CFB betting look for Week 13: In on Herman's Longhorns
Will Jarrid
ESPN INSDER
Our college football look-ahead is the essential grab bag of numbers, trends, reads and concepts each Monday throughout the season. In Week 13, we buy and sell a pair of Big 12 teams, dive into how two teams out west will approach an unprecedented scenario and offer a quick shortcut to profiling "under" teams.
Portfolio checkup
Which teams we're buying and selling and why.
Buy
Texas Longhorns
We've mainly described Tom Herman as "talented," and our outlook on his regime at Texas has been optimistic, but we were decidedly pessimistic about his maiden campaign in Austin and advised selling this team early this season. Texas was overvalued earlier in the year, and we believed it would take more than one season for Herman to affect a real culture change within a pretty undisciplined outfit with a lot of losing habits and not much accountability. Well, we were wrong on both counts and consider this a fine season in which Texas made a lot more progress than anticipated.
Terry Allen, Bo Pelini and Urban Meyer weren't talented enough to win a conference title with Tim Beck calling plays, and neither is Herman. There's a lot of work to be done on that side of the ball, starting with the offensive brain trust and offensive line recruiting. However, Todd Orlando's defense is outstanding.
The whole team is playing with a previously unseen edge, and the rapid progress they've made embracing Herman's practice model is nothing short of amazing. The immediate situation that Herman stepped into was worse than the Longhorns' fan base realizes, and this team has come a lot farther than it's getting credit for. Nobody wants to face this bunch in the postseason this year. Even offensive inconsistency won't prevent a big leap back into the mainstream spotlight next season.
Sell
West Virginia Mountaineers
Those conditioned to think of air-raid offenses as well-oiled systems that are plug-and-play at quarterback would do well to heed Dana Holgorsen's warning prior to the Texas loss that his offense had basically devolved into Will Grier "just running around and making plays downfield." This Mountaineers attack had lost its way and was suffering from a midseason identity crisis even before last week's 296-yard performance, in which Grier was lost for the season with a finger injury. He was the field general and primary playmaker for this offense, which is now in real trouble without its engine. Tony Gibson's defense has improved all year and was finally starting to play with its usual swagger over the past few games, but bowl practice won't provide enough time to reinvent the offense without Grier. It's doubtful that even this fine defense can prevent an 0-3 finish to a once-promising season.
Slate standout
A game we'll be studying closely this week and what we're looking for.
Boise State Broncos (-7) at Fresno State Bulldogs
One of various doomsday scenarios slowly unfolding around the sport has come to pass. For the second time, two teams will meet in the season's final week with the foreknowledge that they will meet again in their conference championship game the very next week. Unlike the Stanford-UCLA prematch in 2012, home-field advantage isn't even on the line. That's thanks to Mountain West leadership prioritizing computer rankings above the actual competition on the field. No matter the outcome, the opportunity to host is left first to the playoff committee, then in the event that the committee's purview is too shallow to venture an opinion on the matchup, the league turns to an unpublished set of computer rankings.
While past and future installments in the 18-game series between the Broncos and Bulldogs may not be particularly meaningful to everyone, the games do have a certain sanctity to those involved, and that's certainly disrespected by Mountain West rules, suddenly rendering the long-scheduled meeting a mere undercard to a high-stakes postseason rematch. Unfortunately, it will not be the last time this scenario unfolds, but for now, there's no precedent for a conference devaluing one of its own competitions to this degree.
No coaching staff has ever been in this exact position, incentivized not to win this game, but rather to use it to maximize the probability of winning the next one. Our task this week is to see this "meaningless" game through the eyes of both sides, figuring out the coaches' approach to calling and managing the game and to pitching the value of winning it to their skeptical players, as well as those players' mindsets toward a competition that they're well aware lacks the usual stakes.
Handicapper's toolbox
A different concept every Monday, and how to apply it on Saturday.
Teams that possess the ball, yet do nothing with it, are prime "under" candidates
Sounds obvious, right? Here's a simple but surprisingly effective exercise: Once there's a reasonable sample -- say, half the season -- find the top 30 or 40 teams in time of possession. Now look to see which of those rank in the bottom 30 or so in scoring or total offense, regardless of defensive statistics. Now watch how many times the game goes under when two such teams get together. High ball control combined with low output usually equals low-scoring games, even with weak defenses on the field.
The UT San Antonio Roadrunners (10th in TOP, 90th in scoring offense) are one such team, and they earned a 9-7 victory over the Marshall Thundering Herd (30th in TOP, 82nd in scoring) last week. We're eager to see the total this week on Tuesday's matchup between the Miami (OH) RedHawks and Ball State Cardinals. The RedHawks are 24th in time of possession and 95th in scoring offense, while the Cardinals are 12th and 121st.
Will Jarrid
ESPN INSDER
Our college football look-ahead is the essential grab bag of numbers, trends, reads and concepts each Monday throughout the season. In Week 13, we buy and sell a pair of Big 12 teams, dive into how two teams out west will approach an unprecedented scenario and offer a quick shortcut to profiling "under" teams.
Portfolio checkup
Which teams we're buying and selling and why.
Buy
Texas Longhorns
We've mainly described Tom Herman as "talented," and our outlook on his regime at Texas has been optimistic, but we were decidedly pessimistic about his maiden campaign in Austin and advised selling this team early this season. Texas was overvalued earlier in the year, and we believed it would take more than one season for Herman to affect a real culture change within a pretty undisciplined outfit with a lot of losing habits and not much accountability. Well, we were wrong on both counts and consider this a fine season in which Texas made a lot more progress than anticipated.
Terry Allen, Bo Pelini and Urban Meyer weren't talented enough to win a conference title with Tim Beck calling plays, and neither is Herman. There's a lot of work to be done on that side of the ball, starting with the offensive brain trust and offensive line recruiting. However, Todd Orlando's defense is outstanding.
The whole team is playing with a previously unseen edge, and the rapid progress they've made embracing Herman's practice model is nothing short of amazing. The immediate situation that Herman stepped into was worse than the Longhorns' fan base realizes, and this team has come a lot farther than it's getting credit for. Nobody wants to face this bunch in the postseason this year. Even offensive inconsistency won't prevent a big leap back into the mainstream spotlight next season.
Sell
West Virginia Mountaineers
Those conditioned to think of air-raid offenses as well-oiled systems that are plug-and-play at quarterback would do well to heed Dana Holgorsen's warning prior to the Texas loss that his offense had basically devolved into Will Grier "just running around and making plays downfield." This Mountaineers attack had lost its way and was suffering from a midseason identity crisis even before last week's 296-yard performance, in which Grier was lost for the season with a finger injury. He was the field general and primary playmaker for this offense, which is now in real trouble without its engine. Tony Gibson's defense has improved all year and was finally starting to play with its usual swagger over the past few games, but bowl practice won't provide enough time to reinvent the offense without Grier. It's doubtful that even this fine defense can prevent an 0-3 finish to a once-promising season.
Slate standout
A game we'll be studying closely this week and what we're looking for.
Boise State Broncos (-7) at Fresno State Bulldogs
One of various doomsday scenarios slowly unfolding around the sport has come to pass. For the second time, two teams will meet in the season's final week with the foreknowledge that they will meet again in their conference championship game the very next week. Unlike the Stanford-UCLA prematch in 2012, home-field advantage isn't even on the line. That's thanks to Mountain West leadership prioritizing computer rankings above the actual competition on the field. No matter the outcome, the opportunity to host is left first to the playoff committee, then in the event that the committee's purview is too shallow to venture an opinion on the matchup, the league turns to an unpublished set of computer rankings.
While past and future installments in the 18-game series between the Broncos and Bulldogs may not be particularly meaningful to everyone, the games do have a certain sanctity to those involved, and that's certainly disrespected by Mountain West rules, suddenly rendering the long-scheduled meeting a mere undercard to a high-stakes postseason rematch. Unfortunately, it will not be the last time this scenario unfolds, but for now, there's no precedent for a conference devaluing one of its own competitions to this degree.
No coaching staff has ever been in this exact position, incentivized not to win this game, but rather to use it to maximize the probability of winning the next one. Our task this week is to see this "meaningless" game through the eyes of both sides, figuring out the coaches' approach to calling and managing the game and to pitching the value of winning it to their skeptical players, as well as those players' mindsets toward a competition that they're well aware lacks the usual stakes.
Handicapper's toolbox
A different concept every Monday, and how to apply it on Saturday.
Teams that possess the ball, yet do nothing with it, are prime "under" candidates
Sounds obvious, right? Here's a simple but surprisingly effective exercise: Once there's a reasonable sample -- say, half the season -- find the top 30 or 40 teams in time of possession. Now look to see which of those rank in the bottom 30 or so in scoring or total offense, regardless of defensive statistics. Now watch how many times the game goes under when two such teams get together. High ball control combined with low output usually equals low-scoring games, even with weak defenses on the field.
The UT San Antonio Roadrunners (10th in TOP, 90th in scoring offense) are one such team, and they earned a 9-7 victory over the Marshall Thundering Herd (30th in TOP, 82nd in scoring) last week. We're eager to see the total this week on Tuesday's matchup between the Miami (OH) RedHawks and Ball State Cardinals. The RedHawks are 24th in time of possession and 95th in scoring offense, while the Cardinals are 12th and 121st.
