2007 College Football Article Archive
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Below is a listing of articles appearing on Doc’s site sorted by date.
How Will Coaching Issues Affect Bowls?
by Trevor Whenham - 12/19/2007
This year's college football coaching carousel hasn't been abnormally busy, but it does seem as if there are more bowl teams affected this year than we are used to. Of the 64 teams set to play in a bowls starting tomorrow, nine - Arkansas, Georgia Tech, Houston, Michigan, Navy, Southern Miss, Texas A&M, UCLA and West Virginia - have experienced a change in their coaching status since the regular season ended. On top of that, several other programs like Rutgers, LSU and Missouri have had to deal with rumors about their coaches' potential new destinations.
Read more about Coaching Changes.
December Games Crucial To March Madness Handicapping
by Robert Ferringo - 12/05/2007
Marquee matchups in November and December do much more than just fill up time between weekend football betting binges. They not only provide a prime profit opportunity for gamblers with knowledge and moxie to tackle these soft early lines, but they also provide bettors with a blueprint for how the season should shake out through conference play and into the Big Dance.
Read more about December Games.
Betting Against Top Five Teams a Windfall for CFB Bettors
by Trevor Whenham - 11/29/2007
In college football a team ranked in the top five is supposed to be virtually unbeatable. They are a team full of the best talent in the country, playing their best football. That's the theory, anyway. If you've watched even a little bit of college football this year you know how far that theory has been from reality. Being in the top five has been a kiss of death for many teams. Every time you turn around you read another article about how bad the top five are, or hear another expert talking about the problems of those on top of the college football rankings. I wanted to know just how bad the top five were, though. I was especially interested in how poorly they had performed from a betting perspective. So, I fired up a spreadsheet and crunched some numbers from the first 13 weeks of the season. Let's just say they aren't pretty.
Read more about Top 5 Teams.
Tips for College Football Totals
by Trevor Whenham - 11/15/2007
There are a lot of sports bettors out there who will play the NFL, but shy away from college football. This is especially true of people who play NFL totals. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Though college football totals is a little bit different than in the pro game, the wide variety of games, higher scoring games, and, in many cases, the softer numbers, mean that college football is often more attractive to play.
Read more about College Football Totals.
Michigan-Ohio State Betting Preview
by Trevor Whenham - 11/15/2007
I am unapologetically pro-Big Ten, and especially pro-Michigan, so you may want to take everything I say in this article with a grain of salt. That being said, I don't buy the argument that the Big Ten is a pathetically weak conference this year, and I think that the Big Game on Saturday still sets up as one of the highlights of the college football calendar this year as it does every year.
Read more about Michigan-Ohio State Betting Preview.
College Football Teams That Might Have Given Up
by Trevor Whenham - 11/01/2007
We're getting into the nitty gritty of the college football season. For the teams that are in contention for conference titles or the national crown this is a tense and exciting time, and players have no problems with motivation. For many teams, though, the season is over several weeks before the games are done. In some cases the season was over before it started. By the time November rolls around players are sore, and listening to the coach isn't as fun as it used to be if you aren't winning.
Read more about Throw In The Towel.
Pac-10 Betting Chaos
by Trevor Whenham - 10/11/2007
Last week was not a good week to be a Pac-10 supporter. Coming into the season many people, including me, thought that there were two teams at the top of the conference - USC and UCLA. Oops. UCLA was beaten soundly by previously (and mostly still) pathetic Notre Dame, which was a good follow up for their lousy performance against Utah a couple weeks earlier. Two games they should have won going away they instead lost by a combined score of 64-12. They were favored in those two games by a total of 36 points.
Read more about Pac-10 Betting.
Overrated College Teams
by Trevor Whenham - 10/04/2007
With the college football season suddenly turning into a circus last weekend, a lot of teams took a freefall down the rankings. It must have been a very difficult week for those who had poll ballots to fill out, because it would be hard to find enough teams to move up so that the teams that deserve to drop can drop as far as they deserve. That means that there are going to be teams that are overrated. The public pays a great deal of attention to the rankings, and will give a team much more respect if it has been voted somewhere into the top 25.
Read more about Overrated College Teams.
Football Wagering Tips
by Joe Paciella - 10/04/2007
If betting on football has not treated your wallet well, here are some football wagering tips that can get keep you from becoming the guy everyone bets the opposite of.
Read more about Football Wagering.
Doc's Friday Public Action Report
by Trevor Whenham - 09/28/2007
It wasn't as solid a week last week for games with line movement that didn't match the public action. The previous week, all five games were winners. We were still able to isolate three nice underdog winners in Michigan, Virginia and Iowa, though. This week four college games and one pro matchup meet our criteria - more than 70 percent of the public bets that have been placed have been on one team, yet the line is moving to make the popular team even more attractive:
Read more about Public Action Report.
Four Biggest College Disappointments
by Trevor Whenham - 09/28/2007
If you like to bet on college football at all then you probably spent some time before the season began deciding how good certain teams were going to be. You may not have compiled formal rankings or a list of good teams, but at the very least you probably thought about the teams that were going to be good enough for you to seriously look at early on. I did that is a lot of different ways - some formal and others more by feel. In many cases I was pretty accurate - I'm pretty happy with my preseason love of Kansas and Cincinnati, for example.
Read more about Four College Disappointments.
National Championship Contenders Besides USC and LSU
by Vegas Sports Informer - 09/27/2007
Every time I picked up a college football magazine this summer, all I read about was USC or LSU. That is fine, but there are other schools who have started out this young season 3-0 and, still, the public hasn't put them in the same class as the Trojans or Tigers. USC receives all the hype because Los Angeles doesn't have an NFL team, so the Trojans are their pro team. Heck, USC could probably hang with some pro teams -- like possibly Buffalo, Cleveland, Kansas City or Oakland. LSU is always going to be mentioned as one of the top teams in the nation, but I do believe there are better squads in the SEC now as well as in the future.
Read more about National Championship Contenders.
How Low Can the Irish Go?
by Trevor Whenham - 09/18/2007
Wow. As I was watching the Michigan-Notre Dame game on Saturday that word kept coming to my mind. The more I watched, the harder I found it to believe that any team could be as irredeemably bad as the Irish are. I have spent the last 30 hours or so since the game ended trying to come up with one nice thing to say about the team, but I can't. The offense is truly incompetent, the defense is worse, the special teams are hopeless, and there is apparently a total talent vacuum in South Bend. The kick returners looked like they have the potential to be good, but they did little in the end, and the team could do nothing with the field position they did earn.
Read more about Notre Dame Struggles.
College Football Cinderella Watch
by Trevor Whenham - 09/18/2007
When it comes to sports, and particularly college sports, practically everyone loves a Cinderella. George Mason was immortalized by their Final Four appearance, Utah's BCS appearance made Urban Meyer a superstar, and Boise State won the hearts of the country with their amazing upset of Oklahoma. With the success of the Broncos last year, this college football season started with more of a focus on the potential BCS-busters than ever before.
Read more about College Football Cinderella.
Ranking the Conferences from a Betting Angle
by Trevor Whenham - 09/14/2007
By now you have heard comparisons between the BCS conferences a million times. You know that the SEC is very strong yet again this year, the Pac-10, Big 12 and Big East are largely as solid as expected, the Big Ten has been exposed as a fraud at the top end, and the ACC is just plain pathetic. There's nothing new to be gained by rehashing that. What can be interesting and valuable, though, is to look at how the conferences stack up from a betting perspective. The rankings are quite different when you look at how teams fare against the spread.
Read more about Conference Betting Rankings.
College Teams with Potential Value ATS
by Trevor Whenham - 09/14/2007
In college football, most people would say that their favorite team is Texas, Oklahoma, Michigan, USC, Florida or one of the other powerhouses, or maybe the local team or their alma mater. If you ask a serious college football bettor, though, their favorites last year would include Central Michigan (11-2 against the spread), Nevada and East Carolina (both 10-2 ATS). Those are the teams that were practically ATMs last year. They were consistently reliable bets because they were solid, talented squads that stayed far enough out of the public eye to be consistently under appreciated and undervalued.
Read more about Value College Teams.
How do Bettors Play Michigan Now?
by Trevor Whenham - 09/06/2007
What now? As a diehard Michigan fan I have asked myself that question about a million times since the unthinkable happened on Saturday. Though my Appalachian State-induced sorrow is personal, questioning Michigan's future is something that serious college football bettors also need to undertake. When something as bizarre and unexpected as this upset happens, there is inevitably going to be some value in the next few games.
Read more about Michigan Wolverines Betting.
College Football Power Rankings: The Ferringo 15
by Robert Ferringo - 08/31/2007
Polls. Our culture is permeated by swarm of focus-group happy vagrants who value style over substance. And in the sports world there is no area where this plague is more rampant than college football.
Read more about College Football Power Rankings.
Syracuse a Live Home Dog on Saturday
by Steve Kosmider - 08/31/2007
On Friday the Washington Huskies will be three-point favorites when they get it on with the Syracuse Orangemen. Washington hasn't been a road favorite since Week 10 of 2003, 36 games to be exact. They were laying 16 back then at Arizona and lost outright, 27-22. I'll give five bonus points to anyone who can tell me who coached the Huskies that day? In fact, Washington has only been road chalk seven times in this decade. They are 1-5-1 ATS in those games.
Read more about Syracuse Home Dog.
Bold College Predictions for 2007-08
by Trevor Whenham - 08/30/2007
The first day of college football is here and I couldn't be more excited. Soon it will be all about handicapping the games, analyzing what went right and wrong and then doing it all over again. Before we get to that point, though, I think that it's time to make a few bold predictions about what's going to happen this season. By taking the time to write down a few f my hunches I have the luxury of having them in print if they come true. That makes gloating so much easier. Of course, it also means that all of my bad ideas will live on in infamy, but we can't worry about that. Here goes nothing:
Read more about Bold College Predictions.
2007 Miami Hurricanes a Solid Under Bet
by David Lane - 08/30/2007
Even though there's no Gino Torretta, Russell Maryland, or Ottis Anderson in particular on this 2007 version of the Miami Hurricanes, the team looks to surprise many in the talented Atlantic Coast Conference with its excellent defense, 16 returning starters, and a reliance on the ground game. While they manage to find an identity of their own, the team looks to once again be a great wager to finish consistently under the total this season. Miami's last season playing home games in the Orange Bowl before they move next year to Dolphin Stadium should be a memorable and emotional one.
Read more about 2007 Miami Hurricanes.
Possible Week 1 College Trap Lines
by Trevor Whenham - 08/25/2007
After an offseason that seemed like it would never end, college football season is almost here. The season starts in earnest in less than a week - there are seven games to bet on Thursday, Aug. 30, and a full schedule follows over the weekend. Though it's incredibly exciting to have the season underway, it can also be a very costly weekend if we don't go into it with our heads in the right state.
Read more about Week 1 Trap Lines.
Handicapping New College Quarterbacks
by Trevor Whenham - 08/25/2007
At the start of every college football season there is nothing that causes more frustration and confusion than young quarterbacks taking the reins at an elite program. You never know if a player is going to step in and shine from the start, or if he is going to take a few games to settle in and find his mojo. Plenty of money is lost each year by making the wrong assumption. The best solution, of course, would be to just avoid betting on any programs in this position until you know how the new general will command the troops, but where's the fun in that? Sometimes you feel like you have to bet on a game despite major quarterback questions. To help your decision making process at the start of this season, here's a look at five major programs looking at new faces and their chances of success early on:
Read more about Handicapping New College Quarterbacks.
College Football Rule Changes
by Trevor Whenham - 08/25/2007
Remember all of those college football rule changes at the beginning of the year? Remember how much time we spent trying to figure out what impact that they would have on the games, and consequently our handicapping? Forget about all of it. It turns out that the changes were merely a one-year experiment. Or rather, they were a bad, and completely unnecessary, decision that created all sorts of unintended consequences, so the NCAA did the right thing and tossed them out.
Read more about College Football Rule Changes.
Hawaii Warriors Football - Buyer Beware
by Steve Kosmider - 08/24/2007
In 2005 Hawaii opened camp with the seemingly impossible task of replacing the NCAA's all-time passing leader, Timmy Chang. They began the year getting steamrolled by USC (63-17) at home. That particular Trojan team may go down in history as arguably the best college team ever. However, since that game the Warriors are 10-4 at home, with two of those losses stemming from non-conference foes. In fact, dating back to 2001, Hawaii is 37-10 on the island. That's not including a dominating 3-1 record in their semi-annual "Home Bowl" game, which, let's face it, is becoming a joke.
Read more about Hawaii Warriors Football.
VSI's 2007 Surprise College Football Teams
by Vegas Sports Informer - 08/20/2007
Every year there are one or two college football programs that leap out of the shadows and shock the national betting public. Last year it was Rutgers and BYU, who went a combined 18-5-1 against the spread while dazzling and surprising college football fans across the country. Being able to spot these teams before the books is a key to being a successful college football bettor.
Read more about College Footbal Sleepers.
"Others Receiving Votes," Playground for Sharp Bettors
by Robert Ferringo - 08/12/2007
Others Receiving Votes. In college football, where the Almighty Polls are King, being in the Others Receiving Votes is simultaneously a proud achievement and a gross dismissal. It's a bit like flirting with a big-breasted blonde all night, getting some touches, but then not taking her home to close the deal and not getting her phone number. Close…but not close enough.
Read more about Others Receiving Votes.
NCAA Football Polls Unduly Influence Point Spreads
by Robert Ferringo - 08/11/2007
There's an amazing symbiosis between polls and people in this country. On one hand, polling data alleges to reflect the national consensus through the science of random sampling. On the other, polls have an incredible power to influence the general public perception, sometimes even more than they "reflect" it.
Read more about NCAA Football Polls.
Top College Football Games
by Trevor Whenham - 08/11/2007
College football doesn't start for a few weeks, and we don't know much about how things are going to play out over the season yet, but it's way too tempting to resist to look ahead at the schedule to spot the must-see games that are coming up. Thanks to some aggressive sportsbooks we can not only look at these games, but also bet on them now. It doesn't matter that some of the games are three months and 11 games away - odds have already been set for selected high profile games.
Read more about Top College Football Games.
Most Important 2007 CFB Non-Conference Games
by Robert Ferringo - 08/08/2007
One of my favorite elements of college football is the regional bias and regional jingoism that cultivates in hamlets and townships across this great nation. I mean, what's more fun than geographic stereotypes? We all know that southern schools are populated by nothing but racist hillbillies.
Read more about Non-Conference Games.
Betting College Football Conference Winners - Odds and Analysis
by Trevor Whenham - 08/02/2007
In the constant pursuit of more football bets to make to satisfy my desire for gridiron action and to ease my impatience over the start of the season, my eyes have been drawn to the odds offered on college football conference and division winners. Any futures bet is all about looking for value, and there certainly appears to be some reasonable value on the table in several places here. In many divisions or conferences it is relatively easy to narrow it down to two or three likely winners, but the public often falls in love with one of those teams, leaving the other one or two teams as an overlay.
Read more about Betting College Football Conference Winners.
Heisman Trophy Winner Betting
by Trevor Whenham - 08/02/2007
You only need to look at Troy Smith to realize that the Heisman Trophy is probably given more importance than it deserves. He was the clear winner last year, yet he was essentially ignored by pro scouts and his chances of NFL success are not high. In recent years the same thing could have been said about Jason White, Eric Crouch, Chris Weinke and Ron Dayne. That's five of the last eight winners who were or will likely be pro disappointments, and only one, Carson Palmer, is an established and proven star.
Read more about Heisman Trophy Winner Betting.
Editorial: The Big Ten Network Following Dangerous Path
by Max - 07/20/2007
With our main office being located in the Midwest we are located right in the heart of Big Ten Country. This is the conference that has allowed our company to prosper since 1971 and hopefully will continue to do so for another 36 years into the future. Most of us in the main office are die hard Wisconsin Badgers fans and for the past decade have enjoyed watching games on ESPN, ESPN 2, ABC, CBS, FSN, or syndication. But starting this year that may all change with the launch of the Big Ten Network, schedule to debut on Aug. 30. The following will examine the new network from all 360 degrees.
Read more about Big Ten Network.
The Betties - College Football Betting Awards for 2006-07
by Trevor Whenham - 01/12/2007
Movies have the Oscars and the Golden Globes. T.V. has the Emmys and music the Grammys. Sports has the Espys, though I don't know anyone who cares about them. There is a major void just screaming to be filled, and I'm going to fill it. Allow me to introduce the College Football Betties, the awards designed to honor the best and brightest of the most important part of the last college football season - the betting. Drumroll, please:
Read more about The Betties.
2007 National Championship Game Preview
by Robert Ferringo - 01/04/2007
So this is it. This is what it has come down to. After hundreds of games - backdoor covers, blowouts, upsets, overtimes, turnovers, comebacks and John L. Smith - we've finally reached the apex of the college football season, the BCS National Championship.
Read more about National Championship Game.
What Did the Bowls Tell Us About Florida-Ohio State?
by Trevor Whenham - 01/04/2007
Unless you are drooling over the GMAC Bowl or the International Bowl (and if you are then you are truly a degenerate), then the biggest focus in your football world right now is obviously Monday's big National Championship showdown between Florida and Ohio State. Since the match-up is so compelling and controversial, and because it has been set for so long, you have surely evaluated the two teams from every angle.
Read more about Florida-Ohio State.
2007 Sugar Bowl Preview
by Robert Ferringo - 01/03/2007
Man, Notre Dame sure has gotten a lot of mileage out of that loss to USC. No, I wasn't talking about this year's 44-24 beat down that the Trojans dealt the Irish in November. I'm referencing last year's thrilling 34-31 win for USC in South Bend. That was one of the best games of 2005 and, so far, has been the defining moment of Charlie Weis' reign with the Golden Domers.
Read more about 2007 Sugar Bowl Preview.
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