Friday Gamblin’ Talk: Week 3

Published September 14, 2012 - 11:02am

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It’s Friday afternoon, and that can only mean one thing…It’s time to put your money where your mouth is.

We’re two weeks in to the football season and overall, it’s been a good year so far.

Despite starting off the season with a loss on the South Carolina-Vanderbilt game, I made it back and then some on my biggest move of the year so far which was Tennessee-NC State.

Week two was even better to me. Not only did I hit both of the larger bets in Florida and Georgia, but I accurately called the ULM spread (didn’t think they’d actually win though!). Here’s what I said:

Arkansas wins fairly easy, but I don’t think they cover the 30.5 point spread. LA-Monroe is used to tough road games (playing at FSU, TCU and Iowa last year) and they bring back essentially their entire offense who was banged up all last year. This unit can move the ball and I don’t view Arkansas as a dominating defense. While Arkansas looks ahead to Alabama next week, LA-Monroe scores a few times.

Here’s the track record thus far this year:

Week 1:

South Carolina -5 at Vanderbilt – 5 units (loss)
Tennessee -3 vs NC State – 8 units (win)
Oregon -38 vs Arkansas State – 1 unit (loss)
Alabama -14 vs Michigan – 1 unit (win)
Week 1 Total: up 3 units

Week 2:

Florida +1.5 at Texas A&M – 3 units (win)
Georgia -4 at Missouri – 4 units (win)
ULM +31.5 vs Arkansas – 2 units (win)
Ohio State -17 vs UCF – 2 units (loss)
Temple -10 vs Maryland – 1 unit (loss)
Oregon -7.5 (first quarter) vs Fresno State – 1 unit (win)
Week 2 Total: up 7 units

So we’re up 10 units on the season. If for example 1 unit is $25, then we’re up $250 on the season. It’s unlikely that we can keep up this pace, but hey, let’s give it a shot.

Here’s what I’m looking at for week 3. I was anxious for the Alabama line to hit the boards. I tend to think that Arkansas’ Tyler Wilson is in a little worse shape than the Arkansas athletic department is making known. The trend right now in college football is to give no information on injuries. Bottom line is that I don’t think Wilson plays. The Arkansas pass protection is terrible, and if you saw ULM move the ball on Arkansas last week, you know the Hogs might be in trouble this week at home against visiting Alabama. I think this game looks like Alabama visiting Florida last year when they steamrolled the Gators 38-10.

While there’s a chance that Wilson plays and 20+ points is a huge spread for an SEC game, I went big on Alabama. You have to make moves and since I’m up 10 units on the year, I’m taking a shot at the end zone.

Alabama -20 at Arkansas – 8 units

Looking outside the SEC, I like USC at Stanford. I think people are giving way too much love to Stanford forgetting just how good Andrew Luck made that team. Also, the USC-Syracuse game, in my opinion, wasn’t indicative of how good the Trojans are. They traveled across the country and played in bad conditions. They rebound this week, and I think win easily.

USC -10 at Stanford – 2 units

I like a few other teams this week, but decided to tease a few spreads. A teaser means you can buy the spread down in exchange for worse payouts. Typically, you bundle the games in order to increase the payouts, but it requires you hit all of them in the group:

4-game, 7-point teaser: USC -2 at Stanford, Alabama -14.5 at Arkansas, Mississippi State -9.5 at Troy, Auburn -9.5 vs ULM – 2 units (pays 4 units)

As you can tell, I’m looking at a lot of heavy favorites. Several of them being heavy favorites on the road. This is something I typically try to avoid, so we’ll see how it works. If this is the trend this week, then I’m going to add one more game to the list.

I hope I’m wrong on this one, but I am going to do 1 unit on Texas visiting Ole Miss: