Breaking down everything you need to know for Week 3 college football. Best bets? You’ll have to listen and find out who the boys and I are on this...

Each week we’ll cover all the games that are a;ready in the books, trying to highlight any unusual ocurrences or statistical anomalies to get you prepared for the upcoming slate of games. As always, use hashtag #BoxscoreReview if anything jumps out to you from the weekend in real time and we’ll include it in our post. Air Force at Michigan: AFA out first downed Michigan 26-19 and matched them yard for yard.  The propellerheads ran 34 more plays, converted 12-21 3rd downs, and held the ball 11 minutes longer than Michigan leading to an easy cover as +21.5 pt dogs. UGA at Missouri: The key to the Bulldogs success? They were able to get off the field on 3rd down holding Missouri to 4 of 18. Miami at Kansas St: Kansas St punted one time en route to their 52-13 drubbing of the Canes.  KSU outgained Miami 498-262 and even that wasn’t a good indicator of how lopsided the game really was in Manhattan. Syracuse vs USC: The final score doesn’t do the Orange justice.  Syracause had 27 FD’s compared to 17 for USC and yardage was identical.  The major difference? USC outgained the Orange nearly 2:1 on the ground avg 7.8 YPC. Wisconsin at Oregon: The mighty Badgers mustered 207 yards of offense in Corvallis.  Heisman hopeful Montee Ball continues to struggle only gaining 61 yards on 15 carries. Fresno St at Oregon: Ducks took their foot off the gas in the 2nd half. For the 2nd time in as many weeks, Oregon only scored 7 pts over the final 30 minutes.  So far this year they’re outscoring opponents 85-16 in the 1st half but have been outscored 43-14 after the break. UTEP at Ole Miss: The Rebels used a ground and pound game to...

Our OTL podcast this week jumps into all things college football wagering. We attacked the marquee match-ups on the slate and sprinkle in plenty of other in depth analysis surrounding our best bets and additional key releases.  It’s not easy to assemble a cast (or get a word in) with guys as talented as Drew Collins (ChuckOliver.net), Adam Kramer (Bleacher Report), and Bud Elliot (SB Nation) to share their views.  Leave it to me to take the spotlight off the marquee games and find the action that may see 7 bets all weekend at most Vegas...

Click here to listen Everything you want to know about the SNF showdown between Denver and Pittsburgh. How bad is Sacramento St? Anyone that’s a 22 point dog to the Buffaloes has some...

Click here to listen The 3HL crew and I break down all the weekend’s upcoming marquee SEC matchups and talk about how much stock you can put in mid week line moves with marquee teams.

Written by Justin Zovas (follow him on twitter Justin_Zovas) It comes as a surprise to no one that the NFL has become a passing league. In 2008, teams passed on 55.56% of plays. In 2009, teams threw the football 56.39% of the time, 57.01% in 2010, and 57.22% in 2011.  Anyone else seeing a trend developing here?  The prevalence of passing in the NFL has consistently risen since 2008 with each season breaking the record set during the prior season.  Last season alone, we witnessed three different quarterbacks throw for over 5,000 yards, a feat that had only occurred twice before in NFL history.  Thanks to a combination of rule changes to promote player safety, defensive secondaries struggle to sustain a level of performance that has been established in the past.  As a result, the NFL has evolved into an aerial league and the quarterback position is now more important than ever. The consensus elite QB’s; Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees are a combined 200-141-7 (58.7%) ATS as starters with their respective teams’.  This stat isn’t meant to suggest automatically going out and betting these guys blindly, (past success does not ensure future value; efficient market theory) but rather serves to illustrate how powerful an effect elite quarterbacks can have on the outcome of games (with all due respect to Trent Dilfer and the game managers of yesteryear). Handicapping the quarterback position and a defenses’ ability to stop a passing attack is paramount in order to successfully predict the final score of NFL games.  I calculated an efficiency ratio to quantify my hypothesis.  The ratio compares net yards per passing attempt and net yards per passing attempt allowed (NY/PA divided by NY/PA allowed).  A ratio equal to one indicates for every one...

Follow the author on twitter (@trickynice) I’ve been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. My family still recounts how my motivation for learning to read came from a desire to understand baseball box scores. I was a fan in the purest sense of the word because salaries, contract demands, and the ability to bet were all lost on me. Looking back, I can’t believe I viewed sports through such innocent eyes. Ask most sports bettors and I think they would relay a similar story. No five-year old calls a bookie or uses an offshore account (I hope).  Sports bettors begin as fans of a team then everyone seems to reach the conclusion that we know more than we actually do. How can we lose? This way of thinking usually hits in either high school or college; flush with a bit of spending money and an excess of stupidity where young gamblers tend to take their lumps during formative years. Some develop handicapping skills while many never do still, at the end of the day, most of us remain fans above all else. That balance between fandom and handicapper is a delicate one that every gambler must be willing to address if he plans to bet sports with any level of success. We all know the adage: “Bet with your head, not with your heart,” but I think its time to move beyond a simple saying and establish a few ground rules to guide the fan and the bettor within us. 1. Never bet against your own team Listen, I’m sure a few of you have bet against your favorite team and ended up with money in your pocket. Still, those successes don’t compensate for the crushing feeling when you bet...

Written by @Payneinsider College football storms out of the box faster than Seabiscuit at Santa Anita when Michigan meets Alabama in the marquee week one duel.  JerryWorld in Dallas is the stage Saturday evening when the two heavy weights collide to set the BCS championship tone for 2012-13. Expectations are high for the Wolverines’ coming into the season after an 11-win campaign in 2011-12.  Brady Hoke has maize and blue faithful thinking National Championship, but that’s facetious thinking in my estimation.  Michigan returns 13 starters from a team that caught all the breaks a season ago.  They won every close game (those decided by 7 or less), while winning the turnover battle with a +7 differential.  The schedule was cupcake city early on, where a young Michigan team was afforded the luxury of learning a new system on the fly.  They started 5-0 (all home games), against teams that finished a combined 32-31 last season.  Four of their toughest games against Notre Dame, Ohio State, Purdue and Nebraska were also played in the comfy confines of The Big House.  This year, those four teams will be hosting Michigan while salivating at thoughts of revenge.  Despite coming away victorious in the Sugar Bowl against Virginia Tech, it was quite an anomaly.  Beamer’s boys out gained Michigan 2 to 1, holding the Wolverines’ to just 184 total yards.  They were out rushed 3 to 1 and V-Tech had 10 more first downs.  To this day, every time I see the score of that game I think my mind is playing tricks on me.  Michigan might be in the hunt for a Big Ten title, but they have no shot at a National Championship – don’t think they come close to matching last season’s eleven wins, either. ...

by Sports Cheetah One of the more intriguing things a sport psychologist attempts to analyze and understand is the way that athletes respond to pressure, criticism, and adversity. I do not think there is a University that experienced more adversity this past off-season, heck, probably in the entire last decade, than Penn St. We all know what happened, and I don’t intend to dive into any of the specifics.  What I would like to do is look at the situation that the Penn St. football team finds themselves in and how everything that has happened to this team will affect their performance on the field week 1 at home against the University of Ohio. What makes this game interesting from the betting angle is how much money came in on Ohio early after the opening number was seen to be as high as 13 initially. We saw this price consistently tick down before it settled at 6 for the past few weeks. It is my impression that this number is now too low, for a few reasons: I really believe that there is a unique emotion and sense of unity that surrounds a team, a school, and the fans after experiencing a tragedy similar to what has happened over the last year. I think if there was any game that Nittany Lion nation—the players, the coaches, and the alumni included—were to band together, it would be week 1 versus Ohio, at home, in a house filled with over 107,000 screaming fans, friends, and family. Sure the Penn St. football team might not be as talented as in the past, but the remaining players on this team chose to stay at the University and represent their school. There is no doubt in my mind they...

Written by James Kempton (follow him @ukbettingpro for all your soccer needs) Throughout history, statistics show teams are far stronger on their home turf than on the road it’s not exactly rocket science in sport.  The common perception of home field advantage is that smaller teams travel into the ‘Lions Den’ of their larger rivals with the home crowd baying for blood as the reluctant visitors meekly surrender to the far superior clubs. However, these are highly paid professionals  at the top of their craft and despite a league imbalance between top and bottom, surely a few cat calls and obscenities screamed at them shouldn’t take these elite footballers off their game…should it? The tactics employed by road teams often differ markedly from their style of play at home. Obtaining a draw away from home is typically the main goal while an outright win serves as a huge bonus. If you needed proof that teams perform better at home than on the road, here it is:  looking at just the last five seasons of EPL action (discounting now relegated sides), you see some startling numbers. Of the 69 qualifying seasons I reviewed, 65 out of 69 times teams racked up more points at home than on the highway. The real test of home field advantage is comparing the home/road differential impact it can have on a teams’ performance. To assess accurately, the only real measure is dissecting the % of points a side gains from their home fixtures. Good teams with quality players tend to be good wherever they play and handle the pressures of playing on the road with professionalism.  Below I’ve highlighted three of the smaller clubs who offer betting value at home given their huge home/road disparity Since their promotion to...

Click Here to Listen Everything you need to know about Week 1 college football including a betting opportunity that caught both Mark’s eye and mine.

Click here to listen What better way to kick off college football than breaking down the marquee Thursday night match-up with the boys in Nashville.