College Football: An early look at lines. (Week 2)

Right now, there are people getting paid to go onto sports talk radio and tell you that any given line is "how Vegas sees the game" or (my favorite) "Who Vegas thinks will win."

The understanding of lines, and how they are set, is probably the biggest misunderstanding in the gaming industry and, is quite often used by casinos to separate gamblers from their money.

It's important to note that lines, especially in close games, are not "who Vegas thinks will win" but are instead where the number needs to be set, in the minds of the bookkeepers, in order to ensure an even distribution of bets on either side of the line.

There will always be exposure, games where the books find 70% of all money on one side or the other, and no amount of line tweaking is going to change that.  But the books understand a couple of things:

1. They have the Vig, which is mathematically unbeatable.
2. They understand that the betting public is, by and large, stupid and prone to be wrong.

There's a reason the sports books cater to touts, and the action they bring. It's because the touts are wrong a majority of the time. (Regardless of the stats they cherry pick to convince you otherwise.) The Sports books LOVE touts.

My entire FIVE is an experiment to see if the recreational bettor can, with just a little bit of research (and luck), crack 53% (the number generally accepted as needed to turn a profit considering the Vig) over the course of a season. That's why one bad week or, conversely, one good week is neither the end of the world or a big victory. The key is consistency, over the long-run.

All that said, here are some of the early lines that I'll be considering for tomorrow's FIVE:

(Listed in no particular order)

Louisville (-14.5) @ Syracuse
Cincinnati (-6) @ Purdue
Arkansas @ TCU (-7.5)
Iowa St. @ Iowa (-15)
BYU @ Utah (-3)
Boston College (-17) @ UMASS
North Carolina (-9) @ Illinois
Va Tech @ Tennessee (-11.5)
UNLV @ UCLA (-26)
Ohio @ Kansas (-2.5)
Texas Tech @ Arizona State (-2.5)
Washington State @ Boise State (-12.5)
S.Carolina @ Mississippi State (-6.5)
Penn State @ Pitt (-5)
Rice @ Army (-10)

All of these games are under consideration, and much of it will depend on how lines move over the next 24 hours (I'm writing this on Tuesday evening for Wednesday AM publication.)

Schedule wise, this week is far inferior to week one. But from a betting perspective there may be more interesting games out there where profit could be made.  Part of the reason for that is because the public now has a sample set to run off of, so they can overreact to what they saw in week one.