Fade the New Coaches
By Judd Hall
It’s that time of the summer where plenty of college football teams are firming up their depth charts and preparing for opening kickoffs. While this is old-hat to many coaches at their respective schools, this is the first go at running a program for some men.
There are 23 new coaches taking over Football Bowl Subdivision squads this season. Does that sound like a lot? Sure, it does. However, you have to take into consideration that there were 22 coaches making their debut in 2009. And we saw 17 new coaches at college football’s top level just two years ago.
So while these guys are sweating out the details of wins and losses, we can sweat it out at the betting shops. Here are a couple of things to watch out for as the season goes on.
Starting with a push…
While many tradition-laden programs have had coaches in place for a good deal of time, first year ringleaders are just setting up the foundation for their team. That normally means that the first season is a long one for the players, coaches, fans and bettors. This wasn’t the case in 2009 as eight of the new coaches were taking over teams that had no fewer than five victories, making it a lot easier to succeed.
The result in such a cakewalk saw eight of those 22 coaches make it to a bowl game in their opening campaign. And most of those mentors started out the season on the right note, going 11-11 straight up in their openers. They did admirably for our purposes as well by posting a 9-8 mark against the spread in game that were posted by the sportsbooks.
We’re going to see more of the same coming into play in 2010 with 15 of the 23 head coaches taking over programs that won at least five games. Now can those teams open up the season on a positive? How can one think they can’t? Coaches like Jimbo Fisher at Florida State, Lane Kiffin at Southern California and Joker Phillips at Kentucky all have ties to their respective schools. And all of them have easily winnable openers.
On the other side of the spectrum are guys like Sonny Dykes at Louisiana Tech, Rob Ianello at Akron or Willie Taggart at Western Kentucky. These are guys that are looking to turn around dogged programs, install new offensive schemes overnight or both. Plus, all three teams are reasonable fades to open the year.
First Impressions are Important Amongst Peers…
There are a lot of firsts that a new head coach will endure: First meetings with parents, first practices and the first time you had to tell the media why your players claim you put them in a electrical closet. But the first impression fans care most about is how your opening league game goes.
Conference debuts are the true test for many coaches because their opponents know your teams a little bit more than you do about your own team. Over the last two seasons, that has helped gamblers fade first-year coaches in their opening league bouts. Teams that are going into their first conference game with a new head coach since 2008 have gone 11-25 SU and 14-22 ATS. That’s a solid 61% conversion rate for us.
That first road test for these new coaches in conference play isn’t a walk in the park either. We can tell that much by the fact that they’ve went 8-28 SU in those games over the last two seasons. They did slightly better for our purposes, going 15-21 ATS.
For those players that fancy playing totals, you may want to consider the ‘over’ as it has gone 38-35-1. Not the best line out there, but better than nothing.
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