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I'm always leery of such a huge line move thru zero. Louisville is -2 now, a 4 point swing from the opener of +2, which is obviously a huge move....but many don't think the line ever matters under a fg, so they'll just take the dumpy line. Might work out, but there were pretty many pissed people on Washington -1.5 or -2 last weekend (just for the most recent example i can think of), and that crap happens more often that I think lots of people realize with these low lines.
Personally, if I were to take a poor line, I'd rather lay -7 for a team who opened at -3, or take a +11 for a team that opened at +15, or something like that.....rather than one that opened as a small dog and got pushed to a small fave. Looks so easy because why would +2 come into play, right? But those games so often seem to be close (hence the low opening line to begin with) and the points actually seem to come into play more times than it seems like they should and those with the opener end up covering while those with the much worse closing line end up pissed off with a losing ticket....
If i made a decision to play Louisville, I'd at the very least buy it down to -1 if i could get that @ -120 or less, but that's still a horrible line in contrast to +2 -110, or even +1 -110, unless it moves to -3....in which case I'd actually feel more comfortable taking Louisville because if the books are willing to offer +3 on a team who opened at -2, that's a pretty big indicator they're not worried about the middle or that the line will come into play. An example of that from last week would have been Pitt/Syracuse. Pitt moved right on up and thru -3 (there were some -3.5's just before game time) after opening around +1, and proceeded to blow 'Cuse right off the field.
Stif, I agree that the line move is a bit perplexing. I pegged it as a game because I thought Louisville was the better rushing team and would win outright. If the line had started with them as the favorite I probably wouldn't even have considered it. In hind sight I probably should have passed on them.
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