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USC went into last season favored to win the Pac-10 and return to its rightful spot atop college football’s pecking order. They had a Heisman-candidate QB and a roster bursting with NFL prospects, most handicappers and observers felt they would win the BCS title.
But college sports have a way of humbling a player and a team. Hell, it has way of humbling an entire program and an entire genre of human beings (sports bettors). And that humbling usually gets administered by the most unlikely of sources. Most never see it coming, the attack of the big “dog”.
Last year, the big underdog strolled right into USC territory on Oct. 6 and upset the mighty Trojans, who were favored by nearly six touchdowns (39.5 points). Stanford won 24-23 on a late score. It wasn’t a fatal blow to USC’s title aspirations (that happened three weeks later when they lost 24-17 at Oregon), but it was a significant wound. BCS voters never quite looked at them with the same loving eyes.
That game was just one of four after October 1 last year where an underdog of 20 or more points came through – not just winning against the spread in what many call a ‘backdoor cover’ but winning the game straight up. Many recall the whopper at Michigan, when Appalachian State upset the Wolverines, but there was no line on that game so no money was won or lost, only pride.
This underscores the handicapping conundrum with college football, where spreads can sometimes exceed 40 points. How can you possibly gauge a team’s appetite or ability to run up the score so dramatically against an opponent? And how can you project the resilience or anger of the team getting pounded to keep on working, keep on playing and keep on scoring, ideally to ruin that number? Those are the teams you zero in on to create that money-making backdoor cover.
USC wasn’t the only marquee program to endure defeat in that fashion. West Virginia retained an outside shot at the national title game until a crushing 13-9 home loss to Pittsburgh to close the season. The Panthers had lost three of four including a humbling defeat against South Florida, and seemed to be playing out the string on another bowl-less season. But then, as a 28.5-point underdog, they beat the Mountaineers. Ouch!
Alabama had started 6-2 in 2007, but had lost two in a row by the time they hosted tiny Louisiana Monroe from the Sun Belt Conference. Favored by 24.5 points, the Crimson Tide couldn’t shake the little dog nipping at its proverbial football heels and lost 21-14 at home to the Warhawks.
They would lose a fourth in a row the following week to finish 6-6. Yet in typically strange NCAA fashion, the Tide still qualified for bowl action and won the Independence Bowl against Colorado.
The fourth game involved Southern Mississippi, a 21-point favorite at home to Rice. They lost 31-29 in that Conference USA battle.
So, as a college football handicapper, how do you size up these whopping spreads when it comes time to wager on games like this? When do you confidently say the chalk will cover the big number, and when can you say the dog can easily bite into the number and cover it? It happens regularly enough that you can’t simply ignore all games with huge spreads. And many times it will involve a hot team, whose winning streak you are happily riding all the way to the bank.
Can you look at home underdogs and predict that they will fight particularly hard to win? In the final nine instances of 2007 where a home team was a dog of 20 or more points, they covered just four times. 4-5 ATS is hardly a convincing trend.
What about late in the season? Surely favored teams that felt they needed to win big to clinch their conference seeding or impress the BCS judges would put the hammer down. The ‘mercy rule’ goes out the window for those underdog schools in November and December, says the theory. Well, it wasn’t a ‘lock,’ but favorites finished 2007 on a 15-9 ATS run.
Overall, in the final 50 games last year where the closing line was 20 points or more, the edge was a modest 27-23 ATS to the favorites.
West Virginia accounted for seven instances in 12 regular-season outings, going 4-3 ATS. Louisville learned the underdog lesson quickly and painfully in the opening weeks of the season. The Cards were an early favorite to dominate the Big East and after scoring 73 points against Div. 2 Murray State, they faced a 38.5-point spread the next week against little Middle Tennessee. The Blue Raiders lost, but only 58-42 and proved that Louisville’s defense was porous.
Two weeks later (after Louisville was upset against Kentucky), oddsmakers went right back and made the Cards a 37.5-point dog against Syracuse. The result was a stunning 38-35 loss to the Orange, which snowballed into a pathetic 6-6 campaign and no bowling.
In Louisville’s case, some early crippling losses ATS set the tone for the rest of the season. These losses can be warning signs that the preseason experts were dead wrong. Those warning signs do not go unheeded for long by oddsmakers, so identifying that trend quickly can let you sneak in a couple of easy victories. |
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