Week 5 - CFB Version

Thursday was a bit tough going 1-2.  We had two chances for Cal to swing in the backdoor and got beat in overtime with W. KY and MTSU.  Disappointing, yet watching the games it seemed like we were on the right track, which is all you can hope for.

This week we have a lot of positions that are borderline, so please follow us on Twitter @TheSportsMarket.  We may actually try and put them in a blog.  Look for a post before the 3:30 games and another before the night games.  Now on to our plays with a write-up for the models this week, and be write-up we mean Yeungling infused obnoxious comments (sorry, it just got to OH).  Yes, the models did get run before Yeungling got here.

2 ★

MS St. -19.5 @ UAB (Last time we dance Bulldogs, last time we dance)

FL St. -10 @ Wake Forest (We fear the trap game with Duke next week)

Temple -9 @ Ball St. (Sorry Whitlock, Jeff George exhausted his eligibility)

E. MI +21 @ Toledo (The opposite of HBO's Michigan / OH St: The Rivalry)

AZ / OR St. under 59.5 (The Pac-12 Basement Slap Fight Championship, you thought we'd take the over?)

Ohio St. / Nebraska under 45 (Have you seen OH St. play offense? Start the Justin Zwick chants!)

Air Force / Notre Dame under 55 (Defenses be stomping in their Air Force Ones - Yes, we're that cheesy)


FL/LSU under 42.5 (We've got nothing, go defense)


1 ★

Luckily, we wrote these before Yeungling reached OH.


Nebraska -10 Feel free to take a look at our comments above.    At the beginning of the week, we had this game pegged around this #, assuming the return of the Tattoo 4/5.  With the further suspensions, we see no reason Ohio St. can produce more than about 14 points.  When you combine that with Nebraska being embarrassed on national TV and coming home?  You'd have to think the Huskers will be focused and giving an intense effort.  We swear we're not trying to piggy back and ride @beyondthebets #FadeFickell, and thought this would be the week to hop off the #FadeFickellBandwagon.  However, value is value.

Pittsburgh -7 @ Rutgers  This is Pittsburgh's second road game, however Rutgers good performances  one could argue are based on smoke and mirrors.  Both Rutgers yards per pass and yards per rush have been skewed higher by their performance against North Carolina Central, its been ugly otherwise. Pit beats them in YPA, YPR both offensively and defensively (save for defensively against the rush) against much better competition.  Have to like the Panthers on that basis, with a long week to prepare.

Three more games we're going to wait on.  Air Force @ Notre Dame, NW vs. MI, and FL @ LSU.  All are dogs playing public teams.  We think we can get at least a 1/2 point by waiting.

Week 5 - Thursday CFB

Not a long blog write-up tonight.  We have two model plays, and may have one more to add via Twitter a little closer to game time.  With Oregon being a favorite at home, in a night game its likely to be a public play along with the over.  If you wait closer to game time you may be able to get an extra half point.

We wanted to get this posted at least, but will be waiting ourselves.  We'd still play this down to +23 and under 64.5, but will wait in the hopes of getting to +24.5 and 66.

2 ★


California +24
California / Oregon under 65.5


Follow us @TheSportsMarket for any possible in game wagers and if we move on the W. KY / MTSU game.

Panic In The Markets - Don't Overreact To The First Game

We move on to Week 1 of the football season and our college football card for this weekend.  We feel the key here is not overreacting to something you saw last week. 

The best comparison we can make to an overreaction to a team’s second game is the overreaction in the market place to what the Down Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 or other stock indexes may do in a certain day.  How often (if you follow financial news) have you seen huge reaction to a large drop in an index in one day?  Alarmist reporting, world coming to the end scenario articles, etc. never seem to play out.  If you’re like most investors with retirement savings in a 401K or a college fund for junior, these ebbs and flows really shouldn’t affect you.  If they do, you should be putting your savings in a different asset class – high daily, weekly, or monthly volatility really only effects short-term investors. 

We here at The Sports Market aren’t that type of sports investor.  We attempt to do our fundamentals and grind out a profitable return over the long haul.  You won’t see us overreact to one bad day or week here (it’s called variance), nor will you see us quote our record over the last 7 or 10 plays, or offer any 500★ stone cold locks to rally your bankroll.  We grind our return out in a conservative approach that aims to win over a season, a year and hopefully into the forseeable future.   

With that being said, we won’t be overreacting and steaming Stanford and Michigan with our full bankrolls this week.  You could argue we’re doing this with our Wisconsin position, however we feel this has more to do with travel, the quarterback situation and a running-back injury to Oregon St., rather than just thinking “Oregon St. got beat by Sacramento St.” 

After cashing in on Oklahoma St. last night we’ve rounded out the rest of our card.  The first two we tweeted out earlier in the week and now provide a full explanation along with a few other positions.

1★ Positions:

Wisconsin -21 vs. Oregon St.: We tweeted this play out earlier in the week and it has subsequently dropped.  This could be the square side here, but we like the Badgers.  Their offense was spectacular last weekend.  Their defense did leave a bit to be desired.  Oregon St will be travelling across the country to meet the Badgers.  They lost last week at home to Sacramento St. and although we don’t expect performances that poor to continue, it’s a tall order to bounce back at Camp Randall in a morning game for a West Coast team. 

You could also argue Oregon St. is in a bit of disarray.  Not only did they lose to Sac St. last week, but they’re looking to rebound amid a quarterback controversy.  Starter Ryan Katz who struggled greatly last week (11/22 – 87yds – 0 TD – 1 INT) will split time with red-shirt freshman Sean Mannion.  The Beavers relied heavily on the one successful part of their offense last week, the running game.  Sadly, leading rusher Malcolm Agnew is out with a bad hamstring.  Oregon St. going cross country, amidst turmoil and without the one reliable part of their offense will prevent them from staying with this potent Badger offense.

Utah +9 @ Southern Califonria: This line is down to 8.5 in some places after opening at 10.5.  Southern California looked less than spectacular last week in staving off a Minnesota team that will be near the basement of the Big 10 this year.  Although they out gained the Gophers, USC had less yards per pass attempt and yards per rush than Minnesota.  We think Utah will pose a more difficult challenge for the Trojans.  The Utes were very successful on the ground, while struggling a bit through the air.  You have to think Norm Chow returning to USC will make the Utes very motivated.  This line feels almost a TD too high for us.  Had we been able to get on the other side of 10, we likely would have upgraded this to a 2 ★ position.

UNLV +14 @ Washington St.:  UNLV showed us something last weekend.  They moved the ball a bit against Wisconsin in a tough environment.  Washington St.’s environment won’t be nearly as difficult, nor will their offense.  Washington St. has been one of the worse teams for the better part of the last 5 years.  While we know you can probably add UNLV to that category as well, how either team would be a 14 point favorite is beyond us.  Washington St. has won 5 games in the past 3 years, and hasn’t been a favorite against an FBS school since 2007.  Until they prove they can beat anyone on a regular basis, let alone win by double digits – we’ll take the points.

Brigham Young +7 @ Texas: BYU Quarterback Jake Heaps came on at the end of last year for the Cougars as they won 4 of their last 5 and blew UTEP out in their Bowl Game.  In addition to having Heaps back, they also return 4 starters on their offensive line and their running back.  On the opposite side of the ball their defensive line dominated Ole Miss allowing only 64 yards rushing.  As Texas installs a new offense we see these teams as fairly equal and think taking the points is a good position.  

NFL Every (Rest Of) Game on The Board

Below are our remaining “Unofficial Line Picks for Shits and Giggles” along with the opening and current lines so you can see if you’re getting “the best of it.”  These are the games we didn't have any official position on.  You can find our official positions here.  Again, we aren’t backing these positions with our own money, but its good to at least look at every game on the board.

New Orleans @ Green Bay

Opening Line: Green Bay -5

Current Line: Green Bay -4.5

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Green Bay-4.5

The defending Super Bowl Champs are undefeated in the NFL Kickoff Game.  The line is a little too high for us to back the Saints, but we don’t want to go against that trend.

Detroit @ Tampa Bay

Opening Line: Tampa Bay -3

Current Line: Tampa Bay -1

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Tampa Bay -1

This game feels like a toss-up to us, but we’d rather back the home team against a team that may have a just weee bit too much hype.

Buffalo @ Kansas City

Opening Line: Kansas City -6.5

Current Line: Kansas City -6

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Buffalo +6

Some of this line movement is due to Matt Cassell’s injured ribs.  Having injured our ribs in the past we’ll take Buffalo.  That injury doesn’t go away quick.  Also, Ryan Fitzpatrick is a bit underrated in our opinion.

Indianapolis @ Houston

Opening Line: Indianapolis -1

Current Line: Houston -9

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Houston -9

Hmmm, why did this line move?  Some Manning guy?  We’re not backing Houston as we have no clue how Indy will respond, but certainly wouldn’t back them either.

Philadelphia @ St. Louis

Opening Line: Philadelphia -4.5

Current Line: Philadelphia -4.5

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: St. Louis +4.5

We saw this line hit 5.5 at one point this summer and are hearing Philadelphia (unsurprisingly) is receiving a lot of love from the public.  If this line is somehow driven up to a touchdown, look for us to play the Rams.  Assuming that’s the case we’ll release the play on Twitter along with where we able to get down on the Rams getting a touchdown.

Seattle @ San Francisco

Opening Line: San Fran -6.5

Current Line: San Fran -5.5

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: San Fran -5.5

I have absolutely no idea how either of these teams will perform.  Both of their quarterback situations are a mess and both weren’t very good last year.  I’d rather not back Tavaris Jackson or Charlie Whitehurst on the road, though.

Dallas @ New York Jets

Opening Line: New York Jets -4

Current Line: New York Jets -4

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: New York Jets -4

Another sharp line in our opinion, but if we’re just picking we’d like to root for New York on 9/11’s 10^th Anniversary.

New England @ Miami (Monday Night)

Opening Line: New England -3.5

Current Line: New England -7

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: New England -7

For the last game we leave you with the perfect example of buying high on a Week 1 game.  We would have loved to have taken New England at 3.5, 4, or even 6.  However, at this time the line has been pushed just too high.  We wish we would have had our act together earlier in the summer and been able to get down on this at the opening line.  Sadly, we didn’t and now can’t justify laying 7 with our own money when we could have a lot better lines.

Buying High

Today marks the beginning of the NFL season.  Now that the owners and players have figured out how to split more money then we’ll see in a lifetime, we can get back to football.  Despite the labor unrest over the summer, lines for this first week were posted as early as April.  You can view them here via @ViewFromVegas

Obviously, much has changed in the NFL.  Free agency, injuries, and preseason performances, have all changed people’s view of various teams, which has caused some line movement.  However, with the availability and the amount of time people have had to bet into these lines, they have been rounded out to essentially sharp, market lines. 

In equity markets, the idea is to buy equity stocks low and sell them high.  Buy when they’re undervalued and sell when they begin to reach an over-valued level.  Attempting to bet into these Week 1 lines is essentially doing the opposite of this.  For the most part much of the value in these lines has been extracted.  Trying to bet into a line on this Sunday (or Thursday) morning is like buying a stock at its peak.  Therefore, you have to be doubly sure you perceive the current line as having value before taking a position. 

First we’ll go through the positions we’re taking this weekend with some of the lines having being taken earlier in the summer which helped us (sorry if you still can’t get them at those numbers).  For each game we’ll also show the opening line to help reinforce how things have changed in the past five months and why things are much sharper by now.  We’ll also give a “pick” for each game for shits and giggles sake (if we haven’t already taken a position), but please know we will not be backing those with our own money.  Only the official 1★ positions have 1 unit of our money backing them.  Like college football we tend to rely on model based picks which we will begin releasing at higher units in Week 4.

1★ Plays:

Atlanta @ Chicago:

Our Position: Atlanta -1.5

Opening Line: Chicago +1

Current Line: Atlanta -3

This season we see Chicago regressing to the mean, as we could argue they were the league’s “luckiest” team last year.  They were able to take advantage of a weak schedule and an unsustainable record (7-3) in games decided by a TD or less.  Atlanta improved their team after a 13-3 season last year.  While that record may be unsustainable we feel they are closer to a 13-3 team than the Bears were to their record.  Even if their record doesn’t show it this year, the additions of Ray Edwards and Julio Jones should make Atlanta a better team.  We would not play Atlanta by more than a -3 pt favorite, but would play this if you could get it at -2.5.

Cincinnati @ Cleveland

Our Position: Cleveland / Cincinnati under 37

Opening Line: Cleveland -3

Current Line: Cleveland -6.5

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Cleveland -6.5

The line movement here is very much based on the “retirement” of Carson Palmer and the performance (or lack thereof) of Andy Dalton.  We viewed taking Cleveland -3 as a very sharp position, however were not able to get down at that number.  We also view the current line of Cleveland -6.5 as a very sharp line.  For the shits and giggles portion we would take the Browns, but again view the line as very sharp (which will be discussed later on). 

The first week of the NFL season often sees many unders as teams shake off the rust.  This is something that was only exacerbated by this year’s lockout.  Our position on the under 37 reflects the same opinion the market has had of Cincinnati’s offense.  A rookie without a full off-season is likely to struggle in the first week.  The lockout also put the Browns at a disadvantage.  Colt McCoy is in his second season at Quarterback and Pat Shurmur is a rookie coach installing a new offense.  One would have to think there will be plenty of rust and miscues on the offensive side of the ball for both teams.  Cincinnati does have an above average defense that also returns its defensive coordinator to provide some consistency.  Both teams will likely try and control the game by running the ball.  The lack of continuity in the off-season with both teams, two young quarterbacks, an average Cleveland defense and above average Cincinnati defense lead to our under play here.

New York Giants @ Washington

Our Position: New York Giants -3

Opening Line: New York Giants -3

Current Line: New York Giants -3

This is a line that has moved a little, but not much throughout the off-season.  Much of this can be attributed to the fact there has been a lot of continuity with both teams.  The Redskins did not (for once) go crazy in free agency.  Both have returning coaches and front offices.  There was some question as to who the Redskin quarterback would be (Rex Grossman will be starting), but outside of that and the addition of Tim Hightower, not much changed with the Redskins.  When they did not pick up a quarterback in free agency, the line ticked up to 3.5.  When the Giants experienced a rash of injuries on their defense, the line ticked back to 3.  Despite Tim Hightower’s solid performance we don’t see Washington having improved much (especially on offense) from last year.  The Giants may have a ton of injuries on defense, but a lack of talent at the skill positions on offense for the Redskins lead us to back the Giants.

Carolina @ Arizona

Our Position: Carolina / Arizona under 37

Opening Line: Arizona -3

Current Line: Arizona -7

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Carolina +7

Much of this line change came from Arizona’s addition of Kevin Kolb at Quarterback.  We don’t necessarily agree with this large uptick, as to us Kolb is unproven in a new system, with little time to work with new teammates and coaches.  However, Carolina starting a rookie quarterback who looked terrible in pre-season after being the worst team in the NFL leads us to pass on taking an official position on Carolina.  Instead we believe the factors that will affect both of these offenses will lead to a low-scoring game and took a position on the under.  

Minnesota @ San Diego

Our Position: Minnesota +9

Opening Line: San Diego -10.5

Current Line: San Diego -9

Although we were unable to get the best of the line at 10.5 we still feel there is value on Minnesota.  San Diego is often the darling of the off-season, yet historically they have fallen flat in September.  The Chargers under Norv Turner are 1-4 against the spread (ATS) in Week 1 and 4-8-1 ATS in September.  In Norv Turner’s career he is 4-11-2 ATS Week 1 and 14-21-1 ATS in September. 

This may sound strange, but we also feel Donovan McNabb may be a bit underrated this year.  With little or no talent around him last year in Washington, combining with a tumultuous relationship with Mike Shannahan, his poor play could be somewhat explained.  We think his play will be improved this year, even if it’s not up to his former All-Pro level.  Additionally, Brett Favre quietly had a terrible year last year with the highest interception rate of his career.  We won’t even go into the struggles of Tavaris Jackson when Mr. Wrangler Jeans wasn’t playing.  Meanwhile, McNabb has the 3^rd best interception rate for a career in NFL history.  We think the Vikings will be undervalued much of the early part of the year and will look to play them.  In a matchup against an often overvalued San Diego squad, this is one of those spots.

Oakland @ Denver (Monday Night)

Our Positions: Denver -2 and Oakland / Denver under 40.5

Opening Line: Denver -1.5

Current Line: Denver -3

We’re taking Denver mostly as a play against Oakland.  They had a terrible off-season losing their coach the players were supporting (Tom Cable), perhaps the NFL’s best corner (Namdi Assomugha) and some of their best offensive players outside of Darren McFadden (Zach Miller and Robert Gallery).  They also looked fairly awful in the pre-season, managing one TD in four games when most of the starters were playing in the first half.  We also think Denver’s defense will be much improved with John Fox a defensive-minded head coach coming in, the return of Elvis Dumervil and first round pick Von Miller at linebacker.  This game combines teams with two new coaches and two quarterback situations that fluctuated throughout training camp and the pre-season, an improved defense in Denver, and an inept offense in Oakland.  This is why we’ve also added the under as a position.

Pittsburgh @ Baltimore

Our Position: 2 Team, 6 Point Teaser +100 Pittsburgh +8.5 and Cleveland -0.5

Opening Line: Baltimore -3

Current Line: Baltimore -2.5

Unofficial Line Pick for S&G: Pittsburgh +2.5

This teaser at +100 is offered by 5Dimes.  Often teasers are looked at as a square position; however they can be used effectively.  Jason Sample @SampleThis32 explained this earlier today.  We’ll get into this more in a later blog, but in addition to Jason thoughts, they are most useful when the lines are sharp, and the game is likely to be low scoring.  We see that in this matchup along with the previous sharpness described in the Cleveland / Cincinnati game.  In the first week, we expect this to be a low-scoring affair and a close game.  These teams are very evenly matched and therefore feel 2.5 is a true and sharp line.  The likelihood that Baltimore beats Pittsburgh by more than a TD (something they haven’t done since 2006) is extremely low.  This tease also allows us to cross the all important numbers of 3 and 7 in Pittsburgh’s case (and 3 in the Brown’s case.)

½ ★ Plays

Tennessee @ Jacksonville

Our Position: Tennessee +3

Opening Line: Jacksonville -2.5

Current Line: Jacksonville -1

We tweeted this play out as soon as the news that David Garrard was cut came out.  We found this out on Twitter and released it on our Twitter @TheSportsMarket as soon as possible.  Clearly, Jacksonville will be effected, but were nervous to play more than a ½ unit without further research, so that’s why this was only a ½ unit play.  Please check our previous blog Insider Trading that covers the advantages Twitter can provide.

To recap our official 1★ positions: Atlanta -1.5, Cleveland/Cincinnati under 37, New York Giants -3, Carolina/Arizona under 37, Minnesota +9, Denver -2, Oakland/Denver under 40.5, Teaser of 2 Teams / 6 Points / +100 Pittsburgh +8.5/Cleveland -0.5.  Our ½ ★ position is Tennessee +3.

Market Correction

We are currently grinding through the next month whilst awaiting football season’s arrival.  Pre-season football is something we tend to tread lightly with here, as most of our regular season analysis, such as financial type projection models of games and backtesting, does not apply to pre-season games.  However, we did happen to notice something very interesting in this coming week’s games.

Two of the most consistent trends I’ve seen while betting pre-season NFL are betting against both the Indianapolis Colts and the Kansas City Chiefs.  Here we look to examine the Chiefs.  The following table summarizes the Chiefs performance during the pre-season under Coach Todd Haley.

Year	Week	Vs	Score	Margin	KC Line
2011	1	Tampa Bay	L 0-25	25	L 2.5
2010	4	Green Bay	W 17-13	-4	P -4
2010	3	Philadelphia	L 17-20	3	L 1.5
2010	2	@ Tampa Bay	L 15-20	5	L 2
2010	1	@ Atlanta	L 10-20	10	L 2.5
2009	4	@ St. Louis	L 9-17	8	L -1
2009	3	Seattle	L 10-14	4	L -3
2009	2	@ Minnesota	L 13-17	4	L 3
2009	1	Houston	L 10-16	6	L -3

-Courtesy of www.covers.com

As we can see the Todd Haley led squad is yet to cover a pre-season game.  An 0-8-1 trend is quite a trend of underperformance.  It may lead one to think that playing against Kansas City is a good approach moving forward.  Sadly, the bookmakers have adjusted greatly sending out the Chiefs as a 6 point underdog to the Baltimore Ravens. 

Some square bettors may argue that it doesn’t matter; Coach Haley has never covered a spread.  This has to be a play against game, how could you back the Chiefs?  Well if we look closer we see Kansas City may not have been as non-competitive as it may seem.  They’ve never been more than a 3 point underdog and if you look at the spread of +6 (which has moved up to +7.5 at some places), they would have gone 5-3-1.

Clearly, a market correction here is warranted.  The question then becomes, is this an over-correction or an under-correction?  You could argue it either way (I would lean toward an over-correction, especially if you can get it at +7.5).  The point is to understand the market correction, see how far it has corrected, and look to play against an over- or under-correction rather than just blindly thinking “The Todd Haley led Chiefs have never covered a pre-season spread.  I want to lay the touchdown with Baltimore.”

Insider Trading

Our goal here at The Sports Market is to provide information and parallels between financial markets and the betting markets. It’s our main theory that sports markets (when approached properly) are less efficient than financial markets based on the Efficient Market Hypothesis ("EMH"). Basically, EMH holds that it’s nearly impossible to beat the general financial market because the price already reflects all current information. This theory holds credence based on how governments have set up financial markets to work. Through financial reporting laws, insider trading laws, etc. almost all financial information about public companies is made just that, public. Combine that with the magnitude of the number of smart or “sharp” people in the financial markets and EMH has some credibility.

Luckily, betting markets don’t have those reporting and information laws. Books aren’t required to put out quarterly or financial reports, teams aren’t required to disclose any and all information, and in many cases those in the betting markets are far from Harvard Business School and MIT graduates. The biggest difference is in the discrepancy of information and who’s willing to get it and organize. Where can we turn for up to date and accurate information? Social media, and most notably, Twitter.

The genesis of this blog post was approaching some pre-season NFL games that kickoff in a few days. A key to handicapping those games is who’s going to play and for how long. Where best to get that information? The coaches. Who best to extract that information? The beat writers. It used to be each day or so you could read an article in the morning paper about your teams practice and training camp. Not anymore, we now have Twitter.

Not only does Twitter function as an RSS Feed with beat writers linking to their latest articles, but often they tweet general information they’re hearing and seeing at practice. By following beat writers on Twitter you can get information better and faster to react in the betting market. Is someone hurt? Is someone practicing? Who looks good at practice? Who did the coaches single out in practice? Who were they using in the red-zone? These are questions that are often answered by just following a beat writer as he/she’s observing practice.

For a practical example, let’s look closer at pre-season NFL handicapping. I am of the opinion that a lot of early pre-season NFL games will go under due to the layoff and lack of continuity. This is more likely to happen in places with new coaches, who have bad QBs from top to bottom and with teams more likely to play their starting defense longer. Therefore I narrowed Thursday’s games down to Seattle (bad QBs) at San Diego (new coach) and Arizona (new QB) vs. Oakland (New coach/lack of QB depth).

After identifying these games, I looked to the beat writers to see what more information can be learned, and found this nugget from azcardinal.com‘s Darren Clarke:

Clearly, not very inspiring news from your new QB on his understanding of the new offense.

With the idea of gaining more information from Twitter to do legal “insider trading” in the betting market and inspired by @beyondthebets college football lists, I’ve compiled a Twitter list of beat writers for all 32 NFL teams. Visit us @TheSportsMarket in our lists section and give it a follow. It is quite likely that in the pre-season and regular season, there will be quite a bit of “insider trading” type information that will help you beat the betting market.

The Notre Dame Discrepency

The Notre Dame Fightin' Irish are one of America's most publicly bet teams.  Chalk them up with the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and LA Lakers as one of the teams America loves to bet, no matter the price.  It can be very difficult to make money betting on the boys from South Bend.  In the last 10 years they've only had 3 winning seasons against the spread ('00, '02, '05) and were an unprofitable 56-61-2.  However, in the last 5 years it has gotten much worse ATS for the Irish.  ZERO profitable seasons and a 25-33-2 record. 

Early this week CFB season win totals were released both in brick n' mortar shops in Las Vegas and the offshore books.  The numbers on the Irish ranged from 8.5 to 9.5 wins.  Upon seeing 9.5 wins, I personally channeled my inner Major League and shouted, "It’s too high!"  The number has since been pounded out by the market to either over 8.5 -160/+130 or over 9 +100/-130.  You may find something different, but let’s go with that for now.

At the same time, many individual college football game lines have been released.  As I paged through them I noticed Notre Dame was a favorite in almost all of them and in most cases, a fairly heavy favorite.  This made wonder if there is some kind of inefficiency in the way the market is viewing Notre Dame, and if so, how can I take advantage of it?

The best opportunity required you to jump on this number early.  If you bet under 9.5 when it opened and over 8.5 now, you create a nice middle opportunity, which is equivalent to being offered +1900 for Notre Dame to finish with exactly 9 wins, an incredible value.  The 9.5 o/u is now gone, eliminating this opportunity, but there must be some other way we can find some value in this wager?  

The table shows the Notre Dame schedule with the available spreads, the moneyline conversion and the conversion to the win probability.  Total the probabilities and see how the market views their win total.  I had to make a few assumptions, for games where the lines weren't available I assumed a 90% chance to win, which might be a tad high, but only lends more credence to my point.  The South Florida game isn’t listed but I've read through social media outlets that many sharps view the South Florida game at a -1.  

Opponent	Notre Dame Spread	Moneyline Conversion	Win Probability
vs. South Florida	-1	-116	51% (est.)
@ Michigan	-3	-151	57%
vs Michigan St.	-8.5	-280	70%
@ Pittsburgh	-4.5	-195	63%
@ Purdue	-10	-427	77%
vs. Air Force	-11.5	-543	81%
vs Southern California	-4.5	-195	63%
vs Navy	NA	NA	90% (est.)
@ Wake Forest	NA	NA	90% (est.)
vs Maryland	-10	-427	77%
vs Boston College	NA	NA	90% (est.)
@ Stanford	5	166	36%
Total Wins			8.46

You might be asking about how this table projects Notre Dame’s odds at 8.5 and that's the line?  Yes, but over 8.5 wins is -160, so its not true equality, it’s heavily shaded to the over. What all this analysis is telling me is the current market views Notre Dame as WINNING games straight up, but not covering the spread.  The market is willing to back Notre Dame to win games at a higher rate than the current lines would suggest. Additionally, recent history would suggest Notre Dame is not a good "bet on" team against the spread.  

How can we take advantage of this knowledge?  I will be trying to find spots where Notre Dame is likely to win the game straight up, but not against the spread.  The three that stick out at me are -4.5 at Pittsburgh (road favorites against a team with a veteran Offensive line and expected to contend in the Big East), -11.5 vs. Air Force (a well disciplined team also with a veteran offensive line, a unique offense, and 8 returning starters) and -8.5 vs. Michigan St. (an 11 win team from last year, with a great returning backfield).

This post should help you to understand a different way to approach to your handicapping.  By stumbling on what appeared to be a discrepancy in the market, digging down to see if it was there, I think I've identified a few situations where playing against the Irish would be a great idea.