:30:03 to tout Notre Dame. And we did a big thing on the podcast. If you haven't listened to
00:30:07 the podcast yet, go check it out because Rob and I went for like an hour and a half and
00:30:11 a good part of it was spent on Ryan Day and Lou Holtz.
00:30:15 Up next, Kansas takes on Texas. Kansas 4-0, I believe, for the first time since what,
00:30:20 2000 or no, 1913 or 1903 or something like that. It's a 230 game on ABC. Texas, a big
00:30:26 favorite 16 and a half. There's going to be some points scored in this game. The over
00:30:30 under at 61.
00:30:32 And that over under has dropped from 64, by the way, guys. So there was a high of 64 at
00:30:37 one point when the lines came out early in the week at a couple of books far, far away
00:30:40 from Southern Nevada. And the line itself has dropped a little bit. It was 18-ish, 18,
00:30:45 18 and a half now down to 16 and a half. So we've seen kind of steady money coming in
00:30:50 on the underdog Jayhawks in this one.
00:30:52 Just to start this handicap out, I have Texas power rated fifth. I have them like not even
00:30:57 half a point behind Penn State for that fifth spot. I've got them power rated also 14 and
00:31:02 a half points better than Kansas on a neutral field. So it's getting to that point now where
00:31:07 it's kind of a Texas or nothing for me in this game. They obviously own the better defensive
00:31:11 numbers on paper. I really like their D-line and their linebackers too, for that matter.
00:31:16 The secondary is not bad. I just don't think it's quite at the level of the D-line and
00:31:21 the linebackers. The strength's up front. That's where they're going to win some big
00:31:24 games. Kansas has to be mistake free, guys. And I'm looking at some of the notes I made
00:31:27 on this game the other night.
00:31:30 They beat Reno 130th in the country power rating and they struggled. They won 31-24.
00:31:36 BYU's outside the top 50 on just about everybody's power ratings. Illinois is in that 45-50 range.
00:31:43 BYU and Baylor, by the way, if you want to compare maybe teams that each of these teams
00:31:47 that play, BYU and Baylor are about the same as far as their power ratings are concerned.
00:31:52 And we saw Texas crush Baylor without much trouble. And that was a bad spot for Texas,
00:31:57 by the way, and they still got the job done. That was my one loss last week was the Baylor
00:32:01 Bears. Kansas could get enough to win against BYU. We saw them play good enough to get that
00:32:06 win over BYU. But the question with a couple of minutes to go, Kansas leading by one score,
00:32:12 Slobis 350 yards passing against them. And so it's 16 and a half. I'm starting to lean
00:32:17 towards Texas. Don't know if I'm going to pull the trigger yet, but I just think they're
00:32:21 going to be a little bit too tough.
00:32:23 I don't mean to say this like no pun intended, but the Longhorns are a different animal this
00:32:28 year. We're seeing stuff out of this team and Sarkeesian's play calling. That's a step
00:32:32 above where they've been when they've supposedly been back under previous regimes.
00:32:36 Well, first of all, another guy feeling the heat because he needs to win, especially going
00:32:41 to the SEC. Do you take into account payback in a game like this? Kansas came from behind,
00:32:48 beat Texas a year ago. Do you do you account for payback at all in a game like this?
00:32:53 I don't. Rob's the guy to ask that. For me, it's like I usually think that after the first
00:32:58 couple of plays, that's all behind you. You know, I mean, once you're out there having
00:33:01 to make plays, you either do or you don't. And I don't know how much motivation from
00:33:06 a loss, even if it's a bad loss, carries throughout the course of the game. For me, just from
00:33:11 doing this all these years, I don't factor a whole lot into it. It's got to be pretty
00:33:16 remarkable for me to think that revenge is going to be a major situation that can last
00:33:21 beyond a few plays.
00:33:22 Well, you didn't lose that much, Rob.
00:33:26 Well, we did. And I'm thinking about that Iowa State game.
00:33:31 Hold on. Marv Seiler just ran by me again.
00:33:36 Marv Seiler, still running. Best hashtag ever. It doesn't. I mean, that's the thing. I mean,
00:33:43 golden board material, that kind of stuff, it's, man, 90 seconds into a game clock, it's
00:33:51 gone. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I mean, that's the kind of thing that I always
00:33:57 think about in terms of, I mean, is this the kind of stuff that's really going to carry
00:34:03 you through a game? And it's just, it's not. So, I mean, you look at this and think, yeah,
00:34:10 Texas is going to want to get some payback. No, once you get five plays into this game,
00:34:16 Texas is just going to be sitting there going, okay, what do we have to do that's within
00:34:21 our game plan? We're going to be working through that stuff. And that's what they want to do.
00:34:27 It doesn't have anything to do with what happened last year. You've got a few different players
00:34:32 involved. You got some different people involved on the field. Texas wants to go out there,
00:34:37 win the game, and just keep going and get to the playoffs. I mean, the thing about Texas
00:34:42 that jumps out at me, it's just, Scott, you made the point that when you look at this,
00:34:47 it looks like a different Texas team in terms of what you've seen from a play-calling standpoint
00:34:54 in the past. I mean, the big thing that jumps out to me is their defense. I mean, that's,
00:35:01 no, I love Manny Diaz. I think he's a great defensive coach. I mean, you look at what
00:35:09 he's doing right now, he's doing some really, really good things. But I mean, right, you
00:35:16 removed him from Texas. You kind of hit that reset button. And you look at what Texas is
00:35:23 doing defensively right now, that's where I see the big difference from the last few
00:35:28 years to this year, is what Texas has done on the defensive side of the ball.
00:35:33 >> The front seven's nasty, isn't it? I mean, they're tough.
00:35:38 >> It is, which I will still say, when it comes to recruiting players, talent, however
00:35:46 you want to put it, if I'm a college football coach and somebody comes to me and says, "Hey,
00:35:52 you get to pick whatever team you want to coach, whatever place you want to be, you
00:36:00 get to pick it." Man, it's going to be hard for me to not pick Oklahoma or Texas, because
00:36:08 I still think those are the schools that have the best athletes in the nation in terms of
00:36:14 access. I mean, I look at UT, I look at Austin, holy cow. The athletes they've got there right
00:36:22 now are unbelievable. You just got to have somebody who puts them in the right place
00:36:26 to do it. And right now, I think Texas is that team. That's the team that I look at
00:36:31 that I think, I mean, Scott, you talk about Washington and some of the things they're
00:36:37 doing right now from that statistical analysis standpoint, from that metric standpoint. Right
00:36:45 now, Washington owns the metrics. When it comes to the intuition side of it in terms
00:36:52 of the athletes that they've got on the field, right now I'm looking at Texas and that's
00:36:58 the school I look at. I'm like, if they can kind of shore a few things up here and there,
00:37:03 clean up some technique stuff, clean up some play calling, Texas is the team that I think
00:37:08 really has a chance to do some damage going forward.
00:37:11 - Absolutely. And I tell you what, I was in Austin in 2019 and we took my kid to the school
00:37:17 to tour and all that kind of stuff and then just hung out in Austin for a few days. I
00:37:21 know they're going through some rough times right now, but we'll leave that for the political
00:37:25 debate tonight. But as far as, you know, Austin, oh my gosh, I'd said it back then, 'cause
00:37:31 I had never been there before. And we did the tour of the stadium, the whole thing,
00:37:34 we were there in the summertime, 2019. And I was like, if I'm a kid, I've been to a lot
00:37:39 of campuses and a lot of stadiums. If I'm a kid, you know, maybe anywhere than growing
00:37:44 up in the Omaha area and I got Texas calling, I'm signing the dotted line. They got so much
00:37:49 to recruit with down there also. That's a job, I agree with you. I mean, take that job
00:37:54 and sign that contract. And I do love their D, I think that's, you kind of finished it
00:37:59 up for me there because I think in the trenches on defense, their D line against the KU offensive
00:38:03 line is going to be the difference maker in this game eventually.
00:38:06 - All right, next game up, who knows what this thing is? It's Saturday night. I'm a
00:38:14 Hawkeye fan, you guys know it. It's getting harder and harder to be a Hawkeye fan.
00:38:18 - Okay, dude, I'm a Michigan State fan. How hard do you think it is right now for those
00:38:24 of us?
00:38:25 - I know. And people may not know that about Dr. Rob, he is a huge Michigan State fan.
00:38:28 And if Michigan State wins on Saturday, he's going to come to the podcast on Sunday wearing
00:38:33 a Michigan State shirt. I already know what he's going to do. It's a 630 game, Iowa 12
00:38:40 and a half point favorite. Can they score 12 points? That's the big question. And the
00:38:45 over under God awful low at 36 and a half. This game is just, it's a mess. It's just
00:38:53 a mess.
00:38:55 - Maybe Michigan State can bring Brian Ferentz with them. They need a coach, you know, when
00:39:00 they go back to East Lansing.
00:39:01 - What was that question that just popped up?
00:39:03 - So here's the question. I'm going to cover Rob up for a sec. Dustin asks, how do you
00:39:07 bet a coaching change situation like at Michigan State? Mel Tucker officially fired today,
00:39:12 by the way.
00:39:13 - That's a great question. And I got a good answer for you. I don't bet blindly, but I
00:39:17 have against Michigan State since this whole Mel Tucker thing was exposed a few weeks ago.
00:39:22 I decided at that point where they were going into that weekend of that first game without
00:39:26 him, I had decided that I'm going against state until they beat me. And I'm not even
00:39:31 thinking twice. I'm going against them. They got to beat me before I jump off ship. They
00:39:35 got to show me that they care to even be on the field. I'm sitting there thinking there's
00:39:39 half the team's probably thinking about that transfer portal right now. And let's get to
00:39:43 the end of this season and let's get out of here. What's that?
00:39:46 - They got 30 days.
00:39:47 - Oh yeah. It's yeah. What is that? Until Michigan?
00:39:51 - Well, no, they got-
00:39:53 - Oh, until they can declare. Yeah.
00:39:54 - Yeah. The players have 30 days to jump ship.
00:39:57 - Exactly. I forgot about that. Yeah. But that's, I think they're thinking about that.
00:40:03 I think they're thinking about this season's a wash. It's done and over with. And so once
00:40:08 again, I'm going to, well, this time I got to hold my nose, but once again, I'm going
00:40:11 to go against Michigan State. It's my anti-Sparty tour. We went against them with the Terps.
00:40:17 We went against them with the Huskies. Obviously we're talking about much better offenses than
00:40:22 Iowa has, but they did allow those two teams 67% passing. How about this? They allowed
00:40:27 those two teams over 10 yards per pass. Crazy stuff. Only two picks in all the passes they
00:40:32 faced against Maryland and against Washington. And meanwhile, Sparty 2.7 yards per carry,
00:40:38 52 and a half completion rate from their quarterbacks, one touchdown and four picks in those two
00:40:44 games. I'm counting on the Hawkeye defense scoring two touchdowns. All right. If I get
00:40:48 two touchdowns out of the Hawkeye defense and one more out of the offense, I think I
00:40:52 cover this 12 and a half, 12 and a half point spread.
00:40:56 Basically what the books are kind of saying is like, you know, this is going to be a 24
00:41:01 to 11 type of game, 24 to 12 type of game. I think Iowa gets over that magical number
00:41:08 of 25 and holds Michigan State to 10 or fewer. I just think this team's completely checked
00:41:14 out. If they beat me, I jump off the anti-Sparty tour and I start handicapping their games
00:41:19 again.
00:41:20 402-543-5556. Let's go to Georgia. That's where Craig is. Craig, welcome to Behind the
00:41:28 Points. You're our first caller of the year, Craig.
00:41:31 I think we know Craig.
00:41:32 We do. He brings good beer.
00:41:33 I'm also the guy that brought you out of good beer yesterday.
00:41:38 Oh my God. We have drank so much beer courtesy of Craig. It's good. It's such good stuff.
00:41:45 It is.
00:41:46 Yeah, I brought you a lot of Monday night back in June. You haven't drank that yet,
00:41:50 so you got to get going on that.
00:41:52 Oh God. Craig, if you can see the fridge, and I got another stash today and I got another
00:41:57 delivery coming on Friday. The beer is just getting delivered to MCL Construction on a
00:42:01 daily basis. They think it's like a bar now because like distributors are like showing
00:42:05 up, dropping off truckloads.
00:42:07 I go to like ...
00:42:08 What the hell?
00:42:09 So Travis has ... I mean, I got to describe this.
00:42:12 I'm coming back next week to see my ... I'm coming back next week to see my mom again,
00:42:16 but you guys have so much beer, so I'm not going to bring you back then. I'll bring you
00:42:18 back later.
00:42:19 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Bring beer. Bring beer. Bring beer. Bring beer.
00:42:23 Which we ... So Travis has one of those Viking fridges in his basement. His basement fridge
00:42:30 is like this super nice, giant commercial refrigerator.
00:42:36 It's the old coffee shop refrigerator, by the way. When the business went under, I took
00:42:41 the good stuff. I took the fridge and I took the blender.
00:42:44 Oh, holy no.
00:42:46 That's good to know. I mean, I ...
00:42:48 I can just ...
00:42:49 I'm glad you guys enjoy it. I mean ...
00:42:51 Craig, I can go to that fridge and I stumble upon stuff that's been in there for like six
00:42:56 months, which I mean, it's fine for beer. Some of that stuff you want aging a bit. You
00:43:04 want a few months on that stuff. But I mean, it's like, I find stuff for like ...
00:43:09 What's that, Craig?
00:43:10 I'll tell you, but no, Dr. O, you got to ... I mean, Thor's probably got to be one of the
00:43:18 guys, he's a big dude, that Tropicalia, which is his favorite beer. I don't know if you
00:43:24 have that yet, and I brought that back a while back. But yeah, make sure you drink that beer.
00:43:27 Okay, we'll do it. Hey, do you got a question for us?
00:43:29 There's nothing that doesn't get drank, I'll say that.
00:43:32 What'd you ...
00:43:33 I do have a question. So I'm curious, you were just talking about the Michigan State
00:43:38 and Iowa and Michigan State, but my question really is, is Northwestern, everyone thought
00:43:44 Northwestern was going to drop and be zero and nothing. So what's the difference between
00:43:49 them and Michigan State, really, in all reality? I mean, Michigan State could pick it up. I
00:43:53 really don't know, I'm kind of curious, because you talked about that with Iowa. Could Michigan
00:43:56 State get that backbone like Northwestern did and just do well? Because Northwestern
00:44:01 seems like they're doing halfway decent.
00:44:04 I think for me, the biggest difference is the defense they're going up against, too,
00:44:07 this week. And teams react different ways. When you saw the Mel Tucker scandal break,
00:44:13 you just saw a team that looked like they had no leader at that point. And a lot of
00:44:17 these players have looked like they really don't care that much, and I don't see that
00:44:20 on Northwestern. I think it's whoever takes over the job at the time it happens, and the
00:44:24 fact that it happened to Northwestern late in the summer, but before the season began,
00:44:28 probably helped the cause a little bit. But this Michigan team looks completely rudderless.
00:44:33 I got a question for Greg real quick. Are you going to be out in Vegas anytime soon?
00:44:37 We'll see.
00:44:39 Yes, with a beer.
00:44:42 I would love to say yes, but I live down in Georgia right now. My friend of mine goes
00:44:52 to Vegas like five times a year, but I don't.
00:44:54 Well, if he drives to Vegas, give him some beer and we'll have you drop it off at Scott's
00:44:58 Place.
00:44:59 There you go.
00:45:00 So, I mean, the thing that I look at between those two teams, I mean, to answer Craig's
00:45:05 question, you look at Northwestern, you look at Michigan State, it's hard to compare those
00:45:13 two in my mind. And I say that because I think Michigan State has far, far, far better athletes
00:45:22 than Northwestern does. I think Northwestern has some restrictions in terms of the academic
00:45:30 requirements. I'm not saying they're not great athletes, but I mean, that's D1 athletes.
00:45:37 They're very good. It's not what Michigan State has. Michigan State has some really,
00:45:43 really good athletes. I would probably argue that the guys who've been at Northwestern
00:45:49 for more than a year, you've got some guys who've had some really good coaching. I've
00:45:57 always been a big fan of Pat Fitzgerald, at least when it comes to coaching. And again,
00:46:02 I'm not talking about the dynamic of the hazing or how they did things at Northwestern. That's
00:46:09 not what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about just the pure X's, O's, football development,
00:46:16 developmental kind of stuff. And I think the guys at Northwestern are far more developed
00:46:21 than what the guys at Michigan State got. At the same time, Michigan State's a team,
00:46:26 I think, from an athletic standpoint, you've got guys that are bigger, stronger, faster
00:46:31 than what they've got at Northwestern. It's hard to make an apples to apples comparison
00:46:38 here in this situation because of that. Because you've got one team that maybe doesn't have
00:46:44 quite as good of athletes, but they're far better coached over the last couple of years.
00:46:49 You've got a team like Michigan State, where I think they've got far better athletes, that
00:46:53 may not have been as well coached as the guys at Northwestern. So it's going to be interesting
00:46:59 to see how this one plays out. I think it's going to be a little bit of a wash. So Scott
00:47:05 and Travis, when you guys talk about value and betting, I know Travis, that's something
00:47:10 that you talk about.
00:47:11 Hold on real quick. Hey, Craig, I'm going to hang up on you, buddy. Thanks for the phone
00:47:15 call. I appreciate it.
00:47:16 All right. Enjoy, man. Drink more beer.
00:47:19 All right. We will. We will.
00:47:20 100%. Craig, love you, buddy. But I mean, Travis, you talk about value. I mean, every
00:47:27 time you talk, every time you bet, when you and I talk about it, you talk about where's
00:47:32 the value at. Where are you going to probably make at least a little bit of money or at
00:47:37 worst break even. You're always looking for those value bets. And the problem is with
00:47:44 this game. I look at this and I don't see value here.
00:47:48 I don't. And Scott, I don't know if my way of doing it, I'm not as smart as you. I don't
00:47:52 do the breakdown as you. When I break down value, I refuse to do almost double digit
00:47:56 spreads. Right. If it's a 20 or above, I'm not even going to touch it because I usually
00:48:00 look for a spread between that five and two. And then I look for the value there. Then
00:48:05 I start kind of looking at some of your numbers and I just look at some other things that
00:48:09 I look for value in smaller point spreads where I think that's going to cover. And that's
00:48:13 where I look for the value. I don't know if that's the right way to do it, but I stay
00:48:18 away from double digit spreads almost all the time.
00:48:20 If this isn't your job, if you've only got X amount of hours to work on your handicapping
00:48:25 for the upcoming card, I think that's not a bad way to go about it. Listen, Oregon was
00:48:30 21. How much value do they have against Colorado? We talked about last week, Colorado wasn't
00:48:35 even power rated in the top 50 yet they were in the top 20 by the Associated Press. So
00:48:40 sometimes there is value and those teams do tend to cover. Listen, I got one for you here,
00:48:46 a little nugget. And this includes every point spread from one all the way up to 50 and more.
00:48:53 The average differential from the point spread of a final score in college football for the
00:48:58 last 30 plus years is over 12 points. So the average final score is 12 points away from
00:49:05 the point spread. And that goes back 30 plus years. That's why when people ask me, should
00:49:10 I buy a half a point? I'm only getting six and a half with this dog. Should I buy it
00:49:13 up to seven? And I always say, absolutely. Well, you got to do what you feel comfortable
00:49:16 with. But the math says absolutely not because you have to pay an extra price to get that
00:49:20 bumped up from six and a half to seven. The books have gotten even tougher to beat in
00:49:25 that instance because they've raised the price when you want to buy a half a point and you
00:49:30 don't need to in the long run if you're playing these games every single week like I do. And
00:49:34 usually a lot of games because of that point spread differential from the actual final
00:49:39 margin of victory. So if I like a team that's laying 31 and I like a team that's laying
00:49:45 three, I'll lay the 31, I'll lay the three. But again, I've got time to really jump into
00:49:49 this stuff because this is all I do. As you said at the top of the show, I'm Matt Savant.
00:49:55 This is what I do 12 hours a day, you know, almost 360 days a year out of 365.
00:50:01 I'm the better the books love. I'm a recreational better. They love me because they know I'm
00:50:06 not Scott and they love recreation, but it's fun for me. I don't do it to make a lot of
00:50:12 money. I just, you know, if I'm going to my biggest bet, it's like 25 bucks, right? I
00:50:15 might do a $50 bet every now and then, but that's about as aggressive as I'm going to
00:50:20 go. This is my income. This is what I, you know, what I do. And listen, I'll give you
00:50:24 a quick story. You were talking about the books. Love you walking into the casino. I
00:50:29 had a few of those experiences 35 years ago, but I've also had that now. You know, I do
00:50:33 a lot of NASCAR matchups head to head match. I don't play to win anymore. I do head to
00:50:37 head matchups like they might have, you know, uh, Hamlet, Dinah for a dollar 15 over Turek's
00:50:41 junior at whatever track. And I'm looking at all those matchups every NASCAR race. And
00:50:46 back at about, I mean, we were cleaning it up. Me and a couple of buddies of mine from
00:50:49 like 97 to 2001, we were cleaning it up and we started walking into books and having our
00:50:55 money rejected at certain books. And back then we were playing to win and I'll never
00:51:01 forget. I know a real good, he's a, he's not in the sports book business anymore. He's
00:51:05 a better now. Got a Micah Roberts. He was with the station casinos. There was a casino
00:51:09 out here back then called the wild west and he's the sports book director there. Me and
00:51:14 my little circle, we walk into the wild west seven in the morning. We got all of our notes.
00:51:18 We're figuring out who we're going to go as the 2001 Daytona 500, which is unfortunately
00:51:22 where we lost a Dale senior. But we're sitting down there and we're mapping out what we're
00:51:26 going to do. And I look at the board and I'm going, Holy cow, over under caution, flag
00:51:29 seven and a half. They obviously don't realize that they've got a new tire Goodyear and these
00:51:35 drivers have been just ripping this new tire apart figuratively and literally. And there's
00:51:41 going to, they're going to double that, that caution flag thing, you know? And so that
00:51:45 was one of our big bets. But we walked to the window and I said, give me the, you know,
00:51:48 give us the limit on, on over on a caution flags. Well, Mike, I happen to be with another
00:51:53 sports book director. Who's a good friend of mine at the Daytona 500 about three hours
00:51:57 before the race, she calls him and she goes, can I take this bet?
00:52:00 And he's, and he could hear him through the phone. He goes, is it Scott and Sean? And
00:52:04 I went, no, no, no. John and Bob kind of laugh at you. Go Scott and Sean. I'd go, yeah. He
00:52:09 goes, I'll take their action, but we're going to cut it in half. Fair enough. That's what
00:52:14 they do with the books. He's going to watch the bean counters. So yeah, they don't always
00:52:17 like us when we're walking into casinos. If we're on a hot streak, Oh man. Our final game
00:52:22 tonight, it's Michigan at Nebraska, the Wolverines. They look good. They've been consistent right
00:52:27 around that 31, 32 point scoring each and every week.
00:52:31 There are 17 point favorite over under the 39. I checked out on bet. Fred, why does that
00:52:37 seem low to me? Scott, I'm the under seems the, the under seems like something I, or
00:52:42 the over rather is something that seems attractive to me. There is something really bad in the
00:52:47 water in the Corn Belt. I mean, Nebraska, Iowa, Iowa state. It's not hurting the defenses
00:52:52 too much, but man, the offenses are having a rough time. And you're right. That total
00:52:56 open 42, the side opened 18 and most books, the total 42, 42 and a half of that neighborhood.
00:53:01 And here's the thing. I know some real smart, sharp people who've already been in Nebraska
00:53:05 and they drove this number down and they drove that total down. Basically when it opened,
00:53:10 the books were kind of in theory saying 30 to 12 Michigan.
00:53:14 When you look at this number or where the total is, but anyway, smart money's come in
00:53:17 for me. I haven't jumped in on Nebraska. Listen, I look at what they do on offense. Fedoni is
00:53:23 a really good player. Kemp's a really good player. They're lacking in quality depth.
00:53:27 And we all know that when it comes to the passing game. And that scares me in this one.
00:53:31 I really believe that for quality defense is like Michigan, Nebraska is pretty easy
00:53:35 to prepare for and have that message also that they prepared with translate onto the
00:53:41 field, the Xs and Os. The good news is, listen, if you look at what Michigan's done this year,
00:53:46 they beat, you know, some weak teams, East Carolina, Rutgers. I don't want to say Rutgers
00:53:51 is weak. They're okay, but they're nothing special. UNLV is getting better. Oh, real
00:53:55 quick offensive coordinator for UNLV, write that name down. I'm trying to, I'm space up
00:53:59 Brennan Marion, new offensive coordinator for UNLV. This guy's a head coach in three
00:54:03 years. I'm telling you if not sooner, young guy, great offensive mind. So they beat UNLV,
00:54:09 they beat ECU, they beat Rutgers, they beat Bowling Green. And that's probably good news
00:54:14 for Nebraska that the Michigan offense wasn't that great against three of those four teams
00:54:19 outside of that Bowling Green game. So you got a Nebraska defense that is playing phenomenal
00:54:23 football compared to what they have over the past couple of years. I just don't trust this
00:54:28 offense and Michigan has allowed 13 points when games really mattered. If you look at
00:54:33 when games are done and over with fourth quarter, they're going to win the game. There's no
00:54:37 doubt about it. They've allowed 10 more points, but only 13 in those games when it really
00:54:42 mattered. I think that's going to be tough for Nebraska to overcome. I don't think this
00:54:46 is going to be, you know, some people are calling for like, you know, it's going to
00:54:49 be a 38 to 10 Michigan win. I think Nebraska's defense can keep a minute. I just don't like
00:54:55 what I see sometimes from that receiving core because they're depth shy. The quality of
00:54:59 depth is not there. And Harburg is probably going to have to create a little more in the
00:55:02 passing game when he's trying to escape pressure. And so far he's been good. You know, I've
00:55:07 been impressed with that, guys. When he's under pressure and he starts rolling left
00:55:10 to right and he's making really nice passes on the run. Yeah, I've been impressed with
00:55:14 that out of Harburg because we didn't know how good he was in the offseason. Can't get
00:55:19 away with that every game against a team like Michigan. Boy, I think that number's right
00:55:22 where it should be. I'm going to make a small lean with the Sharps to say it's not going
00:55:26 to be a bet for me. I'm going to lean towards Nebraska. I'll call Michigan by 14. And remember
00:55:32 a lesser Nebraska team, at least lesser coach by a long shot, gave Michigan all they could
00:55:36 handle a couple of years ago in Lincoln. So I don't think there's any intimidation. You
00:55:42 know, a small, small lean. Is that wrong? No, I know. I'm just saying Scott dropping
00:55:47 heat on Frost right there. So you've answered the second part of this question. And I just
00:55:53 want to know if this is true because I don't know this. He says that Michigan is yet to
00:55:56 cover this year. Is that true? They haven't been covering. They could have. That's a good
00:56:02 question. I'm going to kind of qualify it that way. They're up 35, nothing on you and
00:56:05 LV and they shut it down and they were a 34 point favorite. I believe 33, 34, maybe even
00:56:10 a little higher. And the final score was 35, seven. So it's one of those things like, yeah,
00:56:14 they haven't been covering, but they've also been shut. Like I just said, when the games
00:56:18 mattered, they've given up 13 total points and all those games combined when they mattered.
00:56:23 Once they wrapped up those games, they gave up, you know, a few more points than that.
00:56:26 But the bottom line was, is that the offense kind of, I don't know, they kind of slowed
00:56:31 it down a little bit. They weren't looking to match Washington with, you know, big play
00:56:35 explosiveness when they got those big leads. That's why it's kind of hard to judge Michigan
00:56:41 right now. Obviously, I think, well, for me, they're the second best team in college football
00:56:46 behind Georgia, my power ratings. I don't know that they come in here and just want
00:56:49 to blow the doors off Nebraska. If it's 31 to 14, you know, in the fourth quarter, 10
00:56:54 minutes to go, obviously you don't want to give up a touchdown. They only be up by 10,
00:56:58 but I don't think they're going to like drop the clutch and throw 90 yarders and all that
00:57:01 kind of stuff and have those explosive plays.
00:57:03 Hey, Scott, when you talk about, sorry, Travis, I'm jumping in on you here.
00:57:10 You are. It's okay though.
00:57:12 Little bit. When you talk about Michigan, when you said you've got them as the second
00:57:17 best team, where does Penn State figure in that?
00:57:21 I've got them fourth, just barely a smidge ahead of Texas for the fourth place spot.
00:57:25 I got Texas fifth. I still have the Buckeyes third. I don't drop my power ratings, you
00:57:31 know, in a heartbeat. You can't, you can't just keep dropping or raising power. Like
00:57:34 AP puts Colorado 19th in the nation because they get, you know, kind of mixed up with
00:57:39 all the hype and hyperbole and all that kind of stuff. Mine's based on all the math. That's
00:57:43 why I had Notre Dame outside my top. I mean, excuse me, Colorado outside of my top 50.
00:57:48 So Ohio State's power rating for me has dropped about a point and a half, but they were still
00:57:53 ahead of all the teams except Georgia. So I go Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State,
00:57:59 Texas. And those last four teams that I just mentioned are really close.
00:58:03 Man, good stuff. If you like what you're hearing from Scott Spreitzer, you can work with Scott
00:58:08 directly. Text the word DocTalk to the number 29022 and get a free $60 trial of premium
00:58:15 member picks from Scott or visit docsports.com and sign up for the free 60 on the upper left
00:58:23 side of the website. Guys, we talk about this every week. This was originally supposed to
00:58:29 be a half hour show and well, we're an hour into this thing now. We're, we're, we're an
00:58:34 hour in. This is still the best. I mean, you don't have to bet at all. You don't have to
00:58:41 be into gambling at all. Just from a, just from a pure information standpoint, this is
00:58:47 the best show in college football. You know what, Rob? And you know, it's cool if you're
00:58:52 just a fan, let's say that CFBstats.com, if you're just a fan, your, your favorite team,
00:58:58 go see where they rank, go see where their opponent this week ranks, you know, and some
00:59:02 of those metrics and sit back and watch it unfold. I mean, if I wasn't betting, I'd still
00:59:07 be doing that stuff. I'd be like, I want to see, you know, my team, Hey, my team's 11th
00:59:11 in explosiveness and success rate. And the other team's defense is like top 15 in the
00:59:16 same categories. I can't wait to watch this and see what happens. It just makes it even
00:59:20 more fun to me, even if I'm not betting.
00:59:22 What's that Travis?
00:59:24 Is that CFBstats.com?
00:59:26 Yeah, CFBstats.com.
00:59:27 There you go. Right there. Look at, look how fast I can put that up there. Everybody write
00:59:35 that down.
00:59:36 Somebody's going to go that far, aren't they?
00:59:37 Yeah.
00:59:38 But this is the kind of thing that I look at where I, I mean, I go back to when I played
00:59:43 and you're looking at these numbers that we were basing game time decisions upon. I mean,
00:59:50 you had a third and seven, we call a timeout. It's in the third quarter. What player are
00:59:55 we going to call? Osborne's got that on a, he's got that in a notebook somewhere. He's
01:00:01 flipping through on the sideline and he's calling plays based on that kind of stuff.
01:00:06 Look at that. Uh, Krillin says, Doc, Doc, power ratings. Number one, Scott. Number two,
01:00:10 Rob. Number three, Owen. Number four, Owen's girlfriend. And number five is, is me.
01:00:15 Damn. I'm moving Lizzie up to number two or number three.
01:00:22 And I'm just guessing that's Travis's wife.
01:00:25 No, Lizzie, Lizzie is the, Lizzie's Owen's girlfriend. I don't even know if my wife is
01:00:30 a fifth.
01:00:31 No, no, I meant the person who put up the top five. I'm guessing it is your wife. That's
01:00:33 why she put you in fifth.
01:00:35 Oh, by the way, with the stats, you know, they're going to adjust their power ratings
01:00:39 now because they've got that stat thing up there. So I moved up the power ratings just
01:00:42 a little bit.
01:00:43 There you go.
01:00:44 That's good stuff. Guys, thank you so much. A fun show. Uh, if you missed any part of
01:00:50 this show, go back and watch it on YouTube and watch it on Facebook, uh, for dr. Rob
01:00:53 Zaniska for Scott Spricher. I'm Travis justice. We will talk to you next Wednesday, uh, behind
01:00:59 the points spread presented by bet. Fred sports.
01:01:03 [inaudible]
01:01:04 (upbeat music)
01:01:06 (upbeat music)