System Health Check
This seems pretty good, my friends. I went 6-3 last weekend, bringing my record into profit land at 10-8, 55.5%. While it is singularly significant to be turning profits, of course, ultimately I’m in the projection game, so merely having some nice breaks doesn’t really do it for me. Fortunately though, all of the signifiers I look for have also been showing me enough thumbs up to be encouraged about what lies ahead for the system this season. First off, looking further into my 9 games on Saturday and it’s notable that 2 of my 3 losses, Army and Baylor, both went into overtime and were each getting points, giving me many opportunities throughout both games to pull one or both of them off. Just one of those 2 losses turning to a win would have taken me to 11-7, 61%, near the high end of the range I traditionally resided in pre-Covid years. Navy got waxed, an ugly loss, but I countered that with 3 fairly easy wins of my own in Air Force, Liberty and Maryland. The other 3 were close enough to not call them easy, so I can throw them plus the 2 overtime debacles into the close call 50/50 pile and forget about them. 3 easy wins to 1 harsh loss, now that’s what I’m looking for.
Additionally, it’s useful to look at some of the other things I track, games not hindered by 1st year/2nd year coach discrimination, as well as games without the influence of the 2nd scale. I might not be using that data as my system of record, but looking at the games I did not select does give me more information as to how the system is scaling out the teams in general. Most notable here is that the second scale actually hindered me this week, as I would have gone 8-2 without it, a very good week for the system that would have been on record in every season prior to this. The second scale saved me in week 1, remember, so my overall record would rest at 10-8 now regardless of tactic taken, but the important thing to acknowledge is that the system was offering up more winners in week 2 than I opted to select. Allowing 2nd years coaches into play wouldn’t have helped in week 2 (10-8 with the 2nd scale, 10-7 without), but including 1st year coaches as well would have been a nice payout (20-10 with the 2nd scale, 20-9 without). Don’t get the idea that we can now trust those games more, we can’t, but it is comforting to see “win” across the board with a 2-1 frequency over “loss.”
This coming weekend’s games, 2 on Friday and 9 on Saturday, brings a slight increase in sample size, although I’m still looking forward to weeks with 13-15 games, or more. I locked these in early in the week, so many of the spreads have changed a bit, some in my favor, some not, but none so much that the system backs off and I no longer recommend playing it. Here are my picks:
Friday
Louisville +2.5 at home vs Florida State
Wyoming +17 at home vs Air Force
Saturday
Miami (OH) +21 at Cincinnati
Syracuse pk at home vs Purdue
Western Kentucky +6.5 at Indiana
UNLV -3 at home vs North Texas
Georgia Tech +16 at home vs Mississippi
Wake Forest -16.5 at home vs Liberty
Georgia State -20 at home vs Charlotte
Western Michigan +10 at home vs Pittsburgh
Arizona State -19.5 at home vs Eastern Michigan
Lastly, I’m in Texas on a bit of a sports road trip. I’ll be at the Kansas/Houston game tomorrow, and have already found some tailgating spots, so hit me up if you plan to attend as well!
