UCF at TCU: R.B. Dressler’s Week 3 CFB ATS Prediction

Hoping the UCF Knights End Up Like the Black Knight

(“Oh, I see, running away eh? Come back here you yellow bastard, I’ll bite your legs off!”)
This week’s play:
TCU +2

This play is from one of my WF systems, where I try to identify Wrong Favorites in college football.

After last week’s results came in, I decided to drop one of the three WF spots I was charting.
First – it was very time consuming and kicked out very few games to play.
Second, I’ve noticed that seasons in which I track and chart ten or more plays not only take up too much of my time but also divide my focus, leaving me sometimes unsure which plays to bet on using which method.
Handicapping is an art,
handicapping takes talent.
If you’re going to try your hand at it don’t overdo it, don’t go crazy with too many systems. Focus on finding a few that work as a play ON or a Fade AGAINST.

The game plan this year is to limit my handicapping to two WF systems for sides (WF1 and WF2) and three for totals.
And, as always, I’ll chart subsets within those plays, based on point differentials, home or away, and when I get a match (two or more systems choose the same play.)
More focus should result in a higher W percentage. Time will tell.

WF2 says UCF is the wrong favorite in Saturday’s game.
It has a record of 8-9 on road teams, like UCF this week.
At 8-9 I have a losing record to Fade but not really much of an edge.
So why did I choose this game?
Because it fits my favorite subset.
I’ve detailed this before; it sounds complicated, but it’s not:
When WF2 says the wrong team is favored and, WF1 says the correct team is the Fav, and WF1’s point spread differential is a TD or more than WF2’s, take the WF1 team.
Why?
Because the WF2 team has a record of 2-5 in this spot, a 71% Fade.

I used this system for one of my two PredictEm forum selections last week, Northwestern -2′, and they won by 7. (College football forum picks are at 2-1, so combined with homepage picks, I’m off to a 7-1 start.)

This is the first season I’m using this particular method of ‘capping in football.
I came up with it late in the current WNBA season where it went 2-6, a 75% fade.
Yes, very little data to go on. But one of the keys to winning at sports betting is to get on a trend before reversion towards the mean comes into play. This is one of the reasons why people who jump on already established streaks don’t win.
They see someone is 9-1 and jump on their next pick. But a 90% win rate is impossible to maintain. The value in that play was nine or ten games ago.
It’s not easy to discern when a winning trend is at it’s beginning, that’s why most people don’t try it and jump on streaks instead.
But that’s what I’ve done the last couple times I’ve used this play, I’m trying to identify and catch a streak at the beginning.
It was 2-6 in the WNBA and is now 2-5 in college football. I’m curious to see if it continues to win. And I’m betting it does.

There is one caveat in this game that wasn’t a factor in any of the previous games that qualified – Clemson is what I call a FF Fav.
FF stands for Flip Flop. In the sports book, parlay cards had to be sent down to the print shop Monday afternoon. Favs on the left hand side of the card, Dogs on the right. Last minute edits had to be submitted to the print shop by Wednesday at 4:00. So when line moves caused a team that opened as a Dog to become the Fav we had to call down to the print shop and tell them to flip which sides of the card the teams are on, and give them the new line. Hence the term Flip Flop Favs.

TCU opened as the Fav, but now they’re the Dog. Normally, I’m laying points in this spot, but in this game, I’m getting points (unless it flips again.)
Will this affect the play?
I don’t know, but regardless of the outcome I’ll be charting a record for when this system involves a FF Fav, so if it comes up again this season I’ll have an idea of which side to put my money on. Or not.

UCF is off to a 2-0 start, but they’ve beaten the University of New Hampshire and Sam Houston, both games at home. Color me unimpressed.

TCU is also 2-0, and though their opening game 45-0 victory against the Long Island Sharks is not a quality win, they did beat Stanford in their second game, 34-27 on the road.

UCF is 2-0 ATS.
Despite being 2-0 SU the Horned Frogs are 0-2 ATS, missing by one point vs the Sharks and a half a point in the Stanford game.

Final note: This pick/analysis write-up began on the UCF/TCU game. Then I decided to use the Fla Int/Fla Atl game, and started my write-up on that contest. But then I remembered one of the oldest rules we were ever taught, going back to grade school – NEVER change your original answer on a test.
And it applies to handicapping, too.
At the last minute, I changed one of my picks in the Stardust Invitational contest, and though I finished the year with the highest win percentage of any participant, I got knocked out because I changed one of my picks from the Akron Zips (who won and covered) to USC (who lost.)

And I did it earlier this year at PredictEm. I did a last-minute switch, and the game I went off of won, and the game I went with lost.
Part of winning is learning from mistakes. I’m sticking with my original play today. But I’ll use that Fla Int/Fla Atl play in the forum.

When to buy recommendation:
The line is all over the place on this one.
It opened TCU -2/-2′, moved to UCF -2/-2′. This morning I see UCF everywhere from -2′ to -1′. Barring any injury updates I don’t see any chance of this one going to TCU +3 at home, so I grabbed it this morning at the common number of +2.

Good luck with your plays this week.

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