We were 4-3 on this week’s recommended plays, which could have been a little better had it not been for an INT returned for a TD with 1:20 left to go in the ULM-Troy game.  UL-M (+14) held Troy to just 50 yds rushing and was only outgained 428-396 (including holding a 22-21 1^st down advantage and 7 minute time of possession advantage), but lost 42- 21 largely b/c of a -3 TO margin (including the INT with 1:20 to go that was returned for a TD cause the L).  We called for a 32-26 game (459-394 advantage for Troy) which if you take a away the pick 6 was pretty close (would have been 35-21,which if you consider the likely affects of the additional 3 TOs means we were nearly dead on).

We had a very comfortable W with Missouri laying 4 winning 36-17 (we called for a 31-18 W), a SU win with 7pt dog UAB 38-33 (we called for a 31-32 game), and should have had the SU W with 10 pt dog NCSU losing 45-42 (we gave NCSU a 40% chance to win SU and a 75% chance the game would be within 2 pts).  North Texas Won by 19 (11 pt Fav), and outgained WKU by 258 yards 583 – 425 (We predicted 564-344, pretty damn close).   Throw in a two that we were just wrong on (Central Michigan and Toledo), and it was a good, not great, weekend…we won’t complain about a winning weekend, but felt we should have been 5-2.

We are now 28-27-1 on our recommended plays this year.  This is despite a 1-11-1 record in bad break games (games in which the outcome matched our projected analysis but the score varied because of largely random occurrences (i.e. point erasing or creating TOs, Special Teams TDs, etc), meaning our analysis has been correct in 40 of 56 games (71%).  Those sorts of things (by their definition) will even out in the long run (meaning we would expect in the long run to win as many games where our analysis is wrong as we expect to lose when our analysis is correct), and if you follow that philosophy we should be closer to .500 in those games meaning our record should be closer to 34-22 (61%), or that 6 of our bad luck losses and ties should be wins (+/- 50% of 13 bad luck /good luck games).  Our lifetime record supports that assertion as we are now an impressive 243-143-8 (63%) lifetime in our now 6^th year of business.

We keep a log of our good luck / bad luck games and you can view that by clicking here.  I mentioned this in our weekend summary last week, but I’ll repeat it again as I think it is that important.  Long term success in this business is built by consistently analyzing games to find situations which you think are exploitable.  As in any endeavor there are things for which you can’t predict nor explain, that can make a favorable outcome seem like correct analysis or an un-favorable outcome seem like incorrect analysis.  Both statements are the horribly incorrect, and reinforce our point, that while financial success is determined from ATS Ws & Ls those handicappers that stop there are doing themselves a great mis-service by failing to uncover the real measure of their success.  When you remove the effects of unpredictable and random occurrences, how accurately do your projections mirror actual performance?  This is what our good luck / bad luck log endeavors to do.  We spend every Sunday afternoon pouring over box scores and drive logs of every game to determine how Turnovers, the location and timing of those turnovers, penalties, abnormal special teams’ plays, etc affected the outcome of the game.  We’d recommend all our customers do the same to determine for themselves the difference between a favorable or unfavorable outcome (W or L) from a successful or unsuccessful analytical projection.

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We finished last season at 68% (52-24-1) against the spread on our recommended plays. We’re verified every week by Cappers Watchdog, an independent monitoring service . We have had our picks published for the last 4 years, and our overall record is an astounding 63% (215-119-7).

We hope you’ll invest in our methodology and reap the benefits of our research and experience.