Early Season College Football Money Makers
By Teddy Covers
Sportsmemo.com
We’re already a quarter of the way through the college football season, with the first three weekends in the rear view mirror. In this week’s Wiseguy Report, I’m going to focus on the early season pointspread outliers. Of the 128 FBS teams that we see lines on every week, 13 have gone 3-0 ATS to open the season. Ten have gone 0-3 ATS. Because of space limitations, I’m going to focus on the 3-0 teams this week, while taking a closer look at the struggling ATS squads in next week’s article.
What should we expect from these hot ATS teams moving forward? And how can we look for those outlier teams from the get-go next year? Read on to find out.
Ole Miss, NC State, Northwestern, Ohio, Air Force, BYU, Buffalo, Middle Tennessee State, Rice, Southern Miss, Washington, Central Michigan and SMU. The only obvious commonality between those 13 squads is their 3-0 ATS mark. I could easily add the likes of Texas Tech and Colorado State to this list, both 2-0-1 ATS. And 2-0 ATS Navy hasn’t played three games yet; worthy of inclusion into this discussion.
Even if we expand to 16 teams, there’s one key factor that stands out like a sore thumb. Not one of these teams was projected to win their conference. Not one of them was projected to be elite, or even necessarily very good. You didn’t even find most of these squads on any ‘most improved’ list. By and large, they were afterthoughts. Even Ole Miss - the only team of the 16 that was ranked in the ridiculous, yet ubiquitous preseason polls - was ranked fifth out of eight SEC teams in the Top 25.
Even after their respective 3-0 ATS starts, only one additional school has reached the Top 25; Northwestern, following a pair of high profile wins over Stanford and Duke – both TV games, by the way. BYU made a brief appearance in the Coaches Poll last week, but their one point loss to UCLA (didn’t the pollsters know that they were 16.5 point underdogs and vastly exceeded expectations in that game?!?) dropped them into the "others receiving votes" category this week.
Most of those teams had serious question marks coming into the campaign. The biggest commonality? Late season collapses last year that left the betting markets very suspect about their ability to bounce back right from the get-go in 2015. Another commonality? Many of those teams were replacing their proven quarterback with an unproven commodity. A third commonality? Only five of the positive pointspread outliers came from Power 5 conferences. The majority of these ATS success stories came from the mid-major (for lack of a better term for non-Power 5 but still FBS conferences) ranks.
Ole Miss is a prime example here, replacing their quarterback and trying to erase the stink of a 2-4 SU finish last year including an ugly whipping at the hands of TCU in the Peach Bowl. But quarterback Bo Wallace was anything BUT elite last year - no shock that Chad Kelly has come in and played better than Wallace in his first few starts. And the Rebels late season meltdown was a clear factor in the lack of market respect for them through the first few weeks of the season.
BYU suffered a late season meltdown ATS last year, losing five of their last nine in SU fashion (including their bowl game) while going 2-7 ATS. Northwestern? Replacing an underachieving, but proven quarterback on the heels of a 2-5 SU and ATS closeout to Big 10 play. NC State got wiped out stepping up in class last year, enhancing their overall market disrespect in a 41-0 loss to Clemson and a 56-23 loss to Georgia Tech. My personal power rating number on the Wolfpack was way too low coming into the season, in part as a result of those 2014 high profile failures. Washington was replacing their quarterback on the heels of a 3-5 SU closeout, including a high profile bowl loss as favorites against Oklahoma State.
The mid-major schools have similar commonalities. SMU was so awful last year – a team that absolutely quit on their season by mid-September - that any reasonable level of improvement was bound to bring early season ATS success. But the Mustangs haven’t just been better - they’ve been hanging tough with the likes of Arizona and TCU, showing that last year’s collapse wasn’t necessarily a personnel problem. Ohio U was another dramatic underachiever last year, ending a string of five consecutive bowl appearances. Buffalo was projected as the sixth place finisher in the seven team MAC East; a very lightly regarded squad with a first year head coach. Middle Tennessee covered only one pointspread in their last six games in 2014, and, like their C-USA counterparts Rice and Southern Miss on this list, were viewed as ‘middle of the conference pack’ type of squads coming into the campaign.
So what should we looking for at the start of the season next year? Non-descript teams that aren’t getting much hype or love from the preseason betting markets, the preseason publications or the preseason talking heads. Teams coming off a bad bowl loss or a late season collapse are definitely worth an extra look, as are teams replacing an experienced, but perhaps underachieving, quarterback.
What about these early season ATS success stories moving forward? In a Wiseguy Report from last year, I pointed out that the very best full season pointspread teams in college football have a strong tendency to suffer an ugly or high profile loss in early season play, leaving them as undervalued commodities moving forward.
The best pointspread team from last year, TCU (11-2 ATS), had a high profile blown lead in a home loss to Baylor. Other elite pointspread teams suffered some key early season failures as well. Louisiana Tech (11-3 ATS) lost at home to FCS Northwestern State. 10-3 ATS Western Michigan lost and failed to cover their season opener as seven point underdogs at Purdue. 10-3 ATS Arkansas got blown out at Auburn on opening day. 10-4 ATS Georgia Tech almost lost at home to Georgia Southern as 16-point chalk.
I could go on and on, but you get my point. These early season ATS outliers are NOT likely to continue their red hot runs. The ‘under-the-radar’ concept when it comes to finding strong ATS teams in early season play holds sway when it comes to early season results as well. Many, if not most, of the elite ATS teams in college football this year have already lost at least once against the spread, putting them squarely under-the-radar as potential elite ATS squads moving forward.