I’ll be adding to this post as the bowl season moves along. But I just wanted to add a few of my thoughts on the bowl games and how I approach bowl season in general.

Preference for the Dog

Like Pezgordo, I’m not particularly a fan of the favorites in these bowls. But like the regular season, I’m not afraid to play them either when I feel they are getting a favorable line or spot. As a rule for the dogs in these games, I’ll move the point spread about 2 points in favor of the dogs. I do this mainly because of the month of extra prep time a team gets. I feel it favors the dogs more than the faves in these games.

But there are other reasons. Although not always the case,  I also consider the fact that some of these dogs are just happier to be in a bowl than their opponents. For example a Sunbelt team or maybe a low rung CUSA team who very seldom if ever gets to perform on television in front of a national audience, and are more than likely going to give 100% for their school and program exposure.

This is just one reason why I like to give a slight advantage to the dogs in these early games. It comes down to program respect, redemption and prep time, getting healthier as a team and other intangibles.

Good Luck Predicting Motivation

I no longer use motivation as a big factor in my capping. If I have some serious doubts about the mindset of a team, I simply won’t bet the game unless the line already favors the other side after I cap it. I love the psychological part of college football, but the fact is it’s pretty much impossible to guess the mental state of an entire football team.

There may be a couple teams each bowl season that I have serious doubts about as far as the motivation factor, like USC last season against Ga Tech. But it was the events leading up to that game such as the USC team missing the bowl banquet which was a dead giveaway, and a serious snub to the Sun Bowl officials and GT that they simply didn’t care to be there. In my mind that was pretty much inexcusable for the sorry Lane Kiffin and his team. I was about 90% sure they weren’t going to show up for the game either. And they didn’t.

But most of the time the motivation factor isn’t that obvious, and may only happen once or twice a bowl season, if at all. So it’s no use trying to guess. Plus something tells me that even if these teams do have more motivation, they don’t perform any better or worse than 50% over the long run.

If your really stuck on looking for the motivation factor in the bowls, look no further than the coach first. He’s the one who dictates the general attitude of the team. You might be able to pick up on their general attitude in their press conferences. But none of them are going to come out and say “this bowl sucks, and we aren’t going to give 110%.”

Line Movement

We have to keep in mind that because of the public interest in the bowls, we are going to get much more line movement than we normally do during the regular season. This is why I don’t really care for playing games too early.

And I’m especially hesitant of playing double digit dogs too early. Some of these dogs are eye candy to the public. Like for example a dog of +14. Weekend bettors think after reading all of the bowl handicapping advice about dogs covering in December games that the +14 is a gift they better get now before the line drops. Problem is Vegas is already aware of the December dogs theory, and many times will set the line a little lower than it should be.

I’ve seen many examples where the public has jumped all over a team early at +14 thinking it was a great deal, and by kickoff it was up to +16 and the favorite covers. It pays to cap these games yourself before making any foolish early bets based on old or bad advice or somebody else’s opinion.

I know you’ve all heard about the “take the dogs in December and the favorites in January” theory. This is true to an extent. But let’s not get carried away with that angle. Dating back about 25 years the dogs cover about 55% of the time in December. With dogs of 7 points or more a little more than that. In fact I remember back about 7 or 8 years ago when the big dogs had an incredible ATS bowl run for about 3 or 4 years straight. Something around 70% or higher covered at over 7 points. But you can’t count on that big of a run every season. It eventually evens out in the end.

This is why most system plays don’t work year after year. College football is an ever changing game. When we get to January it of course turns to the favorites, who have covered a little over 53% of the time. So you still have to carefully pick and choose your spots.

Plus the bowl calendar has changed quite a bit since these old trends came out. Many of these mediocre teams who used to play their games in December are now playing them in January as filler for the networks. So you have to treat some of these post-New Year’s games like a December bowl.

Coaching Still Rules

To me, the coaching angle is still the strongest handicapping angle there is when it comes to bowl games. I’m probably more guilty than most of using this angle more than I should during the regular season. But there are simply situations where it can’t be ignored.

For example the Gundy/Stoops matchup with OU/OSU. Gundy is 1-8 SU against Stoops in his career. And this year his team was favored by the biggest point spread margin than they’ve ever had over the Sooners. This was an instance where the coaching matchup had to be your number one reason for liking the Sooners in that game.

Same goes for bowls. If the coaching angle isn’t the strongest, it’s  way up there in the top 3 angles you should be using to cap the bowls. Unlike the regular season where they have a fixed routine every week for prepping for weekly games, the bowls are another animal. Some coaches are just better at getting their teams prepped through finals, parties, suspensions, illness and other distractions such as the bowl events leading up to the game. Others are not so good at it. And it reflects in their poor bowl records.

I’m also a little hesitant of betting on coaches in their first bowl. Unless the opposing coach is also inexperienced in bowls or has a poor bowl record, or his team is simply much more talented than their opponent. But in the end every decision you make still depends on the point spread.

Hot ATS Teams vs Cold ATS Teams

Another thing about bowls that differ somewhat from the regular season. Although not set in stone, I’m a little more prone to bet against teams who have an ATS winning streak (3 games or more) coming into the bowls. And I like to bet on teams who have a losing streak ATS, because those teams are usually getting a little more line value because of public perception, and could also be looking for a little redemption for their poor finish.

This is opposite of the way I play regular season games. As a rule I like to ride ATS winning streaks, and bet against the losing streaks. But a layoff of a few weeks can sometimes totally change the dynamics of a team.

Remember, I’m talking about winning and losing ATS, I’m not talking about SU wins or losses. For this reason alone I’ve never liked the 5 week or so layoff from the regular season to the national title game. It is just way too long when you compare it to the other major sports. I think it would have been much more interesting for Florida State to have caught a hot Auburn team the next week or maybe two weeks after the regular season. With 4 or 5 weeks between games, I’m never sure what kind of team will show up.

Remember a couple years ago when Oregon/Auburn played in the title game and the total was set in the 70’s? We ended up getting a 41 point final total for that game. If those two teams had met a week or two after the regular season, my bet is we would have seen a much different type of game. It looks to me like the farther out from the regular season these games go, the less true to form a team plays. But that’s just my opinion. And a subject for another article.

More to come … 

I’ll have plenty more to say as we get into the bowls, which I’ll be adding to this post. I’m sure many of you have heard most or all of this info before, but it never hurts to get a refreshment course on these bowls. I do it for myself every year at this time since I’m getting old and forget half the crap I’ve learned after a good nights sleep.

I’ll try to add a few things as we go along. Every game is different. And with coaching changes it makes it incredibly difficult to cap some of these games. Even with assistants moving on it can put a crimp in a bowl game. I’ve especially found this to be the case with offensive coordinators when they take another job and can’t coach in the bowl. You’ve got to be careful of these games.

Just one early observation from looking at the raw numbers on these games,  it looks like the ACC could perform better than expected in the bowls. And it looks like the Big 12 could be the worst performer of the Big 5 conferences.

I also think the SEC will perform under expectations. And the Big 10 and Pac-10 will be a little hit and miss as far as the spread goes, and we’ll just have to take them game by game. But I think the Big 10 could surprise in one or two games. I’ll start giving my early opinions on some of these games starting in the next few days. BOL this bowl season. Let’s make’em apologize.

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A few more bowl thoughts…

After every bowl season Pezgordo and I have compared notes to see where we went wrong with our bowl losses. When it comes to the running dogs, or really all of the teams in general, we’ve learned to be careful betting the non-BCS schools going up against the BCS schools in these games. Even with the running dogs. They may look good on paper, but we have to adjust to the fact that they played at lower level with their schedule as the BCS teams. A few things to make sure of in these games is that you have some advantages somewhere other than just being the PRD (probable running dog). A sizeable point spread is a good place to start. Plus coaching advantages if any. Maybe home field advantage or going back to the same familiar bowl. And how high of a level the non-BCS team was playing at when the season ended as opposed to the BCS team and whether they were getting blown out by teams at the end of the year, or just scraping by the cellar dwellers of their conference.

A few other things I had written down in my bowl notes from previous years. Teams going back to the same bowl after losing the year before have a good record of winning or covering the next year. For example Ga Tech last year winning the Sun Bowl after losing there the previous year. I also think there is a slight advantage to a team going back to the same bowl year after year. Like Boise St. who won the Las Vegas Bowl for 3 years straight. A few other notes that took me by surprise a little is that many of the teams who had exceptional ATS seasons (won 8 games or more) didn’t do well in their bowls. Ball St, Bowling Green, Fresno, Kansas St, Kent St. Northern Ill, Oregon St, Pitt, SDST, ULM & WKU all lost.

I’ve also learned that the intangibles surrounding these games can trump the teams stats in these bowls much more than they can in the regular season. I can name more games that didn’t go by the numbers in these bowls last year than did. For example the Fresno St/SMU bowl game probably had many of the excel sheet numbers nerds shaking their heads after that game. But the intangibles overrode the numbers in that game. Fresno with a first year coach going against grizzled veteran June Jones, who was not only experienced in the bowls, he was very familiar with the Hawaii Bowl since that was his home base for many years. So he knew exactly how to prepare his team for that game. Plus Fresno was coming into that game somewhat disappointed that they were relegated to a lower bowl like the Hawaii Bowl after having an excellent 9-3 season. They wanted something much bigger against a BCS opponent.  So although the stats favored Fresno, everything else about that game favored SMU, including the generous +13 point line. These are the things we have to look for in these bowls. They can be a much bigger deal than most of the general betting public thinks.

Here are a few other notes I took off of last season. These pertain very much to some of the bowl strategies I mentioned above. In fact about one third of the bowl games last year fell under these strategies.

1.Florida St. lost their last 4 games ATS and won and covered their BCS Bowl game

2.Fresno St. won their last 5 games ATS and lost their bowl game SU

3.Ga Tech lost their last 2 games SU and won their bowl game as +7 dogs

4.Minnesota lost their last 2 games and covered as +13 dogs to TT

5.Ohio lost their last 3 games and won their bowl SU at +7

6.Purdue won their last 3 games and Okie State lost their last 2 games and OSU won and covered easily at -17

7.Pitt easily won their last 2 games of the regular season and lost as just +3 dogs to Ole Miss who lost 3 out of their last 4 games.

8.SDST won their last 3 games ATS and lost their bowl game as +3 to BYU. Rocky Long now just 1-6 in bowl games. Something to take note of.

9.Texas lost last 2 games SU and won bowl over Oregon St. as +3 dogs.

10.Several teams lost their last game of the season and covered or won their bowls like Clemson +3, UW +5 and UCF -7.

 

Bowl coaches with the worst bowl records. Some of these might surprise you:

Spurrier (9-10), Briles (2-4), O’Leary (4-5), Bill Snyder (6-8), Rocky Long (1-6), Dave Clawson (0-2), Frank Solich (4-6), Ken Niumotalolo (Navy) (1-4), Paul Johnson (3-6), Dabo Swinney (2-3), Mark Dantonio (3-4), Rich Rod (3-4), Frank Beamer (9-11), Jerry Kill (0-3) to name a few. The coaches who have been in just one or two bowl games isn’t really an accurate consensus unless they haven’t won any games like Clawson or Kill. .

 

Bowl coaches with the best bowl records:

Urban Meyer (7-1), Hudspeth ULL 2-0), Bronco Mendenhall (6-2), Tubberville (7-3), Mack Brown (13-7), Todd Graham (4-1), Dan Mullen (2-1), David Baliff-Rice (2-0), David Cutcliff (4-2), Sumlin (2-1), Mark Richt (8-4), Kirk Ferentz (6-4), Saban (8-6), Mike Gundy (5-2), Pinkel (5-4), Jimbo Fisher (3-0)

 

First year coaches (1st season anywhere as HC)  for the most hasn’t had a good record in bowl games. Here are the first year coaches. This doesn’t include any current interim coaches yet. And only includes head coaches coaching for the first time ever at any FBS school:

Rod Carey (NIU-0-1 as previous interim HC), Matt Well (Utah St), Scott Shafer (Syracuse), Mark Helfrich (Oregon), Kliff Kingsbury (Texas Tech),

 

Probable Running Dogs

These are courtesy of Pezgordo. The Probable Running Dogs (PRD’s) are the underdog teams who have the potential of outrushing their opponents. A very important tool in capping. Especially bowl games. But like any other part of capping, many other things have to be considered. Like what I mentioned above. The class jump or drop, better or worse defense, coaching records comparison of both coaches and other intangibles. It also doesn’t hurt and many times makes the PRD’s a stronger play if they also have the better defense on top of the better running game. Of course any sizeable class jump can possibly negate these stats. I want to state up front that these aren’t automatic plays for me. In fact there may be a few of these I play against or not play at all if the negatives outweigh the positives with these teams.

 

Colorado State…Defenses are about even

SDST…Just barely qualifies. Buffalo defense better. Two very even teams on paper

Boise State…Boise also has the better D

Syracuse…But Minny has the better D

BYU…D’s are about even

Cincinnati…Cincy also has the better D

Georgia Tech…Ole Miss has the better D

Boston College…But numbers are very close. Arizona with the better D

Iowa…Iowa also has the better D

Houston…And Houston has the better D