Revisiting 2009 Cincinnati

When I previewed the Bearcats in the preseason, I had them around the 4th or 5th best team in the Big East. Clearly, they are much better than that. With last night's defeat of South Florida, the prospect of an undefeated Cincinnati team became much larger. I said on Twitter last night that I didn't think they would be less than a touchdown favorite the rest of the year except to Pitt. After consulting with Moneyline, here are the Bearcats' new expected spreads.



Pitt is the only team with better than a one in three shot of beating Cincy. I can't wait for ESPN touting the Wannstache if this scenario plays out.





The odds of an undefeated Big East team playing for the national title have gone up to around 21%. The media is going to have a field day with this.

2009 CFB Preview: Connecticut

This is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. UConn will likely not be anywhere close to contending for the Big East title. Edsall is putting a decent program together in Storrs, but they will need more talent to compete with the South Floridas and Pitts of the conference.



UConn is actually similar to Cincinnati in their win distribution profiles, but UConn is definitely a worse team. Cincy is getting screwed by their schedule. UConn just isn't very good.





There isn't any value in under 6.5 -240 at 5Dimes. The under will hit about 71% of the time, which is about where you need to be profitable at -240.

Now that I've got the Big East out of the way and have an idea of exactly what I'm doing, I'll start looking at teams that have a chance to be decent. The ACC is next, with Florida State and Clemson coming tomorrow.

2009 CFB Preview: Cincinnati

Cincinnati is going to take a step back this year, though that's not really much of a surprise. Either the 2008 edition of the Bearcats or the 2004 Pitt team was the weakest conference champion of the BCS Era. Cincinnati only made the Orange Bowl last year thanks to luck and the mediocrity of the competition. Arguments could be made that WVU, Rutgers, USF, and Pitt were all better last year. Those same arguments will be true this year, too.



Oregon State and Fresno State were the hardest lines to come up with. I've got the relative difference between those two teams at eleven*, but couldn't really figure out where Cincinnati fell in between them. Eventually, I settled on Oregon State being six points better and Fresno five points worse. Feel free to disagree with me there.

*Boise St -9.5 @ Fresno St
Boise St -4 vs. Oregon
Oregon -6 vs. Oregon St



Even in the best case scenario, Cincinnati is more likely to have a record below .500 than above. The worst case scenario would be funny, only because of the Brian Kelly articles that might surface once he is no longer a hot name. I know there are people up in Michigan that aren't exactly enamored with the guy.




Unfortunately, there are no over/unders set up for Cincinnati. If you can find one, I'd bet under is the play, coming off the Orange Bowl berth last year.

(Thanks to xlssports for the Monte Carlo Calculator)

2009 CFB Preview: Rutgers

Rutgers is in the clubhouse as the favorite in the "Team Least Thought To Be Favored In Every Game" Sweepstakes. Their non-conference schedule is garbage, with Maryland going back to being Maryland, and in conference WVU, Pitt, Cincy and USF all have to come to Piscataway.



I'm not sure there is a lot of value in taking Rutgers to win the conference at +350, but it's probably better than all of the other Big East bets out there.





Unfortunately, there is no value in the total. 5Dimes has it set at 8, which occurs 21% of the time. Nine or better will hit 60% of the time. Considering the time value of money and the -225 juice, it's not worth it.

(Thanks to xlssports for the Monte Carlo Calculator)

2009 CFB Preview: Pittsburgh

The Wannstache will have a squad composed entirely of "his" players this year, which has some folks in Steel City excited about their chances to get the BCS birth from the Big East. It's not like they have any worse chance than WVU, Rutgers, Cincy, or USF. The top five in the conference are separated by about three points in the power rankings.



Hey look, it's another 7-5 or 8-4 record expected from a Big East team. This whole conference is muddled.





The books have Pitt nailed, setting their total at 7.5, though the split is -170/+140 toward the over at 5Dimes, which makes the 58/42 probabilities no value.

(Thanks to xlssports for the Monte Carlo Calculator)

2009 CFB Preview: South Florida

The early favorite for the Big East title has a dichotomous non-conference schedule. On one hand, they have FCS Wofford and Charleston Southern and one of the worst teams in FBS, Western Kentucky. On the other, they travel to Tallahassee and get the Hurricanes at home.



The win distributions clearly show that South Florida is more likely to have a better overall record and within conference record than WVU. I'm not really sure why Vegas has the 'Eers installed as the favorite.





With the total set at 8, though, there really isn't a whole lot of value in the over/under for USF. The 26.6% chance of a draw pretty well sucks all of the value out of the prop.

(Thanks to xlssports for the Monte Carlo simulator)

2009 CFB Preview: West Virginia

West Virginia clearly took a step back last year. There's no reason to think that the Mountaineers won't fall back to their historical place in the college football landscape as an above average program in a second tier conference. The sportsbooks agree with me.



The median spreads above were taken from the spreads already posted by Sportsbook and the Golden Nugget and then interpolating those around college football to come up with games not listed. Worst case scenario spreads gave WVU three or four more points than the median, depending on how confident I felt in the lines I set. The best case lines gave points to WVU's opponent.

Once probabilities were assigned to each game, xlssports provided me with a Monte Carlo calculator to determine the probability of every outcome on WVU's schedule.



With West Virginia's aggressive non-conference schedule, the 'Eers look like a 7-5 to 8-4 team this year. Their total at 5Dimes is 8.5, and if you take the median spreads, the under will hit 77% of the time, which is kind of surprising that there is that much difference. Even for West Virginia's Best Case, under 8.5 comes up 57% of the time. I'm not big on tying up money in futures, but those seem to have fairly high EV.




I can't find any value in West Virginia to win the conference given that half the time they finish under five wins.

Again, I chose a decent Big East team to start out with because I'm not sure if my methodologies are correct, so errors are not terribly important, so feel free to let me know where I screwed up.

(Special thanks to xlssports for providing the Monte Carlo calculator)

2009 CFB Preview: Big East

The Big East should be a wide open conference this year, with any of six teams having a legitimate shot to take the conference title. The only teams seemingly out of the mix are Louisville and especially Syracuse.



The above chart shows the futures odds for the Big East Championship from Lucky's and Harrah's in Las Vegas. The table is sorted by Lucky's, but you can see there are some pretty big discrepancies.

Interestingly, when looking at the point spreads from the Golden Nugget and Sportsbook, West Virginia does not appear to be the best team. South Florida is the team the books have installed as the favorite after home field advantage is accounted for. It's not like USF or WVU have favorable schedules compared to one another within the conference, either.



Given that information, I wonder if there is value in taking the under on WVU win total of 8.5, especially having to play Colorado and at Auburn. Otherwise, the win totals seem to fit with the spreads.



I did the Big East first, because it's a mostly insignificant conference. Let me know if there is anything wrong with the analysis.